Nothing Phone 3a series’ Essential Key and Essential Space explained: How it works

The Nothing Phone 3a Pro and the Nothing Phone 3a have introduced a brand-new button called the Essential Key. It allows you to save quick notes—or perhaps ‘memories’—in the Essential Space, which is available as an app on the devices. You can add audio and text-based notes to screenshots, making it quite easy to save something for future reference. Initially, the functionality was limited, but Nothing has now expanded it to the camera app as well.

Here’s everything you can do with the Nothing Essential Key on the Nothing Phone 3a Pro and the 3a. Read on.

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Nothing Essential Key And Essential Space: How It Works

To use the Essential Key, simply press it, and it captures a screenshot of what’s on your screen. Once captured, you have the option to save it along with a text or voice note for future reference. Or you can long-press the button to start a voice recording automatically. You can access your saved memories in the Essential Space app, which comes pre-installed on the new Nothing smartphones.

Previously, this functionality was limited to capturing only what was on your screen. However, with Nothing OS 3.1, Nothing has expanded its capabilities to the camera app as well. Now, while using the camera app, you can press the Essential Key to save what you see in the viewfinder directly into the Essential Space. It is important to note that these captures will not appear in the gallery app. Also, the Essential Space gives you personalised suggestions, summaries, or action points based on what you have saved.

This opens up more possibilities for preserving memories. After all, you may not want to be restricted to saving only what’s on your screen, you might want to capture your surroundings as well. Imagine seeing a delicious dish and wanting to save your thoughts about it, or spotting a new animal for the first time and recording your raw, unfiltered audio reaction to go along with it. This feature makes such moments possible, all while keeping your Memories separate from your regular photos in the gallery app.

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Nothing Phone 3a’s New Essential Key Camera Capture Update Has Already Rolled Out

It is worth noting that Nothing has already rolled out the Nothing OS 3.1 update for the Nothing Phone 3a and the Phone 3a Pro on 24 March. You can go to Settings > System > System Updates to download it.