The London-based smartphone manufacturing company Nothing launched the Nothing Phone 2a on 5 March 2024. Unlike its successors, the Nothing Phone 2a appears as a mid-budget device. Let’s dive into the features and functionalities the company purports to bring to its latest device. Specifications and Features of Nothing Phone 2a In quality and capacities, the new Nothing Phone 2a is quite different from its ancestors. Several negative traits and claims of bad experience pressed against the prior Nothing phones. Some of these limitations have been improved in the Nothing Phone 2a. Design For a mid-budget smartphone, the Nothing Phone 2a’s 161.74 mm by 76.32 mm by 8.55 mm dimension seems average. Using a semi-transparent plastic body material, the phone weighs 190g, which measures lighter than most market peers of the same budget range. Read more: realme 12 Pro Plus Full Review: Is It Worth Buying? The back of the phone fosters its ancestors' glossy finish. However, the cameras have found a new position on Nothing Phone 2a. An elliptical stage protrudes on the middle-top portion of the phone’s back. The stage rooms two circular lenses and a flashlight just above its top-right corner. Maintaining the angle, a microphone is seated just above the flashlight. Nothing phone’s signature Gluph notification lights surround the camera stage. The phone’s back is covered with a black border. Volume rocker, power button, sim tray, etc., are placed just right on every other phone. Display Nothing uses a 6.7” flexible AMOLED display with a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the front. The display features an adaptive refresh rate from 30 Hz to up to 120 Hz. The touch sample hits high with a 240Hz capacity. With all these features, the display of the Nothing Phone 2a surfaces near-perfect pictures and videos on it.  Read more: Samsung Galaxy M55 Review: Here’s What It Offers The Nothing Phone 2a has a default 700 nit brightness, with an adaptive capacity of up to 1300 nits in the outdoor light. Nothing Phone 2a’s display integrates 1084 by 2412 pixel resolutions with 394ppi pixel density. Its display maintains a 5M:1 contrast ratio while supporting 1.07 billion colors. The overall features of the display promise a stand-out visual experience. Camera The Nothing Phone 2a offers double 50MP cameras on its rear- one wide and one ultra-wide. Together, they produce pictures with balanced colors and qualities. The only issue that might bother a user is a slight distortion in the low-light scenario. Pictures snapped around artificial lighting appear a tad overexposed. Read more: Motorola Edge 40 Neo 5G Review: What’s New? The front lens is of 32MP resolution, which suffices the requirement to capture good photos for selfies. The rear camera can record up to 4K videos at 30 fps while the front camera can capture 1080p footage at 60 fps.  With Nothing Phone 2a, the manufacturing company has thought of minute details. The phone lets users pick between H.264 and H.265 video encoding. The former is compatible with most apps, while the latter is efficient at saving storage. Performance “Nothing” has customized the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 original chipset to employ it in the Nothing Phone 2a. There will be several phone variants based on RAM and internal storage capacity. Read more: Xiaomi Redmi K70 Review: Mid-range phone with flagship features The most powerful variants will have 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. The other two variants are 128GB storage with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage with 8GB RAM. Usual functionalities like app-installing or maneuvering, internet or screen scrolling, and multitasking can’t hinder the smoothness or responsiveness of the phones. The 4nm architecture hints at the processor's sufficient strength. Gaming, not requiring users to be worried about stutters or limps, is comfortable on the Nothing Phone 2a. For high-resolution games, the usual smoothness can feel low a trifle. However, integrating the RAM booster can be handy in cases like an 8GB boost, which should bring significant performance improvements. Software and Other Features The Nothing Phone 2a offers, plainly out-of-the-box, two choices for their operating system. Users can stick to the originality using the base Android 14 OS and comfort themselves in Google’s default Android look and feel. Otherwise, they can explore Nothing’s variant of Android 14, NothingOS 2.5, stripped of disturbing distractions and bloatware that comes with a mottled shadowy-themed skin.  Read more: iQOO Neo 9 Review: A Flagship Grade Mid-Range Smartphone One key feature of the NothingOS 2.5 is a gaming dashboard through which games can be streamed to different platforms. Battery and Charger The biggest battery introduced by Nothing, a 5000mAh cell can claimingly endure for two days straight without going fully empty. An average mixed-use scenario may last a day. A continuous run, dealing with heavy gaming, average browsing, meager snapping with the camera, and enough video consuming can hold up to 18 to 20 hours.  Nothing has deprived the users of a charger, even after lauding the battery’s capacity to support 45W. Users have to purchase a charger separately. Read more: iQOO Neo7 SE Review: Competent Mid-range Gaming Phone Pros and Cons of the Nothing Phone 2a Pros - Crisp display with a higher refresh rate- Good brightness level- Double OS user interface.- Decent photography- 4K video recording supported by gyro-EIS- 5G and NFC enabled- Sufficient battery life with fast charging- Decent gaming and multitasking performance- Stereo speakers- Corning Gorilla Glass protection- IP54 water/dust resistance. Read more: realme GT5 Pro Review: High-performance or Hype? Cons - Durability concerns- No wireless charging- Lack of micro SD card slot- No zoom camera- No audio jack- 1080 video recording capacity for the selfie camera Price of Nothing Phone 2a The Nothing Phone 2a costs about € 335, or BDT 39,608 (EUR 1 = BDT 118.23). The phone is not officially available in Bangladesh at this moment.  Read more: Samsung Galaxy A35 Review: Does It Offer Value for Money? Conclusion The Nothing Phone 2a is a mid-budget smartphone that aims to deliver satisfactory performance and quality. Its design features a semi-transparent plastic body with a unique camera setup. The flexible AMOLED display promises vibrant visuals, while the dual 50MP rear cameras and 32MP front camera capture decent photos and videos. Performance-wise, the customized MediaTek Dimensity 7200 chipset ensures smooth multitasking and gaming experiences. The device has slight issues in low light. The provision of an audio jack, zoom camera, wireless charging, etc could make it a better package. On the whole, the Nothing Phone 2a has several unique and explorable features. Anyone with mid-budget affordability and a knack for unique design can buy the phone.  Read more: Infinix Note 40 Pro Review: A Mid-Range Phone with 108P sensor, MagSafe Charging

Back in the day, Carl Pei challenged the status quo of flagship smartphones with his revolutionary OnePlus One. Fast forward 9 years and Carl has moved on from OnePlus and founded Nothing, no pun intended. With Nothing too, Carl wanted to disrupt the existing smartphone ideas. To that end, the company just announced the Nothing Phone 2, a successor to their Nothing Phone 1 released last year. So how is it as a device? What new features does it bring? Or is it just “nothing”? Let’s find out.  Key Specifications of Nothing Phone 2   Design and Build Quality  Those who are familiar with the Nothing Phone 1 would feel comfortable with the Phone 2. For a brand that brought a completely fresh design element with the Nothing Phone 1 has remarkably stayed true to the original design language.  Experts claim that this could be due to brand establishment needs. Nothing is a completely new player in the smartphone industry. So going for a drastically different design in just the second iteration would negate the brand establishment prospects.  Read more: Oppo Reno10 Pro+ 5G: Premium mid-ranger on the go Regardless, there are a few new things on the Phone 2. The most striking change is in the colour. The black variant of the Phone 1 has been replaced with a light grey colour which pops the clear back design more prominently. The clear back design has also been subtly tweaked to give a more polished and minimal look.  Dimension-wise, the Phone 2 is a tad bigger and heavier at 162.1mm by 76.4mm by 8.6mm and 201.2 gm respectively. The front and back of the device are glass with Corning Gorilla Glass protection with an aluminium frame in between.  The front camera has been moved from the side to the centre now. The uniform front bezel has also been reduced a bit to allow for an 87.2% screen-to-body ratio. It's not the best in the market, but the uniform distribution makes it look much slicker than most other smartphones at this price point. The usual ports and buttons are all in the same place as Phone 1 with no headphone or card slot, unfortunately.  Read more: Samsung Galaxy A54 vs realme 11 Pro+: Who wins the battle? Nothing has also upgraded the dust and water resistance from IP53 to IP54. Overall, the design element of the Phone 2 has slightly changed from the Phone 1. This has split the opinion of many. But as a brand, the choice of Nothing to stay with a similar design will only help to solidify their brand.   The Glyph Interface  The glyph interface has been one of the highlights of Phone 1. Simply because no phone before has incorporated such design elements. You can read more about the glyph interface in our original Phone 1 review. Not much has changed since then except for a few additional tweaks here and there.  The two most noticeable changes are in the red LED indicator and the centre strip. The video recording indicator has now been stretched to the edge instead of being a blinking dot. The centre strip has also been broken down into six separate pieces.  Read more: Infinix Note 30 Pro 5G Review: Powerful camera at an affordable price Nothing has brought some new functionalities to the glyph interface. The glyph on the top left will work as a priority notification indicator. It can also work as an indicator for car or food delivery ETA (available for Uber and Zomato on an experimental basis).  Users can now compose their own notification sound complete with glyph animations which is like another gimmick. In essence, barring a few useful additions, the glyph interface still remains a novelty trinket to have on a smartphone.  The Display  The display on the Phone 2 is a 6.7 inches LTPO OLED display with an 1080 by 2412 Pixels of resolution, 1 B colours, HDR10+ support, and a bumped-up 120 Hz refresh rate. The display has a 394 ppi density because of the uniform panel alignment. It was expected that the Phone 1 would feature a higher resolution panel but that didn’t turn out to be the case.  Read more: Walton NEXG N70 Review: Unlocking the Budget-Friendly Phone Regardless, the FHD+ panel still looks excellent as ever with 1600 nits HBM and a higher refresh rate. The uniform flat display alleviates the overall design aesthetic of the Phone 2. It almost feels like using an iPhone with Android OS.  The panel has excellent viewing angles and good color calibration. Overall, the display is easily one of the key strong points of the Phone 2.