This affordable phone gave me something I’ve been craving for years

Fear is the driving force in the smartphone world right now. Manufacturers are stuck between trying to innovate enough to draw attention, but are also worried about straying a bit too much from what is considered “the standard”. That creates a paradox.

Sometimes, the “wild” and “risky” choice is actually the most logical one. Yet few are daring enough or agile enough to try it. Thankfully, Nothing is still small enough and nimble enough to be able to afford some experimentation.

So, the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro gave me a “flagship feel” that I’ve been missing for years. And it’s very simple — the phone’s body is entirely made of aluminum.

How is this groundbreaking and why is it “hard” to do?

The Illusion of Premium

For years, the mid-range market has suffered from an inferiority complex. Manufacturers are so worried that their $400–$600 phones would look "cheap" next to $1,000 flagships that they do everything to blur the lines between them. Including adding a glass back on their midrangers — or worse, a piece of glossy plastic.

Yeah, it looks shiny in photos, but feels just about “meh” in real life. And why are we all forgetting that aluminum unibody was the de facto “premium build” before wireless charging made glass a necessity?

See, the entire reason we switched to glass sandwich phones is that the induction coils that make wireless charging possible simply cannot work when encased in metal.



It was a give-and-take. Early phones with glass backs didn’t have the cool matte finish ot today. They were glossy, sticky, finger grease collecting, warm, and — most of all — brittle. But convenience won over and manufacturers did it all for the inclusion of wireless charging.

At some point, it became apparent that we like the soft matte touch more than the gloss. And manufacturers started making glass backs that mimic the aluminum feel of before — frosted, grainy, and not sticky.

But also, more expensive.

Most midrangers out there… they don’t support wireless charging. And they also try to fit themselves into a budget, so they may not come with a frosted glass back. Instead, we get glossy glass or some type of polycarbonate. Yuck.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro asks the question “Why?”. In the tone of an intervention-leading psychiatrist, too. “Why are we desperately trying to mimic a build of materials that was only developed for wireless charging… when we don’t offer wireless charging?”.

Back to the basics that made things cool

Fourteen years ago, all we wanted was a metal phone. The iPhone 4s is generally a beloved classic model, but its glass back was the source of controversy. It was much more fragile than the Gorilla Glass and Ceramic Shields we have today, and it was a glossy annoyance.



The iPhone 5 (2012) is the favorite of many people specifically because it was all metal and felt oh so cool to hold.

HTC was responding with its own experiments — the HTC Legend, HTC Sensation, HTC One S all experimented with aluminum before the HTC One M7 came out with a full metal unibody.



And that mattered at the time. Samsung was pretty big and people loved their phones, but incessantly mocked them for sticking to cheap-feeling plastic with chrome paint that used to chip and peel. The boiling point was the Galaxy S5 — a plastic monstrosity with a dimpled back that resembled a band-aid (and the memes were rolling!).

And Samsung heard us. “Project Alpha” was a huge back-to-the-drawing-board undertaking that produced the Samsung Galaxy Alpha — the first Samsung phone with a full metal frame (that still had the funny plastic back).

But that was in 2014. You know what else was happening in 2014? Wireless charging was becoming a thing.

So, in 2015, when we got the first Galaxy flagships in the post-Project Alpha era, they had full glass backs to accommodate for the new wireless charging technology. And we were essentially robbed of a full metal unibody Samsung phone.

The rest of the Android phone models followed suit. Metal frame and glass back became the standard for flagships.

Google tried to give us the best of both worlds

If you think I am making a huge deal out of Nothing (he-he), no I am not. Google famously tried to deliver a “metal” phone that still supported wireless charging.

That was the Google Pixel 5. It had an alimunum unibody with a cutout for the induction coils in the back. However, for the charging to work, the entire phone had to be coated in a thick layer of bio-resin (a.k.a. plastic).

The phone was marketed as “all metal” but felt like a cheap toy. Everyone disliked that.

But it proves my point, that in 2020 people were already tired enough of glass backs for a huge company to take notice and try something different.

I don’t know why and I don’t know when, but manufacturers forgot that aluminum unibody is kind of a low hanging fruit right now. Is it possible that they looked at the Pixel 5’s reception and took the wrong lessons?

It was still a risk for Nothing. But it paid off?

In 2026, the manufacturing lines are fully developed, CNC machinery has been perfected, and making an all-metal phone body isn’t as expensive as it was in 2014.

Still, making a glass or acrylic back is cheaper. Make it, stamp it, fit it in a frame. It’s faster than spending a few more minutes to mill the entire body. Those minutes do stack up, and time is money.

But Nothing is playing the balance game and relocating the luxury features from one place to another. By not spending on coils, magnets, and Qi2 licensing, it has enough budget to afford full aluminum builds.

The result? 2026 seems to be a breakout year for Nothing, and the Phone (4a) Pro is selling exceptionally well, often being lauded as a “Pixel 9a killer”.

Now, its camera is not as good as the Pixel’s, but the overall packaging is doing a lot of the selling here. While a lot of core fans and powerusers do have gripes with specific under-the-hood hardware choices, the overall consensus is that this design choice is a massive win.

The Metallic Silver and Metallic Pink models are often out of stock, the review scores are high, and the brand may… not be “small” for a lot longer.

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