Nothing Phone 2a Review: Something new

In a short period of time, Nothing has come a long way and now it actually means something. The company makes good mid-range and upper-mid range smartphones that can be complete value for money. With the Nothing Phone 2a, things are new and different. While you get a similar experience with a unique design, everything is toned down a bit. The plus is that the price is already in the budget premium segment.

I tested (mostly the Glyph interface; just kidding, I tried everything) the Nothing Phone 2a for a week. Should it be your next purchase? Let’s find out.

Nothing Phone 2a price in India

As usual, 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 space? You will 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 variants have a transparent plastic back panel that is both slippery and prone to fingerprints.

Inside the box, which is made from recycled materials, you get the phone, some documents, a USB Type-C to Type-C charging cable, and a SIM eject tool that’s similar to what you get with the Phone 1 and Phone 2 .The charging cable also has some transparent elements, making it one of the coolest in-box cables I’ve seen yet. Nothing pre-puts a screen protector on the Phone 2a.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Design

I’ll keep this section short. The Nothing Phone 2a looks good, there’s no two ways about it. Nothing has changed the design of the back of the Phone 2a and removed a few LEDs 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 rear camera placement is also different compared to previous Nothing phones. The dual camera setup is now placed in the center of the phone inside the NFC coil. The transparent panel also shows some flexible cables above the battery. 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 side while the volume button is on the left, both of which are easily accessible even when using the phone with one hand. The buttons could be a bit more clicky though. The bottom has a USB Type-C port, speaker, microphone and SIM tray, while the top has only a second microphone.

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

Moving on to the front, nothing fails to retain the symmetrical bezels, giving the phone a premium look. More brands should do this. The bezels are thin, similar to what you’d see on an iPhone. A punch-hole cutout in the top center houses the front-facing camera and in-display fingerprint scanner. The Nothing Phone 2a has an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. To be honest, I think they could have done better as several phones in the same price range give a higher rating.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Specs and Software

When it comes to specifications, the Nothing Phone 2a is a mid-range phone. It is equipped with a custom MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Pro SoC, which is built using TSMC’s 2nd generation 4nm technology. Nothing claims 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 supports 5G dual mode, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC and the usual GPS connectivity standards. You get a dual SIM slot on the phone and strangely, it asked us to insert an Indian SIM when we were setting up the phone for the first time. The phone gets an in-display fingerprint scanner which works as expected. The Nothing packs a 5000mAh battery, which is the largest battery ever used on a Nothing Phone. It also supports 45W fast charging, but no charger is included in the box.

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

Feature-wise, the Nothing OS is similar to what we’ve seen on the Nothing Phone 2. It has a Smart Clean feature that can clean up unused system files, you get NTFS optimizations, a RAM booster that supports up to 8GB of virtual RAM expansion, and HyperEngine 5.0 , which aims to improve performance in games. You also get widgets designed with nothing, an AI wallpaper generator and, best of all, no bloatware. The Nothing icon pack is also a great way to reduce phone usage 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 redesigned the Glyph interface again, but this time reduced the number of LED strips. It’s still white, but now it’s only three. However, you can still do most of what the Glyph interface was designed for.

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

Nothing Phone 2a Review: Performance

Nothing Phone 2a, for the first time in Nothing’s history, comes with a MediaTek processor. It gets a mid-range Dimensity 7200 Pro custom SoC which is very good for daily use and gaming and can offer excellent battery life. The benchmark results won’t top any lists, but we ran the usual benchmarks just to find out. In 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 score of 1100 and a multi-core score of 2448. As for GPU performance, the phone scored 3231 on Geekbench.

It’s a capable chipset for everyday use and I never encountered any major lag or stuttering when using the phone throughout the review period. The phone is smooth overall and that is due to the display as well.

Nothing has equipped the Phone 2a with a 6.7-inch flexible AMOLED panel that offers full HD+ resolution, 30-120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color, 240Hz touch sample rate and up to 1,300 nits of peak brightness. The display is easy to read outdoors, even in direct sunlight, and gets plenty of light indoors. It offers two color modes, namely Vivid and Standard, with the former producing more saturated colors. The viewing angles of the panel are good and there is no washing effect.

For audio, Nothing has included stereo speakers on the Phone 2a. The speakers get loud enough, but they are powerful. It has good stereo separation and no crackling, even at full volume. As for the quality of the microphone, everything is also good here.

In terms of gaming, the Phone 2a performed well and gave me very good frame rates in games like Asphalt 9 and BGMI. The latter will not play at full power, but you can definitely play any games on the phone. Nothing has used a 3200mm2 vapor chamber in the phone to keep the phone cool when gaming or using the camera. I didn’t notice any excessive heating during a 30-minute BGMI session, nor while using the camera outdoors at 32 degrees Celsius.

As for battery performance, I consistently got almost two days of battery life with minimal to moderate usage. With heavy use, I can still get more than a day of battery life out of the Nothing Phone 2a. Since Nothing didn’t provide a charger in the box, I was forced to use a 30W charger, which took the phone from 0 to 100 percent in about 1 hour and 35 minutes. Nothing claims that the phone can be charged from 0 to 100 percent in 59 minutes using a 45W charging adapter.

Nothing View phone 2a: cameras

The Nothing Phone 2a has a dual-camera setup similar to the other two Nothing phones. However, this time the camera placement is different. 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, which is also used in the Nothing Phone 2.

Nothing’s camera app is simple and easy to use. You get all the modes front and center with the available settings using a simple swipe down the viewfinder. It has Slo-mo, Time-lapse, Pano, Portrait, Night mode, Motion capture and expert mode. There is also a Google Lens button next to the shutter button.

The main camera performed well in daylight, but struggled with HDR. In super bright conditions, the 50-megapixel sensor overexposes the bright parts of the scene. This was not the case with the ultrawide camera, which exposed the scene better. In low-light conditions, the main camera continued to perform well. Detail, exposure and colors were good and mostly true to life. There wasn’t much glut.

Coming to the ultra-wide camera, again the sensor performed decently in daylight and low-light conditions. The color setting was different compared to the main camera. Let the samples do the talking.

Top – ultrawide, basic, 2x internal sensor zoom; Bottom – Lowlight Ultrawide, Basic, 2x

There’s no telephoto camera in the phone, but you do get a 2x zoom option that takes decent pictures. Portrait mode also allows for 1x and 2x cropping and offers good edge detection most of the time. As for selfies, the photos taken by the camera deliver good detail in daylight, with some detail lost in low light. Video performance is good, with plenty of detail, good colors and dynamic range in daylight. Stabilization is also quite good. In low light, camera performance is decent at best, with visible artifacts. The main camera allows you to shoot in 4K 30 fps or 1080p 60 fps. Slow motion videos max out at 1080p 120fps.

Nothing View Phone 2a: Verdict

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

For Rs. 23,999, I would recommend the Nothing Phone 2a to those who want a unique device with clean software, good cameras and excellent battery life. Those looking for pure performance should look elsewhere. Nothing has rated the Phone 2a really well and I think it will sell like hotcakes. This is something new and we love it!