The Nothing 3A phones were just announced with a new take on the company’s “make tech more fun again” ethos. These devices have improved hardware over the Phone 2A, updated cameras, and a new feature called the Essential Space to store and index your miscellaneous screenshots, voice memos, and photographs, all through a dedicated button. Starting at $379 for the 3A and $459 for the 3A Pro, they offer solid specs for their midrange prices — and a look at what Nothing has been working on for this AI-centric moment.
Technology
Nothing’s Phone 3A and 3A Pro use AI to organize all your stuff
The 3A and 3A Pro are mainly differentiated by their cameras, which you’ll notice just by glancing at the two devices. The 3A Pro’s prominent round camera housing includes a 3x periscope telephoto lens; the 3A offers a standard 2x zoom. Both phones include a 50-megapixel f/1.8 main camera and an 8-megapixel ultrawide. The telephoto cameras on each use a 50-megapixel sensor for lossless crop zoom: 4x for the 3A and 6x for the 3A Pro.
They’re big phones, each with a 6.77-inch display, and the 3A Pro feels especially chunky with the protruding camera housing. Both use Nothing’s striking translucent back panel design for a bold look, which balances an awkward camera bump on the 3A Pro. When I started using the phone I felt like my fingers were constantly bumping against the housing. I’ve adjusted to it after a few days and dig its Pop Socket-esque functionality.
The phones come with Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 chipsets, 12 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage, which is generous for the midrange class. They ship with Android 15 and Nothing is promising three years of OS updates and six years of security patches — a decent, if not the best, software policy for a budget phone. They’re being offered in the US through Nothing’s beta program.
Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro sample images
The Glyph interface and LED light strips are still present, but Nothing seems to be shifting its efforts toward software features. The Essential Space is a new place to save screenshots, voice memos, and images, like Google’s Pixel Screenshots app. It answers the eternal question: what do I do with this thing?
Is your photo gallery cluttered with pictures of stuff you want to remember? Do you wish you had somewhere to keep all those inspiration photos for your bathroom makeover? Do you yearn for a place to put the information in an email you keep searching your inbox for every time you need it? Then you get what the Essential Space is all about. You save stuff there, it uses AI to pull out relevant bits of information, and it helps organize what would otherwise be left floating around your phone somewhere.
1/2
Using the Essential Key to add things to the Essential Space took a little adjustment. It’s right where I’m used to the power button sitting, so I kept pressing it unintentionally. A single press will capture a screenshot, and a double tap opens the app so you can browse through your collections. This feels backwards for reasons I can’t quite explain, but I’ve mostly gotten used to it.
Nitpicking aside, I think Nothing is onto something. I added screenshots of travel information for an upcoming flight that are otherwise spread across emails and apps. The Essential Space keeps it in one tidy spot and is good at pulling key timing and dates from the screengrabs. It’ll even make a little to-do list for you. It didn’t quite get everything right about my connecting flight, but I think that’s because the date wasn’t visible in both screenshots. The software seems to do a decent job when it has complete information to work with.

The functionality is pretty simple right now. Nothing has more on the roadmap like a mode that starts recording a voice memo when you flip the phone over, and the ability to automatically organize related content into collections. It seems like a useful feature with a smart AI layer, rather than something that leans into AI just for kicks.
The 3A is available to order March 4th and ships March 11th. The 3A Pro goes up for order March 11th, and will ship starting March 25th.
Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge
Technology
Valve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long-awaited features — and supports Steam Machine
Not only is it the first release to support the upcoming Steam Machine living room gaming PC, it comes with long-awaited features for Valve’s handhelds and more support for other companies’ handhelds than we’ve seen to date — including Microsoft and Asus’ Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the OneXPlayer X1, and additional support for MSI, GPD, Anbernic, OrangePi, and Zotac.
The one that excites me most: Valve is adding genuine hibernation and “memory power down” modes to the Steam Deck — though just the LCD model to start — which should help extend battery life when you hit the power button or leave them idle. Some Windows machines currently last longer than the Steam Deck when asleep, because they self-hibernate to save power, while the Steam Deck has an instant-on sleep mode.
Plus, Valve has finally added a setting in its gaming mode to let you use your Bluetooth headset microphones — something I’ve been asking for since the beginning. (Valve did add it to the Linux desktop mode last year.) And the Steam Deck LCD is finally getting Bluetooth Wake re-enabled, so you can turn on your TV-connected Deck with a wireless controller from your couch.
The update comes with all sorts of improvements for the Linux desktop modes that sound like they’ll come in handy on a Steam Machine plugged into a TV or monitor, too, including desktop HDR, VRR display support, per-display scaling, “improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton,” and an upgrade to KDE Plasma 6.4.3 among other things.
And for a Steam Machine or Steam handheld plugged into a home entertainment system, they can now detect how many audio channels you have over HDMI to enable surround sound. (I believe surround sound was already a thing, so perhaps this is just a different and better automatic implementation.)
There’s also a new Arch system base and an updated graphics driver.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the “Non-Deck” section of the changelog is huge. Valve says long-pressing your power button should work “across a wide variety of devices” to power off, restart, or switch to the desktop mode. You should be able to change your processor’s power modes on the Xbox Ally now, and night mode and screen color settings should work on AMD Z2 Extreme handhelds in general.
There’s also “Greatly improved video memory management with discrete GPU platforms,” you can limit how far the battery charges in any of the Lenovo Legion Go handhelds (in desktop mode), and it should fix “washed out colors for Zotac and OneXPlayer handhelds with OLED.”
There’s a lot in this update, and it’s possible I missed a feature you care about, so check out the whole changelog here and below.
Technology
Fox News AI Newsletter: Wall-climbing robots swarm US Navy warships
Under the five-year contract, Gecko will begin work on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, with the initial award valued at up to $54 million. The contract vehicle is structured to allow other military services to access the technology as well. (Gecko Robotics )
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Welcome to Fox News’ Artificial Intelligence newsletter with the latest AI technology advancements.
IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER:
– WATCH: Wall-climbing robot swarms crawl US Navy warships as China’s fleet surges
– OPINION: AI comes with a hefty charge, and you are the one who gets stuck with the bill
– Dell workforce shrinks 10% for third consecutive year
Swarms of wall-climbing robots will soon be crawling across U.S. Navy warships in a $71 million effort to slash repair delays and boost fleet readiness as China continues expanding its naval power. (Gecko Robotics )
TECH AT SEA: WATCH: wall-climbing robot swarms crawl US Navy warships as China’s fleet surges – Fox News Digital reports on a new development in naval technology, featuring wall-climbing robot swarms that are crawling on U.S. Navy warships. This advancement comes at a critical time in defense politics as China’s naval fleet continues to surge in size and capability.
WALLET SHOCK: OPINION: AI comes with a hefty charge, and you are the one who gets stuck with the bill – In this opinion piece, the author discusses the economic implications of the growing artificial intelligence industry. The article argues that the hefty costs associated with AI development and its massive energy infrastructure will ultimately be passed down, leaving everyday consumers to foot the bill.
Dell Technologies headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, US, on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023. (Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
COST CRUNCH: Dell workforce shrinks 10% for third consecutive year – Fox Business reports that Dell’s workforce has shrunk by ten percent. This marks the third consecutive year of workforce reductions for the major technology company amid shifting economic conditions and corporate restructuring.
AIMING HIGH: FULL AUTONOMY: AI pilot technology advances towards military capability – Merlin CEO Matt George details how the company is using artificial intelligence to enable military and commercial aircraft to operate fully autonomously on Fox Business’ ‘The Claman Countdown.’
Single family homes in a residential neighborhood in San Marcos, Texas, US, on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
SHOULD I BUY?: Homebuyers, sellers turning to AI chatbots for advice – Prairie Operating Co.’s Lou Basenese and real estate broker Kirsten Jordan discuss how artificial intelligence is impacting homebuyers and sellers on ‘Fox Business In Depth.’
DISRUPTION IS HERE: Charles Payne: AI disruption is here – Fox Business host Charles Payne discusses the economic impact of the rise in artificial intelligence on ‘Making Money.’
BUILDING HER BUSINESS: How Angie Hicks turned Angi into a home services giant and AI player – Angi co-founder Angie Hicks discusses entrepreneurship, company growth and how she built out her business on ‘Mornings with Maria.’
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Technology
A rogue AI led to a serious security incident at Meta
For almost two hours last week, Meta employees had unauthorized access to company and user data thanks to an AI agent that gave an employee inaccurate technical advice, as previously reported by The Information. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said in a statement to The Verge that “no user data was mishandled” during the incident.
A Meta engineer was using an internal AI agent, which Clayton described as “similar in nature to OpenClaw within a secure development environment,” to analyze a technical question another employee posted on an internal company forum. But the agent also independently publicly replied to the question after analyzing it, without getting approval first. The reply was only meant to be shown to the employee who requested it, not posted publicly.
An employee then acted on the AI’s advice, which “provided inaccurate information” that led to a “SEV1” level security incident, the second-highest severity rating Meta uses. The incident temporarily allowed employees to access sensitive data they were not authorized to view, but the issue has since been resolved.
According to Clayton, the AI agent involved didn’t take any technical action itself, beyond posting inaccurate technical advice, something a human could have also done. A human, however, might have done further testing and made a more complete judgment call before sharing the information — and it’s not clear whether the employee who originally prompted the answer planned to post it publicly.
“The employee interacting with the system was fully aware that they were communicating with an automated bot. This was indicated by a disclaimer noted in the footer and by the employee’s own reply on that thread,” Clayton commented to The Verge. “The agent took no action aside from providing a response to a question. Had the engineer that acted on that known better, or did other checks, this would have been avoided.”
Last month, an AI agent from open source platform OpenClaw went more directly rogue at Meta when an employee asked it to sort through emails in her inbox, deleting emails without permission. The whole idea behind agents like OpenClaw is that they can take action on their own, but like any other AI model, they don’t always interpret prompts and instructions correctly or give accurate responses, a fact Meta employees have now discovered twice.
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