Nothing Phone 2A Review: The Mid-Ranger with a Unique Twist

Here’s a new unique-looking mid-range smartphone that’s catching everyone’s eye – the Nothing Phone 2A. Besides its standout appearance, what’s the real story behind this phone? Is it a solid mid-ranger worth your money? Today, we’re diving deep into our review of the Nothing Phone 2A.

Nothing Phone 2A: Design and Build

The original Nothing Phone 2 was launched a while back as a flagship device. Now, the company has introduced the Nothing Phone 2A, a mid-ranger that offers many of the same features but at a more affordable price. The 2A includes a large battery, a competitive OLED display, and a solid chipset for its class. And, of course, it retains the unique design and light setup that the Nothing brand is known for.

Much like the previous models, the 2A supports a see-through back that reveals the inner workings of the device, though most of these visible parts are purely for show. The back also features a horizontal camera bump – a design choice that’s becoming quite rare these days. The back material is not specified, but it feels grippy, albeit prone to smudges and dust. The frame is flat and matte, made from an unknown material, but the phone feels solid and comfortable in the hand. The Nothing Phone 2A also boasts an IP54 rating for protection against dust and splashes of water.

Unlike previous models, which featured a blinking red light on the back to indicate video capture, the 2A has a red square purely for aesthetic purposes. Speaking of lights, if you’ve seen a Nothing Phone before, you’re probably familiar with the Glyph LEDs. These light up for different purposes – notification alerts, a ring light for the cameras, or even a countdown timer. They also provide visual feedback for things like volume control and charging. A dedicated Glyph interface allows for customizable behavior, and you can use the Composer app to create custom Glyph patterns or ringtones.

Nothing Phone 2A: Display

Let’s move on to the display specs and features. The Nothing Phone 2A comes with a 6.7-inch 1080P OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. This display is nearly identical to that of the Nothing Phone 2. However, it lacks LTPO technology, which means that the refresh rate switching is less dynamic. The screen smoothly runs at 120Hz, dropping down to 60Hz when idle to save power. However, we couldn’t get games to run higher than 60fps for some reason.

The display itself looks good – it’s sharp and supports both 10-bit color and HDR10+ video. The screen brightness is impressive too, with a maximum of over 660 nits using the manual slider and nearly 1,400 nits in auto mode in bright conditions.

Nothing Phone 2A: Audio Quality

For audio, the phone is equipped with a stereo speaker setup, which earns a loudness rating of “good.” The sound quality is decent, with clean mids and highs. There’s also an under-display fingerprint reader that’s both snappy and reliable.

Nothing Phone 2A: Performance and Software

The phone offers storage options of 128GB or 256GB, but there’s no expandable storage via microSD. It runs on Nothing OS 2.5, based on Android 14, which is close to stock Android in functionality but comes with heavily customized aesthetics. These include unique monochrome icons, pixelated fonts, and a variety of custom Nothing widgets. You can even turn the entire interface monochrome if that’s your style. There’s also interconnectivity support for Nothing earbuds through the Nothing X app, and the phone is promised three years of software updates and four years of security patches.

The phone’s chipset is a customized version of the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 called the 7200 Pro, which supposedly offers some extra power efficiency, though the details are scarce. It’s less powerful than the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 found in the original Nothing Phone 2, but that’s expected. In benchmarks, the Nothing Phone 2A delivers decent CPU and GPU scores for a mid-range device. In daily use, it runs smoothly with no noticeable hiccups, stutters, or slowdowns, and it’s good for casual gaming too. The phone features a passive cooling system and demonstrated great sustained performance in prolonged stress tests with minimal throttling.

Nothing Phone 2A: Battery Life and Charging

The Nothing Phone 2A is equipped with a larger battery than the Nothing Phone 2 – 5,000mAh compared to 4,700mAh. Combined with the power-efficient chipset, it excelled in our battery life tests, scoring 15 hours and 53 minutes of active use. The phone supports 45W charging, though there’s no charger in the box. Using a proper adapter, we were able to charge the 2A from 0 to 59% in 30 minutes, with a full charge taking an hour and 3 minutes. Unlike the Nothing Phone 2, there is no wireless charging support here.

Nothing Phone 2A: Camera Performance

Now, let’s talk about the cameras. The Nothing Phone 2A comes with a 50MP main camera and a 50MP ultra-wide camera. The setup is different from the Nothing Phone 2, as the camera sensors have changed, and the ultra-wide lacks autofocus. The main camera captures 12.5MP photos due to pixel binning. The quality is solid, though not perfect – there’s a good amount of fine detail, but also some aggressive sharpening. Colors are on the saturated side, but they look good, and the dynamic range is excellent.

When it comes to people and faces, the main camera does quite well, producing nice and natural skin tones. There’s no dedicated telephoto camera, but the 2x digital zoom from the main cam is nearly as good as regular shots. In low light, the Nothing Phone 2A uses night mode processing automatically. The shots have plenty of detail, low noise, well-developed shadows, and controlled highlights, although light sources could be better contained.

The 4K video from the main camera looks great, with good detail, minimal noise, slightly saturated colors, and solid dynamic range and contrast. All of the cameras have electronic stabilization enabled by default, though some wobble can be noticed on the main cam. The low-light videos are also solid, with good detail and well-developed shadows and highlights.

The 50MP ultra-wide camera captures 12.5MP stills with decent detail, color, and dynamic range. In low light, the photos are good, with decent detail and surprisingly good dynamic range. The ultra-wide camera also performs well in video capture, producing 4K clips with good detail for this type of camera.

Nothing Phone 2A: Selfie Camera

For selfies, the Nothing Phone 2A comes with a 32MP front camera. The results are very good overall, although skin tones may appear a bit artificial up close.

Conclusion

So, is the Nothing Phone 2A worth it? It offers much of what we liked about the flagship Nothing Phone 2 but at a much lower price. Overall, it’s a solid mid-ranger with a unique design, a nice display, a decent chipset, good camera performance, and excellent battery life. While it’s not perfect and has a few nitpicks, it’s one of the more unique mid-range options out there and is worth recommending.

Let us know what you think, and I’ll see you in the next one!