Nothing Phone 3a Series Confirmed to Use a Snapdragon Chipset, Get Faster AI Processing

Nothing CEO Carl Pei stated that the Nothing Phone 3a will have a 25 percent faster CPU.

Written by Akash Dutta, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 13 February 2025 18:51 IST

Nothing Phone 3a Series Confirmed to Use a Snapdragon Chipset, Get Faster AI Processing

Nothing Phone 3a is teased to get a quick shutter button for the camera

Highlights

Nothing Phone 3a to feature a 72 percent faster NPU than the predecessor
The Nothing Phone 2a was equipped with a Mediatek Dimensity 7200 Pro SoC
Nothing Phone 3a Series will be unveiled on March 4 at 3:30pm

Nothing Phone 3a series is set to be launched on March 4. Ahead of the launch, the company has shared key information about the upcoming smartphones. Nothing CEO Carl Pei revealed that the handsets will be equipped with a Snapdragon chipset. In comparison, its predecessor, the Nothing Phone 2a series was powered by MediaTek Dimensity processors. The smartphone brand also highlighted that the upcoming series will get significant CPU and neural processing unit (NPU) upgrades. The latter will improve the on-device artificial intelligence (AI) processing.

Nothing Phone 3a to Feature a Snapdragon Chipset

In a community post, Pei announced the decision to move away from MediaTek for the upcoming Nothing Phone 3a series. He said, “I'm happy to announce that we are going back to the Qualcomm Snapdragon series with the Phone (3a).” While the CEO did not reveal any details about the mobile platform that could be used for these phones, he did claim that the CPU will be 25 percent faster and the NPU will be 72 percent faster than the Phone 2a Plus.

An earlier report claimed that the Nothing Phone 3a could be equipped with the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset. It is also said to feature a 6.8-inch full-HD+ AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The smartphone could also arrive with Nothing OS 3.1 based on Android 15. It is likely to retain the Glyph interface as well.

Nothing Phone 3a Surfaces on Certification Site Ahead of Launch

Separately, the Nothing Phone 3a is also rumoured to sport an additional button on the right side of the device, which could be for the camera. Other theories speculate that the button could be an action button, used for on-device AI or even have a multi-toggle function.

The company has also stated that the Nothing Phone 3a series will be assembled at its manufacturing plant in Chennai. The facility has more than 500 employees, among which women make up 95 percent of the workforce, the company said. It is unclear whether the assembled units will be sold exclusively in India or will also be exported to other markets.

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Further reading: Nothing Phone 3a, Nothing

Akash Dutta Email Akash Dutta

Akash Dutta is a Senior Sub Editor at Gadgets 360. He is particularly interested in the social impact of technological developments and loves reading about emerging fields such as AI, metaverse, and fediverse. In hi... more »