A solid offering in the mid-range segment from Nothing!!
Ever since the brand Nothing was introduced by Carl Pie in the market it caught a lot of attention with its unique design and a cleaner software experience. Then from there, the brand started its journey with the Nothing Phone 1 (Review) which targeted consumers who wanted a well-speced smartphone with some flagship specifications and the pricing was also right.
Then, the Nothing Phone 2 (Review) entered the market, a successor to the Nothing Phone 1. It brought in some very good upgrades, such as a slightly powerful chipset, more customizations for the Glyph lights at the back, etc., but the smartphone was priced slightly higher. After focusing on the budget flagship segment, Nothing aims to get some attention in the premium mid-range segment with the Nothing Phone 2a.
The Nothing Phone 2a is a slightly toned-down version of the Nothing Phone 2 and offers some very good specifications for the price, which could make it a strong contender in this highly competitive segment. So, can the Nothing Phone 2a make a way in the mid-range segment like its dominance in the budget flagship segment?
Let's find out in the full review.
Nothing Phone 2a Design:
In terms of design, the Nothing Phone 2a, like its elder sibling, follows similar family characteristics with the transparent back and the Glyph LEDs. However, certain changes have been made now, as the number of Glyph LEDs has been reduced to three, and the two cameras are now placed horizontally instead of vertically inside the NFC coil. On top of the two cameras, there is a tiny LED flashlight.
The Glyph LEDs light up whenever a notification is coming up. Nothing calls this a 90-degree infinity back cover, and the smartphone's curved edges make it easier to hold in your hand. The Nothing Phone 2a also misses out on the small blinking red light which was present on both the Nothing Phone 1 and 2. Also, the back is now made of polycarbonate instead of glass, which has been used to reduce costs.
Like the Nothing Phone 2, the back of the Nothing Phone 2a also has an IP54 rating, making it splash—and dust-resistant. The Nothing Phone 2a weighs around 190 grams, which makes it lighter than the Nothing Phone 2, which weighs around 201 grams. This is primarily due to the use of polycarbonate material at the back and around the side frame.
The frame has a smooth matte finish and houses the power button on the right side whereas the left side houses the volume buttons which feel tactile to use. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone only whereas the bottom houses the USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot.
The Nothing Phone 2a is available in four different colours - Black, White, Blue, and Milk. Milk is a combination of both white and grey colour which looks good. On the front, just like the Nothing Phone 2, here also the bezels of the display are symmetrical and are uniform all along the sides. Overall, the design continues to be the main attraction here but the build is polycarbonate instead of glass which would make it premium.
Nothing Phone 2a Display:
The Nothing Phone 2a sports a larger 6.7-inch Full HD+ (1080x2412 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9, similar to that of the Nothing Phone 2. The display has support for a 120Hz refresh rate. It is a 10-bit one and since the display is an AMOLED one, you get great viewing angles as well as good colour reproduction with deeper blues and blacks.
Unlike the Nothing Phone 2, the Nothing Phone 2a misses out on an LTPO panel but does provide a variable refresh rate depending on the content in the display. There are three different modes to choose from when talking about the refresh rate: Dynamic, High, and Standard. Setting the refresh rate to High or Dynamic makes the display refresh at 120Hz for a few of the applications except that the Dynamic option provides variable refresh rates - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz depending on the content in the display.
However, the Dynamic option mostly refreshes the display at 90Hz for maximum applications. Switching the display to Standard mode results in refreshing the display at 60Hz, which is the best option for extended battery life. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a faster 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming.
In terms of brightness, the display of the Nothing Phone 2a can reach a peak brightness of 1300nits, which is not the best in the segment but still good. Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility, and with the display set to the highest brightness mode, it could reach around 1100nits, which is good. There are two different colour modes to choose from for the display: Alive and Standard.
Setting the display to Alive results in deeper blacks and blues with punchier colours in the display covering the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Standard mode provides off-white colours with a natural tone and covers the sRGB colour space. There is also a temperature slider where you can set the display to a warmer or cooler tone.
The display of the Nothing Phone 2a has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner which works accurately and is faster. The Nothing Phone 2a is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Its display supports Widevine L1, which ensures you can easily stream HDR content on Netflix and YouTube. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.
Nothing Phone 2a Performance:
The Nothing Phone 2a sports a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Pro chipset which is based on a 4nm process and is based on an octa-core setup that includes 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 cores and 6x2.0 GHz Cortex-A510 cores. Coupled with the CPU, you get a powerful Mali-G610 MC4 GPU. The smartphone can handle all of them easily, whether light or heavy, in terms of daily tasks.
All heavy tasks, like rendering videos, playing games, etc., felt smoother. However, in heavy games like BGMI and Genshin Impact, the gameplay was good enough, but some frame drops were present when played in the highest graphics settings. After longer gaming, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer, especially around the camera module.
Regarding the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 80-90 per cent with almost no throttling present, which is very good. The benchmark scores are good, but they are still not the best in the segment, as other smartphones like the POCO F6 and OnePlus Nord 4 have better benchmark scores.
Regarding network connectivity, there is support for 11 bands of 5G, and you get good carrier aggregation. The Nothing Phone 2a is available in three variants: 8GB RAM with 128/256GB storage and 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, with storage speeds of UFS 2.2 and RAM LPDDR5. This is a huge disappointment since the UFS 2.2 speeds are much slower than those of other competitors, who offer much faster UFS 3.1 or 4.0 speeds.
Nothing Phone 2a Software:
The Nothing Phone 2a runs on the latest NothingOS 2.5.3 with Android 14 out of the box. The user interface is completely feature-rich and lets you customize icon shape, size and colour. Like the previous versions of NothingOS, the user interface has the signature dot matrix pattern everywhere, whether it is the fonts, charging animation, custom home screen, lock screen widgets, etc. There are very few changes in the user interface.
There is the Always-On Display present which dims to provide a monochrome look and there are a host of lock screen widgets present to use. In the notifications panel, the two big quick toggles at the top have been changed from circular to square shape, then there is the newer custom icon pack that has a monochrome look, and very few changes in the UI.
However, the Glyph interface comes in handy as you can turn it on or off when needed. It provides most of the functionalities through the LEDs placed on the back of the smartphone. The Glyph Interface contains a huge list of different options - Brightness, Ringtones, Notifications, Flip To Glyph, Glyph Timer, and Composer that lets you choose custom Glyph ringtones, Visual Feedback for controlling the volume level, Music Visualizer, Charging Meter, and also is integrated well with third-party applications like Spotify, Uber, Zomato, etc.
Unlike the Nothing Phone 2 which had support for a lot of experimental features like Connect with Tesla, Enhanced Touch Response, etc. here the Nothing Phone 2a misses out on those but it does provide Glyph Progress which is well integrated with third-party applications and experimental Airpods Support is present. Just like all Nothing phones, here also there is no such bloatware present.
Nothing specific applications like Camera, Composer, Weather, and Recorder applications are present. In terms of software support, just like the Nothing Phone 2, this smartphone will also receive another three major Android updates and four years of security patches.
Nothing Phone 2a Cameras:
The Nothing Phone 2a sports a dual camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.9 Samsung ISOCELL GN9 sensor for the primary camera and a 50MP f/2.2 ISOCELL JN1 sensor for the ultrawide camera. The primary camera is slightly different here compared to the Nothing Phone 2 which came with a 50MP Sony IMX890 sensor for the primary camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.2 Sony IMX615 sensor for the front camera.
As usual, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically whenever the camera detects any scene in the dark but you can turn it off. The images from the primary camera came out with sharper details and had a good dynamic range with almost less noise in the background. The colour reproduction is good as it yields natural tones without much saturation in the background.
Even HDR images come with good dynamic range and have less noise in the background. The white balance is handled very well. At night, the primary camera does a solid job in terms of details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with almost less noise in the background. The exposure is well handled even in very low-lighting areas. All these results were captured without using the dedicated Night Mode.
With the dedicated Night Mode, the images come out with excellent dynamic range and even slightly better colour colour saturation with almost no noise present in the background. The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and the dynamic range is good. However, the colours look undersaturated and there is some distortion around the edges.
The noise is slightly higher in the background. At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details which do look a tad softer and the dynamic range comes to be average. The colours look a bit washed out with some overexposure present in the background. There is no dedicated macro camera but here just like the Nothing Phone 2, the ultrawide camera on this smartphone also doubles up as a macro camera due to autofocus.
The macro images come out with sharper details, excellent dynamic range, and saturated colours. Also, there is no dedicated telephoto camera, but the primary camera offers 2x digital zoom capabilities and using the primary camera at 2x zoom provides sharper details and good dynamic range with some amount of noise in the background.
In terms of portraits, the primary camera can take portraits at 1x and 2x zoom levels and you get good edge detection and proper background blur. The dynamic range is good with saturated colours in the background. The selfies from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with almost less noise in the background.
There is some amount of oversharpening in the background present but still, the skin tones look natural. Even the portrait selfies come out with sharper details and have natural-looking skin tones but the edge detection could have been slightly improved. In terms of videos, both the primary and ultrawide cameras can capture 4K videos at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out to be very good.
The videos have sharper details, good dynamic range, and less noise present in the background but the colours do look oversaturated. The noise is well under control since there is OIS but OIS works only with 1080p videos at 30 or 60fps. However, EIS works well on all three cameras. The videos from the ultrawide camera has a lot of noise in the background, colours look saturated but the dynamic range comes out average.
The front camera is restricted to 1080p video recording at 30fps, which produces sharper details, decent dynamic range, and less noise in the background. This is due to the EIS working well. The colours look overprocessed in the background. In low light, the primary camera does a great job, whereas both the ultrawide and the selfie cameras struggle in low-light videos as there is a huge amount of noise in the background.
Nothing Phone 2a Battery Life:
The Nothing Phone 2a sports a slightly larger battery at 5000mAh which is 300mAh more in capacity compared to the Nothing Phone 2. With the Mediatek chipset built on a 4nm process and NothingOS 2.5, you can expect better battery life compared to the Nothing Phone 2 but there is not much of a difference. With normal usage, the smartphone easily lasts for two days with some charge left which is great.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI for 4-5 hours continuously, rendering videos, running benchmarks, streaming social media, attending calls for longer hours, etc. the smartphone lasts for a day with some charge left. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time comes around 4.5-5 hours and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time comes around 7.5-8 hours which is good.
In terms of charging, just like the Nothing Phone 2, this smartphone also supports 45W fast charging. However, Nothing has skipped bundling a fast charger inside the box, which is disappointing. Therefore, you need to rely on third-party chargers only. A dedicated 45W fast charger would take the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour and 40 minutes, which is very time-consuming.
However, there is also no support for wireless and reverse wireless charging on the Nothing Phone 2a, which is present on the Nothing Phone 2. This may not be a problem since the former is cheaper than the latter.
Nothing Phone 2a Audio Quality:
Like the Nothing Phone 2, here the Nothing Phone 2a gets a dual stereo speaker setup where the sound is more from the bottom-firing speaker compared to the earpiece on the top. The sound does not feel distorted and the haptic feedback is also good and feels tactile to use. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack but you do get Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output.
Verdict:
The Nothing Phone 2a is a well-rounded mid-range smartphone from Nothing that brings an exquisite design with the transparent back having those Glyph LEDs, a 120Hz AMOLED display with a set of stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, a good chipset which handles almost all the tasks easily, cameras are good, and you get solid battery life with support for faster charging.
The software experience is great with no bloatware and you get a lot of features also. The software update policy is very good and Nothing provides timely software and security updates. However, there are a lot of things where Nothing has cut corners and price it right. Unlike the Nothing Phone 1 and 2, there is no glass back and instead you get a polycarbonate back.
The back of the smartphone does catches a lot of smudges and dirt. The cameras are not the best in the segment and definitely there are some other smartphones that provide better results than the Nothing Phone 2a in the mid-range segment, the Mediatek Dimensity 7200 Pro provides good performance but is not so good when it comes to playing games as there is lot of frame drops noticed and minor stutters also.
The exclusion of a dedicated fast charger is also a big disappointment since other smartphones do come with fast charger inside the box. There are two things that Nothing Phone 2a clearly stands from the crowd is the design and the cleaner software experience and if you are someone who prioritizes a clean and feature rich experience, then the Nothing Phone 2a is a perfect consideration.
But considering all other specifications, you will get much better options in this segment when it comes to performance, cameras, and other things but still the Nothing Phone 2a is a good fit for people whoi want an affordable Nothing smartphone with the best software experience and a unique design.
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