I like that Nothing is bringing its 4a Pro to Canada. Last year, I checked out the 3a and 3a Pro, but they weren’t available in our market, so I’m thankful for the change. The Canadian smartphone market kind of feels like the Big Three carriers — similar to how we have Bell, Telus and Rogers, it seems like most smartphones available are from Apple, Google or Samsung (with some outliers like Motorola and OnePlus). However, like most things in life, some sort of diversity is for the best.
And like OnePlus, you can now purchase a Nothing Phone straight from Best Buy in Canada. This is definitely a plus, as some people prefer to purchase devices from a typical store instead of from a manufacturer’s website.
So why am I so happy about the Nothing 4a Pro in particular? Because it’s incredibly flashy – perhaps the flashiest and best-looking Nothing Phone the company has ever shown off. Of course, I miss the Glyph lights, but the Glyph Matrix on the 4a Pro is fun and cute, and while people will find it gimmicky (because it is), it’s a fun addition to a phone that costs $649.
Glyph Matrix
The Nothing 4a Pro has a pretty unique design compared to many of the other devices on the market. While most phones keep aluminum only to the frame, the 4a Pro has a unibody design with aluminum around the back of the phone as well. Additionally, it has a Gorilla Glass 7i display, which Gorilla Glass says should protect your handset from one-metre drops onto asphalt. The phone weighs 210g and is 8mm thick, the company’s thinnest phone ever. It’s far from the thinnest on the market, but it’s definitely an upgrade from the Nothing Phone 3 and even the 3a series. If you like how a sturdy handset feels in your hand, you’ll love it. However, I can see how an all-metal phone isn’t for everyone, and this design also doesn’t allow for MagSafe.
On the right side of the aluminum frame, there are three separate buttons, a power button and a volume rocker – I love when a volume rocker is split up, it’s easier to know if you’re lowering or raising the volume. The left side of the frame has the iconic Essential button, which uses AI to help keep your life organized. Nothing introduced the Essential button and Space last year, which essentially works as a storage space for screenshots that AI organizes to create reminders. If you use the Essential Space for an invite, the AI will remind you on that day and can even add it to your calendar. Although this process has proven a little slow and inconsistent, you also need to specifically have the date and time in your screenshot. Still, having everything in one Essential Space is nice.
But that’s not the design element most people care about; it’s all about that Glyph Matrix. On the back of the device, there’s the camera island, which houses three lenses in an ‘L’ shape (sort of) and the Glyph Matrix, which was first introduced on the Nothing Phone 3. The Glyph Matrix on the 4a Pro is more than 50 per cent larger and is made with 137 precision mini LEDs, meaning it’s twice as bright.
Remember when smartphones had notification lights? The Glyph Matrix replaces this with various emojis. You can also make your own custom symbols, but I haven’t tried this. I like how it works, you can set different apps to different emojis, or contacts or keywords, so you can choose whether or not you want to pick up the phone. For instance, the Glyph Matrix shows me a heart when I get a message from my partner, an octopus for emails, and a sword for WhatsApp. It can also show when you have an Uber coming with a progress tracker, timers, and you can even use it for selfies. The progress tracker works with Uber, but not Uber Eats, which was a little annoying and something I hope gets updated in the future.
I like using it for selfies probably the most because it lets you see a pixelated version of yourself, so you can properly set up a selfie.
Surprising experience
The Nothing Phone 4a Pro model that I reviewed featured 256GB of storage, 12GB of RAM and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset. This processor launched back in 2025, and it runs well without any big concerns. And while playing Elderand, Dead Cells and Greak: Memories of Azur, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro hasn’t warmed up whatsoever. I was very impressed, and honestly kind of shocked that the phone felt pretty cold to the touch after playing 30 minutes straight of these games. I played a match of Pokémon Unite on the highest frame rate, and the phone did warm up just a little bit. Each match is about 10 minutes, I think, if I continued the phone would probably actually warm up, but either way, I was pretty impressed.
This really shows that benchmarks aren’t the end-all because after running the 4a Pro through Geekbench 6, the smartphone has a single-core score of 1,316 and a multi-core score of 4,162, which isn’t that great compared to the latest flagships on the market.
Still a mid-range camera
The Nothing Phone 4a Pro’s photography isn’t the most impressive, but it gets the job done. For example, pictures I took of my furry dog look good, but you can see that the phone hasn’t captured a lot of detail in the fur. Still, images are pleasing to the eye with very good colour accuracy and AI in the background to assist. Some of the pictures I took at the aquarium on the 4a Pro even looked better than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, as the phone’s AI corrected for the blue light filter. The camera may not be the best, but it’s pretty solid for a mid-ranger.
I did have an issue with my eSIM working with the Nothing Phone 4a Pro. My eSIM is with Bell, and when I tried to use it with the device, I got an error message. The handset did work with my roommate’s physical SIM with Rogers, though. I’ve reached out to Nothing, and they’re trying to figure out why this is happening, but I’ll update this post when I get an answer. And due to the eSIM not working, I wasn’t able to use the 4a Pro as my primary device, which made testing the battery a little difficult. It seems promising, but I’ll need to perform some more testing before I can say anything definite about this experience.
Should you buy?
The Phone 4a Pro is a fun device. That’s surprisingly able to handle certain single-player games very well, has a unique design with a fun Glyph Matrix and comes at a solid price. I wish the base model came with 256GB, but the $649 for the 128GB still isn’t bad, though I reviewed the 12GB model.
The Nothing 4a Pro is perfect for someone like my 23-year-old brother. He’s horrible at checking his phone notifications, so Glyph lights would definitely assist him in remembering to pick up his phone, or knowing who’s reaching out to him, so he feels the need to grab his handset. He watches content and plays games, but nothing too intense, so the performance that the phone provides would work well, and he’s incredibly active, so the all-metal design would be perfect for him as well.
Currently, he’s loving the Nothing 3a, so upgrading to the 4a Pro might not be something he’s interested in, but I might make him so he answers me when I call him.
