Nothing just dropped some juicy details about the Phone (3a) design

Nothing has posted a new video diving deep into the designers' approach for the upcoming Nothing Phone (3a) series.

The Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro are soon to be officially launched on March 4. Leaks and rumors have given us plenty of exciting information about the upcoming phones. But Nothing is also keeping the hype up with a series of teasers and actually revealing the design itself.

Now, the company has released an insightful 10-minute video on its YouTube channel detailing some secrets about the Nothing Phone (3a) design. The video reveals different approaches that the designers worked on to bring this unique new look to the camera island and other elements of the phone.

Nothing, ever since its founding, has been betting on this different, futuristic look that definitely stands out from what other brands are making.

The designers reveal their approach by thinking about the two main decisions that have to be made before they start working on the final product: the display and the camera. The video also confirms the rumored periscope camera on the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro and reveals the space that was needed for this element inspired the new design.

First, designers sketch their ideas on paper and look for inspiration from seemingly random things around them (which is how inspiration works, by the way). They focus on making the camera island design look good, be practical, and fit the components. The quite nerdy and very inspiring vid also shows quite a lot of different potential designs for the camera island that were considered before Nothing choose the one we'll have.

We also see the camera button on the new phone, which was teased previously. One of the discarded design ideas was to place a red dot on it. The designers say they ultimately abandoned this idea as it won't match well with the colors they decided to go for, so instead, the button has a glossy finish to stand out while still matching the look of the rest of the phone.

The recognizable Glyph interface has also been redesigned: still featuring three elements, but they now have more 'granular control'. The video hints that this gives the Glyphs more functionality, but we've yet to see exactly what features this is referring to.

In the video, we also "see" the Nothing Phone (3), although it's completely blurred so we don't actually get to see it, rather it's just a teaser for the company's first flagship device.

Meanwhile, the Nothing Phone (3a) series has been in the leaks quite a lot and we know plenty of details. We expect a 3x optical zoom and a 60x digital zoom on the (3a) Pro, while the non-Pro version may have a 2x optical and 30x digital zoom, with the zoom being potentially the biggest difference between the two phones.

Also, rumor has it the two phones may support 50W fast charging, which actually beats the likes of the 45W Galaxy S25 Ultra charging speeds (which have been somewhat glitchy for some people on top of it all). The 50W charging on the Nothing Phone (3a) reportedly may bring the batter from 0 to 100% in a little under an hour, with 50% achieved in just 19 minutes.

The fast charging is definitely something other mid-rangers that are expected to launch sometime next month, like the Pixel 9a, Galaxy A56, and Galaxy A36 won't reportedly sport.

In terms of the processor, the Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro are said to come with a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, something hinted at by Nothing itself. The (3a) Pro recently showed up on Geekbench with the processor, delivering somewhat less-than-ideal speeds compared to some other phones, but technically should still be good for a mid-range device.

The Phone (3a) Pro is said to come with 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage, while the base model may come in either 8 or 12GB of RAM and 128 or 256GB of storage.