Good news, bad news. The good news is that the Nothing Phone (3a) Lite, the briefly anticipated budget budget Android phone, launched today, Wednesday, October 29, 2025. The bad news is that it launched in “select markets,” and the US wasn’t one of them.
We only officially learned of its existence this past Monday, though there had been whispers and leaks about it for a while. It’s an arc of excitement and letdown, constructed over just a few weeks, but it’s a letdown all the same.
no word from nothing
The Phone (3a) Lite is a budget version of the Phone (3a), which is in turn a budget version of the Phone (3). Confused? It’s kind of a Russian nesting doll.
Phones are launched all the time without being released in the American market. What’s shocked Nothing fans and tech media alike is that we’d all expected this one to land in the US. Looking back, we took that for granted.
Two days ago, when we covered Nothing’s official tease of the Phone (3a) Lite, there was no mention that it might not see the light of day in the US. No rumors, no official hints from Nothing.
The price tags are £249 / €249 for the variant with 128GB of storage and £279 / €289 for the variant with 256GB of storage. Both models have 8GB of RAM, and there’s no option to upgrade it. RAM is the short-term memory that, in the briefest of explanations, helps power the apps and software infrastructure of your phone.
More RAM, generally, means more muscle that lets your phone run more intensive, demanding programs, such as video games and serious photo editing. Having 8GB of RAM is perfectly fine for a budget smartphone like this. If you need more, then you should be looking further upmarket anyway.
Nothing has said, well… nothing, publicly about whether the Phone (3a) Lite will come to the US eventually or if it’s permanently persona non grata on our shores. If you’re reading this from elsewhere in the world, though, your chances of taking one home are pretty good.
Nothing told 9to5Google that the list of markets where Nothing is making the Phone (3a) Lite available includes the EU, UK, MEA, East Asia, and South East Asia. And at least that’s something.
The post Thanks for Nothing? The Nothing Phone (3a) Lite Launches With No US Availability. appeared first on VICE.
