If you have a Nothing Phone (4a), (4a) Pro, (3a) or (3a) Pro, it’s time to check for a system update. Nothing posted the finished Nothing OS 5.0 builds for all four phones on Friday 30th October 2026, ahead of the early November date on its own rollout timeline. Nothing OS is the London company’s own version of Android, the design and apps it puts on top of Google’s software, and version 5.0 is built on Android 17.
Until last week, the Phone (3), Nothing’s top phone, was the only one getting the finished release. It started on 12th October, after an open beta that the four cheaper phones also joined in September. Nothing’s general release post now lists all five phones.
Nothing is releasing the update in stages, so some phones get it days before others, and it says availability can vary by region and device. To check, go to Settings > System > System update. The changelogs for the Phone (4a) Pro, the Phone (4a) and the Phone (3a) series ask you to back up photos, call logs and contacts first, and warn that the phone may feel warmer and use more power while the update installs. The build numbers are C5.0-261021-1625 for the (4a) Pro, C5.0-261023-2145 for the (4a) and C5.0-261023-2146 for the (3a) and (3a) Pro.
What changes on the phone
Most of the update is the same on all four phones. The pull-down shade can now be split in two, with notifications on one side and Quick Settings, the toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the torch, on the other. You switch it on in Settings > Notifications > General > Notifications and Quick Settings. Tapping a Bluetooth device in Quick Settings now connects or disconnects it in one go, and you can move several home screen icons at once by long-pressing the home screen and tapping Arrange.
The home screen gets a Translucent theme, a frosted-glass look that picks up colour from your wallpaper, which you set in Customisation > Theme & Style > Translucent. The lock screen gets two new clock faces and lets you pick a colour for the clock. A new three-colour dot in the status bar tells you what the phone is doing in the background: sensitive access, location or AI processing.
The Glyph Interface, the lights on the back of Nothing phones, now has its own app in the app drawer instead of settings spread across different menus. A Glyph Timer widget starts a countdown from the home screen. There’s also an Away Time widget that tracks how long you spend off your phone, and an Expanded Dark theme that forces dark mode on most apps that don’t support it themselves.
The camera changes differ by phone. All four get Dual-view Video, which records from the front and rear cameras at the same time. The (3a) and (3a) Pro also get Tuning, a set of seven adjustable effects, upgraded Presets, and Filters and Tuning when recording video. The (4a) and (4a) Pro changelogs don’t list Tuning.
Essential Voice, Nothing’s transcription tool, gets faster on the (4a) and (4a) Pro. Nothing’s release roadmap lists Essential Voice as out on the Phone (3), (4a) and (4a) Pro only, and the (3a) changelog doesn’t mention it. The roadmap also says real-time translation in Essential Voice is coming later this year, and that Essential Space, the app that stores what you capture with the Essential Key, gets its updates separately through Google Play.
Nothing hasn’t said which Android security patch these builds carry, how big the download is or which regions get it first.
Which Nothing phones are next
Nothing’s Nothing OS page gives the rest a month and a rough part of it, and calls the dates indicative and subject to change.
| Phone | Nothing OS 5.0 stable |
|---|---|
| Phone (2a) and (2a) Plus | Mid-November |
| Phone (3a) Lite | Late December |
| Phone (4b) | Mid-January 2027 |
| CMF Phone 2 Pro | Mid-January 2027 |
The Phone (2a) and (2a) Plus are in the open beta now. The Phone (3a) Lite and CMF Phone 2 Pro skip the beta and go straight to the finished release. The Phone (4b), which we covered at its July launch, comes last because, Nothing says, its Android 17 work started later and needs extra testing and certification. The Phone (1), Phone (2) and CMF Phone 1 won’t get Nothing OS 5.0 at all, because Nothing says they have reached the end of major software support.
The four phones in Kenya
Nothing has sold officially in Kenya since May, when it named Mitsumi Distribution as its local partner, and all four phones are sold here. The update comes from Nothing over the air, so a phone bought in Kenya gets it the same way as one bought anywhere else, whenever the staged release reaches it. When we checked on 2nd November 2026, Phones and Tablets Kenya listed the Phone (3a) at KES 39,000 to KES 46,500, the Phone (4a) at KES 47,500 to KES 59,500, the Phone (3a) Pro at KES 62,500 and the Phone (4a) Pro at KES 78,500.
For the (3a) and (3a) Pro, which launched in March 2025 on Android 15, Android 17 is the second big Android upgrade. Nothing promised them three years of Android updates and six years of security updates, counted from when each phone first went on sale on Nothing’s own store, so their Android updates run out in early 2028. The (4a) and (4a) Pro launched in March 2026 on Android 16, with the same three-and-six-year promise, so this is their first upgrade and their Android updates run to early 2029.
So if you’re choosing between a Phone (3a) and a Phone (4a) in a Kenyan shop today, both now run the same Android 17, but the (4a) gets Android updates for a year longer. The cheapest listings for the two are KES 8,500 apart, and for anyone planning to keep the phone for three years or more, we think the (4a) is worth the extra.
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