NothingPhone (3a) Smartphone, 6.77" 120Hz AMOLED Display, 50MP Triple Camera System, Snapdragon 7s Gen3 Processor, Bluetooth 5.4, IP64 Waterproof, 5000mAh,Dual Nano-SIM, Android 15, 12+256GB White

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I may not be the ideal consumer for this phone. I have an iPhone 16 pro max and an s24 ultra, both flagships and frankly I love tech and don't care to be bogged down to one brand or ecosystem. I have been looking for a third phone to join the ranks of my daily driver and I thought this would be a cool, unique phone, but it left me unimpressed and returning it back to Nothing.I purchased directly from the Nothing website and weirdly took almost a week to get here when I live 2 states away from where they ship from. No big deal. I purchased the nothing ear buds to compliment this phone, but they were cheaper on amazon so I bought this here, and they came first. (short review on those... get them, excellent earbuds and work great with my s24 ultra).The presentation of the unboxing on the 3a is great and it feels premium, although no charger included is ridiculous. You want to set yourself apart from the competition so add something that gives your company value.The phone itself feels great to me. It's a lot of plastic but it feels lightweight, and heavier doesn't always mean premium. My biggest complaint about the exterior of the phone is how slippery it is. I swear I had it on a flat surface and it still was moving around. It's a great, unique design though and why I bought it.I'll get to the meat and potatoes on my gripes and why I returned it. Coming from premium phones, I can't get over some of the concessions of this phone. It's a lower end mid range in my opinion. No wireless charging is big for me. It may not be for you, but it is for me. I use wireless charging daily. I hate wires. Being a midrange I knew it wasn't going to have the best processor or graphics card, but it's abysmal. I will give Nothing credit that they can really make software that is optimal for the chips that they're using, but when you use apps it's noticeably laggy in certain aspects. On a side not, the OS and their version of things aren't for me. I don't like the icons or how the home page feels so I used Nova Launcher and an icon pack and every time I would get out of an app to go on the home page it would stutter for a nanosecond but it was noticeable and I couldn't unsee it. Some of the games I played lagged and would stutter and overall not a good fit for me. If they offered me a $100 refund to make it 279 I would have taken it and be happy but can't justify it when I can get a lot more phone for a little more money.That's not to say it's a bad phone. For the majority of people that don't go in depth with high end games and other apps, it's a fine phone and speedy enough due to the optimization, and the price is great if you can get it for 379.I'm taking 2 stars off. One for the low level internals, and one for the difficulty in returning it, at least from the official Nothing website. I had to google how to return the phone, then contact Nothing twice, then get approved after filling out a form, and then wait another day for them to send me a label so I can return it.I'm debating what I'm going to try next. I'm thinking OnePlus 13R. Has the same processor as my s24 ultra and with an old OnePlus phone I have they would give me $150 as trade in credit which would make the 13R only about 50-60$ more than this phone and it has a lot of things that are better when you compare it to this phone, e.g. processor, battery size, cameras, etc. Sorry Carl.

Great phone I bought it for a gaming phone and it handles very well considering the price. But I used it for a while and the screen started flashing light green randomly as if it overheated or something. It was only flashing if I was in a game and was afk.