Nothing Phone (2a) review: The best flashy midrange phone around

Note: This review was first published on 10 May 2024.

Good for Nothing

After a rocky start with the Nothing Phone (1), the company turned things around by releasing the incredible Nothing Phone (2). Now, Nothing is looking to repeat that success in the midrange segment with the new Nothing Phone (2a). 

Starting from just S$499, the Phone (2a) offers a custom Dimensity 7200 Pro chipset, dual 50MP rear cameras, a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with up to 1,300-nits peak brightness, and a simpler Glyph Interface light design on the rear that’s just as eye-catching.

The TL;DR version:



The phone performs excellently, takes nice photos and has an insane battery life. The S$499 price tag is just the cherry on top.



Note: You can find Nothing Phone (2a) on Lazada and Shopee.

In Singapore, the phone comes in just one configuration, the 12GB+256GB model. Nothing has had to trim some fat to keep the price low, resulting in using LPDDR4 RAM and UFS 2.2 storage. 

The battery inside has been upgraded to an even larger 5,000mAh battery with 45W wired fast charging, although wireless charging has been removed to keep costs down.

With all the small cuts to keep this phone below S$500, is it still a decent offering? Let’s find out.

Flashy can be classy

Design-wise, the Phone (2a) retains the most iconic part of Nothing’s aesthetic: the transparent rear cover.

However, the back is now sheathed in clear plastic in line with its midrange phone status. The rear plastic is well-polished, making smudging incredibly easy. You’ll have to regularly wipe this phone down if you plan to show off the clear back and circuitry-based design. 

The sides are now made with matte plastic instead of aluminium, but what’s interesting here is that Nothing has used a "90° angle unibody cover wrapping around the edges". Instead of the rear plastic simply curving into the edges of the sides, the rear piece extends past the edge to "eat into" the plastic sides. It does look rather cool, but I’ve noticed that one downside of the plastic back is that when viewed at certain angles, you’ll see a rainbow after-effect (chromatic aberration due to optical birefringence). 

All the plastic used has pros and cons. Firstly, the Nothing Phone (2a) is very comfortable to hold and incredibly light at just 190g, which can be great for those looking for a lighter handset in their pocket but still want a big display.

The downside is that the Phone (2a) also feels like a dummy phone. The matte plastic sides make the phone look even cheaper, and it takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to using high-end phones (like us).

Another point to note is that using plastic on the rear doesn't feel ideally durable since it's prone to scuffing by sharper items sharing a space with Nothing Phone (2a). So don't forget to shop for a durable phone case to pair with this phone.

The Phone (2a)'s 6.7-inch display, while retaining the same size as the Phone (2), sees some corners cut to bring down its cost.

It’s not an LTPO panel, meaning the refresh rate switching isn’t as fast or smooth. I’ve observed this a few times when switching between apps in a web browser and scrolling. It takes a few swipes for the screen to kick into 120Hz refresh rate, which means you get up to two seconds of jerky scrolling at the start. The minimum refresh rate can only go down to 30Hz as well (LTPO goes to 1Hz). However, these trimmings aren't a deal breaker for me at this price segment.

The display of the Phone (2a) is protected by Gorilla Glass 5. While the peak brightness (1,300 nits) is lower than that of its flagship counterpart, the screen is still legible under bright afternoon sunlight. Colours and details onscreen look perfectly fine, supports 10-bit colour and HDR10+, as well as the same display resolution of 2,412 x 1,080 pixels.

The Phone (2a) gets the same IP54 dust and water resistance as the Phone (2), which is nice plus point for a value-oriented phone.

We won’t get into too much detail about the Glyph Interface as we’ve covered it extensively in our review of the Nothing Phone (2). In Phone (2a), all the core features are present except for my favourite: the charging progress meter.

Oddly, all the other features like Flip to Glyph, Glyph Timer, and Glyph Progress made their way onto the midrange unit. Maybe I'm a little salty about being left out, but here's to hoping that this is an oversight by Nothing and that it's just one software update away.

Running on Nothing OS 2.5, the Nothing Phone (2a) will receive three years of software updates and four years of security updates. While that’s not on par with the flagship phones, a decent amount of support is promised for a midrange phone at S$499. 

Furthermore, the Nothing OS (based on Android 14) is excellent. Nothing’s custom skin is incredibly clean and well-optimised. It's further enhanced with a coherent design language based on Nothing’s dot matrix font and general black-and-white aesthetic.

Similar to Nothing OS 2.0 that we saw on the Nothing Phone (2), there’s the option to use the “Default” icon pack, which reverts all the icons to regular coloured ones if needed. 

I noticed that the Phone (2a) has fewer bloatware apps installed, if you can even call it that. The only preinstalled first-party app was Nothing X, the company’s app for its Nothing earbuds. Even Glyph Composer (for customising the LED backlights), which came preinstalled on the Phone (2), wasn’t installed out of the box here. Less bloatware is always a good thing in our books. 

Like before, the UI was smooth and fluid, and no bugs were encountered. Nothing has been very hands-on with pushing out minor software updates. One month of testing brought me to Nothing OS 2.5.5, which has many updates addressing camera performance, general UI smoothness, haptics, and more. We noted in our Phone (2) review that Nothing seemed to be committed to listening to its users and rectifying problems, and it’s nice to see that nothing has changed in this regard.

Imaging Quality

On paper, it seems as if the Nothing Phone (2a) shares very similar cameras to the Nothing Phone (2). Both phones have a 50MP main camera with an f/1.88 aperture and a 50MP ultra-wide camera with an f/2.2 aperture and a 114˚ field of view.

However, they employ different sensors, with the Samsung ISOCELL GN9 (S5KGN9) and the Samsung ISOCELL JN1 (S5KJN1) in the Phone (2a). The flagship counterpart had Sony imaging sensors.

All sample photos taken were with the phone running the Nothing OS 2.5.4a update, which was supposed to improve camera performance and enhance camera saturation and tone. 

The main camera on the Phone (2a) shoots with some oversaturation, and photos turning out quite a bit warmer than expected. A bit of post-processing is needed for true-to-life colourisation. That said, the photos taken with this phone are sharp, vibrant and ready for social media sharing.

It’s personal taste when it comes to images, but I prefer a more accurate representation that allows for more leeway when editing and applying preferential effects later.

However, if you’re just looking to snap images and post them on social media, the boosted saturation and contrast comes in clutch.

Images are pixel-binned to 12.5MP resolution, but there’s a 50MP option. Personally, I thought that the pixel-binned images were more than good enough for social media. There’s very little need to capture images at 50MP unless you expect to print large photos. 

Even though there’s no telephoto zoom camera here, the 2x zoom still does admirably with very little detail lost. The lack of a zoom lens and the limitation to just 10x digital crop does mean you won’t be taking any photos of your favourite K-pop idols (or J-pop, from my current photos) from far away, though.

Ultra-wide images are serviceable, although low-light situations are pretty tough on the phone and will result in the device trying to compensate with smudging. 

Low-light shots with the main camera are great, so we have to hand it to Nothing again for doing a good job with the tuning.

All in all, I am willing to put my name down and die on this hill: Nothing Phone 2(a) has the best imaging quality I've seen in a smartphone under S$500 thus far. It's not perfect, but it's hard to believe you can get these images when many phone brands charge more than double the price for something similar.

Benchmark Performance

The Nothing Phone (2a) uses a “custom” Dimensity 7200 Pro processor that Nothing claims was exclusively co-engineered with MediaTek. The base Dimensity 7200 is a slightly older chip that was launched at the start of 2023, but was a decent option for midrange phones last year. 

Compared to the performance of other midrange phones around this price range, the Phone (2a) performs admirably, no doubt thanks in part to this custom processor. We’ve chosen to pit the Phone (2a) against a slew of other midrange phones that retail in the S$500-S$700 price range, although we’ve also included the Nothing Phone (2) just to see how it compares. 

Putting it to the test

To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.

To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we've jotted them down here.

Benchmark Performance remarks

Considering that the Nothing Phone (2a) is cheaper than all the other midrange phones we’ve compared it to, it has held up remarkably well in the benchmark tests. That’s validated by my real-world testing, where Phone (2a) boasted excellent performance when browsing the web, playing games, and general usage. 

Only the 12GB+256GB model is available in Singapore, which makes the S$499 price tag seem even better of a deal since 128GB storage feels too little for a phone these days.

Battery Life

Our battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more. 

I came into this review with high hopes for the Nothing Phone (2a)’s battery life, thanks to the insane endurance that the Nothing Phone (2) had at 944 minutes.

Thankfully, the phone didn’t let me down. The large 5,000mAh battery inside the Nothing Phone (2a) lasted for even longer than the Nothing Phone (2), and during real-world usage, the phone could go a whole day (~10 hours) and still have 40% left. Folks who need a phone that can keep up with them for a whole day out and about can find it in the Phone (2a), plus it's likely the best at doing so in its price bracket.

With support for 45W wired fast charging, the Nothing Phone (2a) charged from 0% to 50% in just 27 minutes, while a full charge from 0% to 100% took just 61 minutes. Although it's not as fast as other phones, getting a full charge in an hour is fantastic nonetheless.

Unfortunately, there’s no wireless charging here, which is easy to look over for such a comfortable price tag.

Nothing is... perfect?

The midrange phone market has become increasingly saturated these few years, with brands packing even more powerful hardware to differentiate their offerings from competitors. The Nothing Phone (2a) does the same, but it stacks an enticing price with many advantages that make it the midrange phone to beat for now.

The Mediatek Dimensity 7200 Pro processor provides more than enough power for most tasks, and the phone's power efficiency is excellent, as evidenced by the battery life offered. The 45W fast charging will also bring the 5,000mAh battery up to full in reasonable time.

Nothing has also done an exceptional job with Nothing OS, providing a great user experience with almost no pain points or bloatware. Minimalists will enjoy the system, while people who want a little more colour can also use the colourful icons. The Glyph Interface has been toned down, but the simpler look has its aesthetic benefits while still remaining a helpful tool. 

At this price point, there’s little to critique about the phone. Even the small quibbles we had, like its plasticky appearance with toy-like handling, all disappeared when we started taking photos with the device.

However, there are two things I think Nothing can work on, but we're probably nitpicking considering the price tag. Firstly, the storage type used is definitely not ideal and we expect it to be offering at least be UFS 3.1 standards if UFS 4.0 is too expensive.

Secondly, the three years of software updates and four years of security updates are on the shorter end of the stick. Nothing stands to earn even more loyal users if it could offer a longer period. The flip side is the phone's proactive software updates, which means the phones are continually changing (hopefully for the better) at a rapid pace. 

Having said that, if you want a comfortably priced phone with a 120Hz refresh rate, exceptional battery life, clean UI, a unique design and relatively good performance, your first stop should be the Nothing Phone (2a). There’s very little out there that can compare at under S$500. 

The Nothing Phone (2a) retails for S$499 in Black and Milk and is available at Nothing's official Lazada and Shopee stores, as well as at Challenger retail outlets.