Then, a little over a month ago, I saw the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro—and for the first time in years, I found myself excited at the prospect of a new phone. Its retro-futuristic design, glowing glyph interface, and promise of genuinely useful AI features made it stand out in a market dominated by Samsung and Apple. So I swapped my SIM card and committed to using it for a week, assuming that, despite its cool features, I’d ultimately return to the comfort I had found in the Apple ecosystem. After more than a month, I’m not going back—here’s why:

Design that Feels Different

What initially drew me to the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro was its retro-inspired design. The aluminum chassis’s back face sports a large, noticeable glyph interface (the big black circle next to the camera) that uses a dot matrix display found in analog tech and transforms it into a useful and playful notification center. When you receive texts or calls the display lights up, and you can program various emoticons to appear when you receive messages from certain contacts or even notifications with specific keywords. I found this handy for being notified of messages from important contacts without a distracting sound while my phone lies face down on my desk.

The glyph matrix lighting up as I receive a notification.

The phone’s operating system, Nothing OS, is functionally a cosmetic redesign of Android that omits much of the bloatware (pre-installed apps and software packaged with a new phone that hardly get used). The streamlining transcends just utility and extends into the visual design, with a custom icon pack and thoughtfully-crafted widgets that exude a stylishness which can often be absent from Android phones.

The home screen on my Nothing Phone (4a) Pro.

The customizability of the Nothing Phone really stood out compared to my previous devices. It’s clear Nothing has gone to great lengths to ensure users are able to use their device however they like. This ranges from the ability to easily program various buttons on the device with custom functions to releasing an tutorials and tooling for creating custom functions for the glyph interface. As someone like me who likes to tinker, the experience felt far more flexible than iOS.

Actually Useful AI Features

Nothing’s thoughtful approach to AI makes it feel like a core feature, not an afterthought. At the most basic level, the phone features integration with Google’s suite of AI tools which are now standard in many Android phones, including the highly useful circle-to-search feature that lets you quickly share portions of your phone’s screen with Gemini so you can ask questions or generate content based on whatever’s currently on your display.

Using circle-to-search to quickly translate a photo I took of a warning sign.

On the more custom front is the impressive Essential Space app, Nothing’s fusion of a notes app and Pinterest board. Using the Essential Key on the device, you can take screenshots and add comments. The Essential Space app then uses image recognition AI to analyze the screenshot, pulling out key insights like event times and locations, action items, and important information. It even takes this info and creates to-dos and calendar reminders. I’ve found this incredibly useful when I was planning a trip to Tokyo recently, wherein I can take screenshots of event fliers and the app automatically added calendar reminders so I didn’t have to manually transcribe them.

Essential Space in Action

Capture

Using the Essential Key on the left side of the phone, I screenshotted this party flier on Instagram.

Key Info

The Essential Space app extracts key info from the flier including the location and date of the event and who is playing.

Calendar and Maps Integration

The Essential Space app can create calendar reminders about events and makes it easy to pull up locations on Google Maps.

Finally, there’s Nothing Playground, an ambitious attempt to introduce “vibe coding” (where an AI makes an app for you) directly within the smartphone ecosystem. The premise is simple: using their dedicated chatbot, describe the type of widget you’d like to have on your phone, like a uniquely designed clock or custom calendar display. Playing with this tool I was impressed with how accessible it made simple app design and how fun it was to come up with small interfaces that felt truly my own. While there are still some issues to be worked through, including a lack of good documentation and a somewhat limited feature set for your created widgets, the feature is still in closed beta and will hopefully be more fleshed out by the time of its public rollout.

Vibe Coding with Nothing Playground

Prompting

I described the exact widget I wanted and Nothing Playground’s AI agent got to work handling the coding.

Final Product

The widget I vibe coded on my phone’s home screen.

A Camera That Took Some Getting Used To—But Delivered

Being used to the look of iPhone photos, I was initially skeptical of the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro’s camera. On paper, the camera specs impressed me: a dual rear system (12 MP and 50 MP) and a 32 MP front camera—an upgrade from my previous phone. But at first, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the photos looked worse. There were two reasons for this: First, upon opening a freshly-taken photo in the gallery, the initial preview looks lower quality before the full image finishes processing a few seconds later. Second, the camera by default takes photos that are less saturated—and more natural-looking—than iPhone photos. Eventually, I became accustomed to this, though you can tweak this in editing or apply filters if you prefer a punchier look.

Photos Taken on the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

Looking down at the Zuishinmon gate in Enoshima.

Shot in medium daylight on the 50 megapixel back camera.

Street lights in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district.

Shot in low light using the 50 megapixel back camera.

Cliffs at Enoshima.

Shot with the 50 megapixel back camera in strong daylight.

A selfie in the Good Housekeeping Institute’s library.

Shot using the 32 megapixel front camera.

After putting the camera through the travel test on my recent trip to Japan, shooting hundreds of photos across a range of lighting conditions, I found the camera to be superb, producing realistic, high-quality photos. The ability to open the camera by double-pressing the power button also made shooting quick, in-the-moment shots incredibly easy. Additionally, video was fluid, well-toned, and vibrant. My only gripe is that when you edit the camera settings (like switching between the 12 MP and 50 MP cameras or removing HDR) your options aren’t preserved once you exit the app, and reapplying them can be annoying. Otherwise, I can happily report that the Nothing Phone’s camera dispels the myth that Android phones take lower-quality photos, and it does so convincingly.

More for Less

Nothing offers two configurations of the Phone (4a) Pro: 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for $499 or 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage for $599. On paper, the value, especially when it comes to RAM, is hard to ignore: The Nothing Phone can be anywhere from $100 to $500 less than an iPhone with the same amount of memory.

While the iPhone’s A19 chips are significantly more powerful than the CPU aboard the Nothing Phone, even when playing resource-demanding mobile games I haven’t felt limited. Additionally, as someone who backs much of my phone’s data up to cloud services, storage matters far less to me than RAM, which is responsible for running applications and multitasking.

Beyond technical specs, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the presence of phone accessories: a charging cord, pre-applied screen protector, and a clear case in the Nothing Phone’s box. These are all things I’ve come to expect to buy separately from my phone, but encountering them as part of the package felt premium and well-considered, like the manufacturer actually understood the needs of its users.

What I Miss

Despite my enthusiasm for the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, there are a few things I miss about my iPhone. The loss of iMessage and Find My are both difficult, though not dealbreakers for me. Communications between Android and iOS devices have improved with the better integration of RCS into most Apple products, but certain features (such as message replies) are still lacking. As a previous Find My Friends power user, not being able to share location with most of my good pals feels strange, but at the same time I’m leaning into the mystique of being untraceable.

Additionally, while Quick Share serves as an Airdrop replacement, its lack of compatibility with MacOS has made sharing items between my phone and laptop a bit more clunky than before.

Finally, the Nothing Phone uses a fingerprint scanner instead of a facial one, which is something I haven’t used in a while. There are a few conveniences that I like about it, but the ability to unlock my phone without my hands previously was a nice feature that is a bit missed.

All in all, though I miss these iPhone features, they haven’t dissuaded me from making the switch.

The Final Verdict

Ultimately, I switched for three main reasons: genuinely useful AI features, a high level of customizability, and a design that made smartphones feel fun again. It’s a premium-feeling smartphone at an impressively low price tag.

If you’re someone who is looking for a budget-to-mid-range smartphone that puts seamless AI integration at its forefront and offers a highly custom experience, I think you’ll like the phone just as much as I do. But if you’re looking for the most high-spec smartphone, don’t feel a need to be incorporating more AI into your life, or are wed to the comforts of Apple’s ecosystem, I don’t think this phone will be for you. While I certainly miss some of the trappings of my old iPhone, I can personally say the switch has been surprisingly easy—and genuinely exciting.

Nik (he/him) works across GH Institute Labs to develop testing protocols, analyze data, and build tools that support product evaluation. He also contributes editorial coverage on men’s beauty and audio, drawing on his background in chemical engineering and experience as a music producer and DJ. Before joining Good Housekeeping in 2022, Nik worked in the labs of MIT and Regeneron on projects ranging from chemical inventory and reporting to bioassay development.