Technologies

Want Nothing’s Transparent Design on a Budget? The 3A Lite Is Its Most Affordable Phone Yet

It’s just a shame it won’t be available in the US.

British tech company Nothing unveiled the latest phone in its 3 series on Wednesday, bringing its signature flashy and semi-transparent design to a new audience at a more affordable price than it’s usually known for. The Nothing Phone 3A Lite is a budget device designed to tempt people who love the company’s style, but not the price of its other products.

Available in black and white, the phone is encased in glass, with visible screws that define Nothing’s signature look. Fans of the brand will be aware of Nothing’s flashy Glyph Interface that makes the rear of its phones glow to indicate notifications. The Nothing Phone 3A Lite comes with an «evolution» of this, which the company is calling the Glyph Light. It will offer customizable light sequences and other glowing features.

From what we’ve seen of the device so far, it’s probably one of the coolest and quirkiest looking entry-level phones to hit the market this year. Usually phone-makers reserve design flourishes for their higher-end models, but for Nothing it’s at the core of the company’s DNA.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

In terms of other specs, you can expect a triple-camera system with a 50-megapixel main sensor, a 6.77-inch AMOLED display and 5,000-mAh battery. Unlike the other phones in Nothing’s 3 Series, the 3A Lite isn’t powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, but instead runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro chip. It arrives running Android 15 and Nothing OS 3.5, with an update to Nothing OS 4.0 scheduled for early 2026.

One initial disappointment in the phone is to see that Nothing is only committing to three years of major Android updates (albeit it’s offering six years of security patches). It would have been great to see this phone able to offer owners true longevity, as well as a cool design at an affordable price.

An affordable phone — but not for everyone

The Nothing Phone 3A Lite will cost £249 ($329) with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, or £279 ($369) for 256GB of storage. That’s around £70 cheaper that the Nothing Phone 3A — not a massive saving, but a saving nonetheless. That’s great news for people in the UK and Europe who are keen to get their hands on this new model. But it’s less good news if you’re based in the US.

«Phone 3A Lite will not be available in North America,» a spokesperson for the company told me. «Given the investment required to localise and scale this specific model, our focus is on markets where entry-level devices are a more natural fit and can serve as an introduction to the Nothing ecosystem.»

This isn’t the case for the other phones Nothing has unveiled this year, which include the 3A Pro and flagship Phone 3 — both of which are available in the US.

In all, 2025 has been Nothing’s most prolific year yet. Not only has it released a range of new phones across its main brand and CMF sub-brand, it’s also launched its first over-ear headphones, Headphone 1, with partner audio brand KEF.

«It’s impressive that Nothing has now managed to launch five phones in one year,» says Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. «It underlines its growing scale and determination to have devices across multiple tiers and segments»

Technologies

Google, Meta and Amazon Join Global Pact to Fight Rising Online Scams

The companies will share fraud intelligence and coordinate responses as AI makes scams faster, cheaper and harder to detect.

Modern online scams operate across multiple platforms, perhaps spanning social media, messaging apps, email and online marketplaces. Google, Meta and Amazon are among 11 tech, retail and payments companies that have signed a new agreement to combat online scams by sharing threat intelligence across platforms, Axios first reported Monday.

The initiative, called the Industry Accord Against Online Scams & Fraud, is designed to improve how companies detect and respond to fraud that spans multiple services. Participants say they will exchange signals, such as scam-linked accounts and fraudulent domains, and coordinate enforcement actions.

By sharing intelligence in near real time, companies hope to identify these scams earlier and stop them before they spread.

The effort reflects how modern scams operate. A victim might encounter a fake celebrity investment ad on social media, move to a messaging app where the scammer builds trust, then faces prompts to send money through a fraudulent website, payment app or crypto wallet — spanning multiple companies’ ecosystems.

Google said it now blocks hundreds of millions of scam-related results every day using AI, underscoring how both attackers and defenders are increasingly relying on the same technology. Meta removed more than 159 million scam ads in 2025 and is expanding AI tools to detect impersonation and warn users.

Online scams are growing rapidly, in part because generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry. AI can be used not only to produce realistic phishing emails but also to clone voices and deepfake videos that impersonate executives, public figures and even family members.

The agreement is voluntary and doesn’t create new legal obligations, but it comes after regulators’ increased pressure on tech platforms to address fraud more aggressively. The companies say they will begin building frameworks for reporting and intelligence-sharing, though it’s not yet clear how quickly those systems will be deployed or how effective they will be in practice.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, March 18

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 18.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I thought it was a fairly easy one, but read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Word before «card,» flood» or «photography»
Answer: FLASH

6A clue: Joust weapon
Answer: LANCE

7A clue: Brain, heart or lungs
Answer: ORGAN

8A clue: «Frozen» reindeer
Answer: SVEN

9A clue: What can be found on frozen roads or frozen margaritas
Answer: SALT

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Follow a dentist’s recommendation
Answer: FLOSS

2D clue: Baby bug
Answer: LARVA

3D clue: Shape made in the snow
Answer: ANGEL

4D clue: Very little
Answer: SCANT

5D clue: Egg layer
Answer: HEN

Technologies

Amazon Speeds Up Delivery Even More With 1- and 3-Hour Options

The retailer says the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities, with discounted shipping for Prime members.

Same-day delivery apparently isn’t fast enough for some Amazon shoppers. The retail giant said on Tuesday it’s adding new shipping options that will get products to front doors within a one- or three-hour window.

The company said in its announcement that the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities across the US, while the three-hour option is now live in more than 2,000 areas. Amazon’s web page at amazon.com/getitfast shows whether those options are available to shoppers for their location. More than 90,000 products will be available for those shipping windows, the company said.

For those who can’t get those services (including the author of this post, who lives between Austin and San Antonio in Texas), a message will display: «3-hour delivery is currently unavailable. Check back at a later time or shop products with Same-Day delivery below.»

Pricing for the faster delivery options is not cheap: It’ll cost you $20 for one-hour delivery and $15 for three-hour delivery for those without an Amazon Prime account, or $10 and $5 for customers who subscribe to Prime.

Last year, the company rolled out faster Amazon delivery options to 4,000 additional areas.

In a video of the podcast Learn and Be Curious with Doug Herrington, hosted by Amazon’s CEO of worldwide stores, Kandace Kapps, the director of the company’s same-day strategy team, spoke in more detail about the challenges of fast shipping. Kapps discussed shifts in customer buying habits over the last few years, such as more people buying household essentials like toilet paper on Amazon.

She said that Amazon can deliver so quickly by placing same-day delivery hubs close to customers in metro areas and by getting products ready to ship within 15 minutes, aided by warehouse robots.

«I think customers are going to continue to get magically surprised by how fast we can deliver to their doorstop,» Kapps said.

Herrington said fast shipping increases sales: «When we speed up the service, the probability that somebody buys a product from us goes up.»

Other retailers, including Walmart, have been adding same-day delivery options or exploring other ways to speed up shipping times to compete with Amazon.

Removing buyers’ moments of hesitation

Part of Amazon’s strategy, which has involved a massive buildout of locations, deployment of thousands of trucks, deals with other delivery services and investment in logistics software, is actually pretty simple: being there when people need last-minute items or make impulse buys.

«It’s about removing the last moment where you would’ve reconsidered the purchase,» said Stephanie Carls, retail insights expert at coupon and promotional-code website RetailMeNot, a sibling site of CNET. «It changes how you shop, not just how fast you get things.»

Carls said that Amazon’s super-fast delivery is removing the timeframe when people might change their minds about a purchase.

«There used to be a gap between deciding to buy something and actually having it. That’s when you’d price check, rethink it, or decide you didn’t need it after all,» she said. «This closes that gap.»

The retail expert said that competitors, including Walmart and Target, have been speeding up delivery times in some markets. Still, they’re not matching Amazon’s scale or product range at those speeds or levels of consistency.

«And that’s what starts to make everyone else feel slow,» Carls said. «Amazon’s advantage is how tightly connected its technology, inventory and delivery networks are, which makes this level of speed more repeatable.»