Android challenger brand Nothing made headlines earlier this year for its Nothing Phone 3, a device that stood out for its unusual, polarising design and for the fact it was the brand’s most expensive phone yet at £799. In a move that could placate critics, the firm has today unveiled the Nothing Phone 3a Lite, a budget option with impressive specs for the £249 asking price.

The Phone 3 got rid of the ‘Glyph’ light system built into the back of all previous Nothing phones, which flash to notify you of notifications and different app actions, replacing it with a small circular LED screen that showed pixelated graphics instead.

The Glyphs are back with the Phone 3a Lite, the firm’s cheapest phone to date, albeit in its subtlest form yet with a single dot light in the bottom right corner of the back of the phone, as opposed to the curved strip lights in older devices.

If you dig its looks, the 3a Lite could prove an affordable antidote to Samsung’s more pedestrian designs in this price bracket.

The 3a Lite in black or white is unmistakenly Nothing. I’ve been testing the black model for a week or so (I prefer the look of the white one) and it feels more premium than the price suggests thanks to protective Panda Glass (a rival of Corning’s Gorilla Glass) on the front and back. You might expect plastic at this price, but only the frame is.

For all intents and purposes, this phone is a reshelled CMF Phone 2 Pro, the latest device from Nothing’s CMF sub-brand. That phone has a metal back with screws for accessories such as wallets and lanyards, but otherwise its specs are identical to the Phone 3a Lite – although the CMF is cheaper at £219.

Nothing appears to want to offer a budget phone option with Nothing branding rather than its non-transparent, colourful CMF option.

That means the phone is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro chip along with 8GB RAM, 5,000mAh battery with 33W charging, a 6.77-inch AMOLED with 120hz adaptive refresh rate, IP54 dust and water resistance, and a main 50MP camera with OIS flanked with an 8MP ultra-wide. There’s a central cut-out 16MP selfie shooter on the front.

Also like the Phone 2 Pro and the Nothing Phone 3, 3a and 3a Pro, the 3a Lite has what Nothing calls an Essential Key underneath the power button. When pressed this takes a screenshot or takes an audio note, which is sent to the Essential Space app to be summarised and categorised by AI.

I personally don’t like it, and press it accidentally all the time. I wish you could turn it off or at least reassign it another function, but no dice.

Unlike some budget Android phones there’s no headphone jack, but you get a dual nano-SIM slot and NFC for contactless payments. The phone also ships with Nothing OS 3.5 based on Android 15, but Nothing tells me it’ll get Android 16 some time early next year.

The phone will get three years of Android updates and six years of security patches – not bad for a budget phone, matching Samsung’s six years of security patches for its double-the-price £499 Galaxy A56.

The Phone 3a Lite is on sale from today from Nothing.tech with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage for £249, or 8GB RAM and 256GB storage for £279.