Nothing Phone 2a review: Looking like a wow bhai! – Technology News

Nothing has launched something. Nothing big, still flashy. Called Phone 2a, this new smartphone marks the London-based startup’s first major entry into India’s mass market, one that is notorious for driving volumes, helping brands make money (unless you’re the big Apple, you’ve got to get your hands dirty!).

Carl Pei, the “legendary” marketing maverick behind Nothing, has made it abundantly clear that he’s not running a charity. The man is here to sell smartphones, bhai, and so, the Phone 2a was inevitable. And all the things that have led to it, right from the onboarding of Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh to hosting its first-ever in-person global launch event in India, speak of how important it is for Nothing, as a brand and as a company.

Eyes wide open

A month before launch, a purported render of the Phone 2a started doing the rounds of the internet. It had all the underpinnings of a Nothing product but one thing was missing. The “glyph” was nowhere to be seen (for those unaware, a glyph is a collection of light strips you’ll find on every Nothing smartphone to date, including the Phone 2a). Needless to say that it caught a lot of attention. A lot of the chit-chatter obviously centred around how it could be a “cost-cutting” measure. The photo was later redacted. It was a ruse. But it got me thinking of all the possible ways that Nothing could make this phone more affordable.

There are your usual suspects. Like say, a metal frame was out of the question. Wireless charging would be wishful thinking. An IP rating, a yes or a no maybe. There’s also the off chance of a design rework that would be anything but thoughtful. Then there’s the stuff that’s harder to guess. Like, the choice of processor, how it would integrate with the software, and all the choices you make there, Android version, whether to bloat it up or not, and the likes. Good haptics and speakers, too, fall under this category. So do advanced connectivity options like NFC and Wi-Fi (type).

And so, even before unboxing the Phone 2a, I had prepared myself for the worst case scenario.(I, like Nothing, don’t like to dive into the spec sheet the minute I get hold of a new device. What’s the fun in that at a time when most smartphones and smartphone makers, have lost the art of surprise.) It did not help that the box it came in was “much” smaller than that of the Phone 2. Could it be that Nothing had —also— fallen for all the trappings of a “budget” smartphone to make more money?

I couldn’t be more wrong.

For inside, lay a very different kind of smartphone. It had a plastic body and a plastic frame but that was about as “budget-friendly” as things could get. It had a whole different look from Nothing’s previous outings. Many had criticised it for “recycling” the design of the Phone 1 for Phone 2. The Phone 2a needed a refresh. Apparently, the inspiration came from the first batch of concepts that Nothing did for the Phone 1. At this point, I am just happy, it made something new. Plus, the changes should hopefully silence critics who called the Phone 1/Phone 2 an iPhone with a tear-down skin.

The tear-down look is a Nothing-thing, though. Phones with see-through back covers have existed long before it, but Nothing has embodied it in ways no one has thought of before. For everybody else, it was probably a one-off thing they did on one crazy weekend, once a year, but for Nothing, it’s (in) their DNA. It’s not that innovative design doesn’t exist in this segment. Fake leather is all the rage these days. But — I am not sure how to put it into words— Nothing’s visual cues are both comforting and stimulating. To me at least. They invoke child-like curiosity, making me flip the phone every once in a while hoping to find something new, every time. The fact that the Phone 2a also does this to me, is why you should never judge a book by its cover. If anything, its contrasting upper and lower halves, give you a bigger canvas for exploration. (Spoiler alert: Meme lovers will have a field day with this phone.)

The lights, especially, take longer to get used to. They are fewer, next to a Phone 2 or even the Phone 1, but they’re still there and when they light up, boy, it’s a spectacle. Something straight out of science fiction. Much of the functionality from the Phone 2 has been retained (much to my initial surprise). And so, there’s a bunch of things you can assign to them, from timers to tracking your order. One of the best use case is the phone letting you precisely control the contact or app that is allowed to get through to you when you’re taking some time off and don’t want to be bothered (Nothing calls them essential notifications). Some colour would make things easier but maybe it could go the other way and create more distraction, just as easily.

You can increase (or decrease) the intensity of the lights so you can, for instance, use them as a fill light for shooting photos and videos in low light or get them to do the “disco”, syncing up with your music. Nothing gives you pre-defined ringtones, each with their own unique pattern and you are free to generate your own through an in-built composer app. Or, if you don’t want the lights to guide you home, you can always turn them off and forget about them.

But regardless of whether or not these lights and underlying aesthetic have impressed you (it’s perfectly fine if you feel they are cringe, too), it’s impressive how Nothing has put everything together at cost without any perceivable compromise. The fit and finish are as good as any other phone, twice the price. An equal amount of effort was put into ergonomics so you can work this “big” phone for hours without losing both grip and your sanity. (The press material goes in-depth into how the Phone 2a is one of the most sustainable devices that Nothing has ever made, which given its entry-level pricing, is commendable.) Basic IP54 splash resistance is available. Something is better than nothing.

Step into the light

With form out of the way, it was time to test the function. And like everything else, here too, I was sceptical about how it would all go. We’ve grown accustomed to Android OEMs giving us two different worlds with two very different experiences on devices. While premium devices “expectedly” get the most attention, budget phones buyers are treated like a second-class citizen. They might promise you the moon, but the gas runs out as soon as you turn on the engine. The Phone 2a, it seems, has some sort of hidden staircase to an oil rig. The fuel never runs out. Believe you me when I say, I did not expect it to be “this” good. Remember the feeling you get when you soak in the sun on a cool winter morning? The Phone 2a’s software reminds me of that. It’s warm, and soothing, and super healthy.

The Phone 2a runs Nothing OS 2.5, the same software you’ll find inside a Phone 2 (unless there are some under-the-hood differences invisible to my naked eye) all the way from how it looks to how it works. A great deal of emphasis is given on cutting out “distractions” (which the more I think of, the more it makes me think, does Nothing even know how to do smartphone business, or worse, I hope it doesn’t turn out to be another OnePlus), through Home and Lock Screen widgets (and of course, the glyph). Nothing continues to iterate and add more (I see they’ve added camera and pedometre widgets recently). They are “Nothing originals” if you will, with monochrome dot styling, which is to say that they have a lot of character that is unique to the brand. They are interactive and fun— another aspect that encourages you to put your thinking caps on, to figure out the best possible combination for your typical day.

Customisation is at the heart of Nothing OS and it’s frankly astonishing that Nothing isn’t keeping any of it behind a paywall (even AI wallpapers with full-on glass and atmospheric effects are part of the experience). There is no bloatware to speak of, either. Its heart is in the right place.

Even the overall optimisation feels like the Phone 2a “needs” to cost more, simply for how slick and smart it is, no matter how you push it. The MediaTek Dimensity 7200 that powers it may seem subpar (and the “pro” moniker attached to it, another marketing exercise), but I am yet to find a use case where it would slow down, or even show any signs of distress. Maybe in some edge case gaming, but, that’s not the intended target audience of this phone anyway. People have been singling out the storage type (yes it is UFS2.2 and RAM an LPDDR4x) and while there maybe some merit to that on paper and in the long run (the Phone 2a will get three years of major OS and four years of security updates), I don’t think that it’s a dealbreaker, not if Nothing maintains this level of fine tuning going forward. We can (and should) cut it some slack, for now.

The big picture

The Phone 2a’s 6.7-inch 1080p AMOLED display is almost the same deal and dimension as the Phone 2’s except that it’s non-LTPO so it can’t refresh as dynamically but it’s still a 120Hz unit, so, plenty fast. It can get plenty bright (up to 1,300 nits) too and has some of the most symmetrical bezels I have seen on a budget phone recently. The panel is flat and has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection. The fingerprint scanner is below the display. It is mostly fast, not the most reliable though.

The 5,000mAh battery lasts all day and you can charge it at up to 45W (if you have a compliant fast charger at your disposal). The dual speakers get loud while haptic feedback is nice and tight. Microphone quality (there are two of those) is good, not great. You get support for 5G, as well as NFC, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.3.

Like the screen, its dual 50-megapixel rear cameras (and 32-megapixel front) are also mostly identical to the Phone 2’s with the exception that the ultrawide lacks autofocus and so, you can’t pull off straight-up macros. Nothing doesn’t explicitly name the primary sensor but it appears to be different, and noticeably inferior to the Sony IMX890 on the Phone 2. Or maybe it’s the tuning that needs some work, I am not too sure. The bottom line is, the setup is serviceable with lots of room for improvement.

But that shouldn’t stop you from considering the Phone 2a. It’s not just a phone, but a ready reckoner of how something special can come out of nothing and surprise you. The Phone 2a is not a home run, but it hits home in all the right ways. And that should work for Nothing, both as a brand and as a company. Hopefully, it will start a trend, too. But even if it doesn’t, even if Nothing turns out to be the “odd one out”, that’s okay, as long as phones like the Phone 2a keep coming.

With a starting price of Rs 23,999 (8GB/128GB), the Nothing Phone 2a is not just one of the best smartphones at its price point today, it is one of my favourite smartphones of 2024, period, and I have a feeling, I’ll come back to it every once in a while, to check on it. I am not sure I can say the same about a OnePlus, Redmi, or a Realme at its price.

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