Nothing Phone 2a Review: Something New

In a short time, nothing has come a long way, and now it actually stands for something. The company makes good mid-range and upper mid-range smartphones that can be total value for money. with the Nothing Phone 2aThings are new and different. While you get the same experience with a unique design, everything is pared down a bit. The upside is that the price is now in the budget premium segment.

I’ve been testing (mostly the Glyph interface; just kidding, I tried everything) the Nothing Phone 2a over the course of a week. Should this be your next purchase? Let’s find out.

Phone 2a costs nothing in India.

As always, I’ll start with the price, which is the most important aspect of the Nothing Phone 2a. The handset is priced at Rs. 23,999 for the base variant with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. Want more storage? You have to spend Rs. 25,999 for the 8GB RAM and 256GB variant or Rs. 27,999 for 12GB RAM and 256GB storage.

The handset is available in two colors – white and black. Both the variants have a transparent back panel made of plastic, which is slippery and prone to fingerprints.

In the box, which is made from recycled materials, you get the phone, some paperwork, a USB Type-C to Type-C charging cable, and a SIM removal tool, which you can use to remove the Phone 1 and Phone K. Get along. 2. The charging cable also has some transparent elements, making it one of the most in-the-box cables I’ve seen to date. Nothing even pre-applies the screen protector on the Phone 2a.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Design

I’ll keep this part short. The Nothing Phone 2a looks good, and there’s no two ways about it. Nothing has changed in the rear design of the Phone 2a and several LEDs have been removed to keep things minimal. Compared to the previous Nothing Phone 1 and Phone 2, this phone only has three LED strips on the back, and I think that’s enough.

The placement of the rear camera is also different compared to previous Nothing phones. The dual camera setup is now placed in the middle of the phone inside the NFC coil. The transparent panel also shows some flex cables above the battery. The Nothing Phone 2a has 90-degree sides, rounded edges, and a flat frame, all of which make the phone comfortable to hold. The power button is on the right, while the volume rocker is on the left, and both are easily accessible even when using the phone in one hand. The buttons could be a little more clicky, though. The bottom has the USB Type-C port, a speaker, a microphone, and the SIM card tray, while the top has only the second microphone.

Nothing claims it used 100 percent recycled aluminum for the mid-frame. The phone also contains recycled tin, copper foil, steel and plastic parts. It feels well built and has a good weight. However, the transparent back panel is plastic, and is prone to scratches. We’ll have to see how it fares in the long term if used without a case.

Moving to the front, nothing has managed to keep the bezels symmetrical, which gives the phone a premium look. More brands should do this. The bezels are thin, just like you see on an iPhone. A hole-punch cutout at the top center houses the front-facing camera and an in-display fingerprint scanner. The Nothing Phone 2a has an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. Honestly, I think they could have done better, as few phones in the same price bracket deliver higher ratings.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Specifications and Software

When it comes to specifications, the Nothing Phone 2a is a mid-range handset. It is equipped with a custom MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Pro SoC built using TSMC’s 2nd generation 4nm process technology. Nothing claims that a custom chip improves performance by 10 percent, and we think it does. The chipset is paired with up to 12GB of RAM, which can be expanded up to 20GB using the RAM Booster feature. The phone also has up to 256GB of storage.

The Nothing Phone 2a 5G supports dual-mode, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, and the usual GPS standards for connectivity. You get a dual SIM slot on the phone, and strangely, when we were first setting up the phone, it asked us to insert an Indian SIM. The phone gets an in-display fingerprint scanner which works as expected. Nothing packs a 5,000mAh battery, which is the largest ever used on a Nothing phone. It also supports 45W fast charging, but no charger is included in the box.

Now let’s come to the software side of things. Nothing Phone 2a runs Nothing OS 2.5 based on Android 14. We received two software updates during our review to improve phone and camera performance. As for software support, nothing promises three years of OS updates and four years of security patches.

In terms of features, the Nothing OS is similar to the one we saw on the Nothing Phone 2. There is a Smart Clean feature that can clean up unused system files, you get NTFS optimization, a RAM booster that supports virtual RAM expansion up to 8GB. , and a HyperEngine 5.0 aimed at improving gaming performance. You get nothing-designed widgets, an AI wallpaper generator, and best of all, no bloatware. The Nothing icon pack is also a great way to minimize the use of the phone, as it uses monochrome elements that make you not want to use apps.

Finally, the nothing phone’s party trick is the Glyph interface. With the Phone 2a, Nothing improved the Glyph interface once again, but this time, it reduced the number of LED strips. It’s still white, but now there are only three of them. However, you can still do most of the things the Glyph interface was designed for.

Phone 2a supports 15 Glyph functions. You can use it as a timer, flip to glyph for notifications, a camera shutter countdown, a progress bar for Zomato, Uber, and Google Calendar, a volume indicator, and music visualization. I really enjoyed using the music visualization feature while playing music on the phone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work when playing audio outside the phone.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Performance

The Nothing Phone 2a, for the first time in Nothing’s history, comes with a MediaTek processor. It gets a mid-range Custom Dimensity 7200 Pro SoC which is good enough for daily use and gaming and can offer excellent battery life. The benchmark results aren’t going to top any lists, but we ran the usual benchmarks just to find out. On AnTuTu, the Phone 2a scored 6,88,079 points, which is not surprising. The results were similar when we ran Geekbench 6 on the phone, only to get a single-core CPU score of 1,100 and a multi-core score of 2,448. As for GPU performance, the handset scored 3,231 on Geekbench.

It’s a decent chipset for everyday use, and I never experienced any major lags or stutters while using the phone throughout the review period. The phone is smooth overall, and that too thanks to the display.

Nothing beats the Phone 2a’s 6.7-inch flexible AMOLED panel that offers full-HD+ resolution, 30-120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color, 240Hz touch sampling rate, and up to 1,300 nits of peak brightness. . The display is easy to read outdoors, even in direct sunlight, and is bright enough indoors. It offers two color modes, namely ‘Alive’ and ‘Standard’, with the former option producing punchier colors. Viewing angles on the panel are good, and there is no washout effect.

For audio, nothing on the phone 2a includes stereo speakers. The speakers get pretty loud but pack a punch. There is good stereo separation and no cracking, even at full volume. As for the microphone quality, everything is good in this department as well.

In terms of gaming, the Phone 2a performed well and gave me very good frame rates on games like Asphalt 9 and BGMI. It won’t play full blast later, but you can definitely play all kinds of games on the phone. Nothing beats the 3,200 mm2 vapor chamber in a phone to keep the phone cool while gaming or using the camera. I didn’t feel excessive heat during a 30-minute session of BGMI, nor when I was using the camera outside in 32 degree Celsius heat.

Coming to battery performance, I was consistently getting about two days of battery life with minimal to moderate usage. With heavy usage, I can still get a day of battery life out of the Nothing Phone 2a. Since nothing in the box provided a charger, I was forced to use a 30W charger, which took the phone from 0 to 100 percent in about 1 hour 35 minutes. Nothing claims that the phone can be charged from 0 to 100 percent in 59 minutes using a 45W charging adapter.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Cameras

The Nothing Phone 2a has a dual camera setup similar to the other two Nothing handsets. However, the camera placement is different this time. It has a 50-megapixel primary rear camera with OIS and f/1.88 aperture and another 50-megapixel ultra-wide sensor with a 114-degree field of view. For selfies, there’s a 32-megapixel front-facing camera that’s also used on the Nothing Phone 2.

Nothing’s camera app is simple and easy to use. You get all the modes front and center with available settings using a simple swipe down on the viewfinder. There is slow-mo, time-lapse, pano, portrait, night mode, motion capture, and an expert mode. A Google Lens button is also available along with the shutter button.

The primary camera performed well in daylight, but had issues with HDR. In extremely bright conditions, the 50-megapixel sensor overexposed bright parts of the scene. This was not the case with the ultra-wide camera, which highlighted the scene better. In low-light conditions, the primary camera performed well. Details, exposure and colors were all good and mostly true to life. Oversaturation was not happening.

Coming to the ultrawide camera, once again, the sensor performed well in daylight and low-light conditions. Color tuning was different compared to the main camera. Let the patterns do the talking.

Above – Daylight sample 1x 12-megapixel resolution
Medium- indoor and outdoor 50 megapixel full resolution images
Bottom – Ultra Wide, Main, 2x In-Sensor Zoom (Daylight and Low Light)

There’s no telephoto camera on the phone, but you do get a 2x zoom option, which takes decent shots. Portrait mode also allows 1x and 2x cropping and offers good edge detection most of the time.

As for selfies, the images captured by the camera deliver good detail in daylight, with some detail lost in low-light conditions.

Video performance is good, with plenty of detail, good colors, and dynamic range in daylight conditions. Durability is also very good. In low light, the camera performs best, with artifacts appearing. The primary camera lets you shoot in 4K 30 fps or 1080p 60 fps. Slow-motion videos are maxed out at 1080p 120fps.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Verdict

The Nothing Phone 2a, an affordable offering from the company, takes on many other similarly priced phones in the segment. You have the Poco X6 Pro, Redmi Note 13 Pro, Realme 12 Pro, and a bunch of others that offer the same or better performance. However, where the Nothing Phone 2a really stands out is in the design and software department. You get three years of promised Android OS upgrades and clean software with a unique design. The phone also has an excellent screen and build quality.

At Rs 23,999, I would recommend the Nothing Phone 2a for those who want a unique device with clean software, good cameras, and great battery life. Those looking for pure performance should look elsewhere. Nothing has priced the phone 2a really well, and I think it’s going to sell like hotcakes. It’s something new, and we love it!