Nothing just made the Phone 4a cheaper to buy. Sort of. The Nothing Phone 4a price in India now starts at Rs 39,999, and the Phone 4b at Rs 35,999, after the company quietly put new 6GB RAM variants up for sale on Flipkart. On paper, both phones have a lower entry point than they did last week. In reality, you are paying more for less than what launch buyers got. Let me explain, because the framing here matters.
This “cheaper” phone costs more than the original did
The Phone 4a launched back in March with 8GB of RAM at Rs 31,999. That is not a typo. The new base model asks Rs 39,999 for 6GB of RAM. More money. Less RAM. And this is the version Nothing is positioning as the affordable entry point.
Why? Because in between, the price of the existing models went up. The 8GB + 128GB Phone 4a now sells for Rs 44,999, with 8GB + 256GB and 12GB + 256GB climbing to Rs 50,999. Against those hiked prices, Rs 39,999 looks like a deal. Against launch prices, it looks like a downgrade you have to pay extra for.
The Phone 4b is a gentler version of the same story. It launched in July at Rs 34,999 for 8GB + 128GB. The new 6GB variant is Rs 35,999, while the current 8GB models sit at Rs 39,999 and Rs 40,999. A thousand rupees more than launch, for 2GB less RAM.
The RAM crisis did this, not greed (mostly)
Context matters. The industry is in the middle of a genuine memory chip shortage, and rising component costs have pushed nearly every brand into price hikes this year. Nothing already raised prices on both phones once. Instead of hiking again and watching the entry price sail past Rs 45,000, it cut RAM to hold the line.
That is a rational move. It is also a sign of where the whole mid-range market is headed. When the cheapest version of a mid-ranger costs more than the phone did at launch, nobody is really winning. Buyers just have to decide which compromise hurts less.
Small aside: our iPhone 17 review earlier this week tells the same story at a different altitude. Same phone, Rs 17,000 more than last year, blamed on chipflation. Whether you are paying Rs 39,999 or Rs 99,900, the component bill is landing on your invoice this year.
What Rs 39,999 still gets you
Nothing has not touched the rest of the hardware, which is the saving grace here. The Phone 4a still runs the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 with a 5,400mAh battery and a triple camera setup. The Phone 4b gets the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, a 6000mAh battery, and dual cameras. Both ship with Android 16-based Nothing OS 4.1 and dual-SIM support.
Availability is straightforward: both variants are live on Flipkart in Black, Blue, and White, with a Pink finish reserved for the higher-end Phone 4a configurations. Storage stays at 128GB across the board, which, honestly, is the spec that matters more day to day than whether you have 6GB or 8GB of RAM.
Nothing Phone 4a price in India: should you bite?
Here is my honest take. If you are already sold on Nothing’s aesthetic and software, the 6GB variants are the cheapest ticket in right now, and 6GB is still fine for everyday use in 2026, especially with Nothing OS’s clean overhead. And yes, the glyph lights are still there. For a certain buyer, that design language is the entire point, and nothing else in the segment looks like it.
But if you are buying on pure value, the maths is uncomfortable. The Oppo K14 Plus 5G starts at Rs 29,999 with an 8,000mAh battery and a Dimensity 7360 Max. That is ten thousand rupees cheaper than the new “affordable” Nothing Phone 4a, with a battery nearly 50 percent bigger. Nothing is asking you to pay a design premium during a component crisis. Fine. Just know that is what you are paying for.
Buy the Nothing for the identity. Buy something else for the spec sheet. Nobody should buy this one thinking they are getting a bargain, because they are not.