Nothing Phone (2a) Review // One Month Later!

[Music] this is the nothing phone 2A a brand new device from nothing that perhaps somewhat surprisingly undercuts all of their previous releases making it the new outright budget smartphone in their phone lineup and given that their previous two smartphone releases already fell in or around that mid-range pricing category the question I found myself asking was what did nothing have to sacrifice to get the price of this phone even lower than those and I got to say after using this phone as my main everyday device for about a month I feel like I have a really good grasp on exactly that and some of the compromises they made make a heap of sense and will leave you tipping your hat to the company but there are some compromises that might actually make you think twice before picking one up yourself and so with that being said let's dive in okay let's start with the great Parts about this phone the first of which without a question has to be the design now admittedly this phone does use a heck of a lot more plastic than the two previous phones from nothing in fact the entire back panel and the side rails are completely made out of plastic but to be honest the only really noticeable difference in the hand if you're comparing this phone with nothing's previous offerings are those side rails on the phone one and phone two the side rails have that sort of cool to the touch metal feeling whereas you can definitely feel that they are plastic on the phone 2A but in terms of the backpack panel honestly it feels very very similar to The Back panels on both the phone 1 and phone 2 I always felt like there were a bit plasticky feeling with those phones anyway so to me it hardly feels any different here with the 2A and so aside from the plastic I actually think that the design of this phone is the best of the entire linup we still have those slightly rounded edges on the back similar to those found on the phone 2 which makes the phone just that little bit more comfortable in the hand compared to the phone 1 but then if you get the white or milk variants in particular then you actually get these really cool color contrast volume and power buttons which I think look super slick and then on top of that I actually just prefer the look of the phone 2A compared to the first two now that's not to say that I didn't rate the designs of the first two phones in fact quite the opposite but if we're being honest one could definitely argue that despite the transparent design language they both still somehow had a bit of an iphony look about them well thanks to that new center camera module the phone 2 now definitely stands on its own 2 feet in the design Department oh and those Center align cameras also help in reducing side to side wobbles when the phone is lying flat which I personally really appreciate now on the front of the phone we actually now technically have the thinnest bezels of any nothing phone to date and they're still symmetrical which is amazing particularly on a phone at this price but I will say the plastic frame is ever so slightly thicker than the metal frame on the phone 2 so technically the bezels are pretty much the same size oh and by the way you may have noticed that I haven't mentioned anything regarding the glyphs and yeah that's intentional cuz I literally do not use them at all and in fact I spoke at length about them in my review of the nothing phone 2 so if you want some more detailed thoughts on the matter then I'll just link that video up in the cut but yeah in terms of the design Department nothing has absolutely nailed every single Choice with the phone 2A and the fact that we have a phone at this price point with this design that is seriously amazing all right the next great thing about this phone is the display much like the phone 1 and phone 2 the 2A still rocks a beautifully fluid 120 HZ display and for me at this price point I don't think you're going to find a better display it's actually quite a bit brighter than the phone On's display to where it can now reach a peak of 1100 nits when high brightness mode is activated and 1300 nits for viewing HDR content and although it's not quite as bright as the phone 2's display it's still really impressive that we've got this combination of fluidity and brightness on a phone at this price real quick one other fantastic aspect of this phone that I truly appreciate is that the software experience is the exact same as what you'll find on the phone 2 and phone one so all of those fancy nothing OS widgets the lock screen animations the neat Quick Settings panel with these big toggles up the top here all of that stuff is here on the phone 2way and that's one of the great Parts about nothing phones right now is that unless there are some sort of Hardware limitations nothing appears to have an overarching goal of providing all of its phones with the exact same software experience regardless of price which is a very Apple thing to do and is not something a lot of other phone manufacturers do like I know for a fact that Samsung does not place the same version of one UI on its lower end phones that it gives to its Flagship phones and even Google have been guilty of this recently where the pixel8 pro had features not available on the regular pixel 8 simply due to Google just blocking them and just to keep the praise train moving along the battery on this phone has been another standout feature in fact it's actually got the largest battery capacity out of any of the nothing phones released to dat which is really cool now the phone certainly doesn't have Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or gen 3 levels of efficiency so it's not a battery champ by any means but I have not been able to kill it in a single day in the entire month that I've been using it in fact most days I'm ending with roughly 25 to 35% battery left with around 5 hours of screen on time and as far as I'm concerned that is pretty great going and so for me if you're looking for a phone with a slick and eye-catching design a really great display clean and minimal software and really great battery life then this phone ticks every single one of those categories in Spades and I've got to tip my hat to the nothing team for how they haven't compromised any of these core features despite the price drop but of course when a phone is as cheap as the phone 2A is there has to be some compromises right well yes and after using this phone for a full month I reckon there are two mediumsized compromises and one pretty large compromise so buckle up and let's unpack them so the first mediumsized compromise is the phone's performance now firstly when I saw that nothing had opted for a mediate Tech dimensity chipset for this phone as opposed to the tried and true options from Qualcomm I was very intrigued as to how that would impact things but as far as I'm concerned this phone performs pretty much identically to the phone one now I always raved about how solid the phone one was in terms of performance despite it using a mid-range chip and so for a lot of people the phone 2a's performance is going to be more than adequate enough that being said the phone 1 is now nearly 2 years old and so for a phone released in 20124 to perform like a nearly 2-year-old phone that may be cause for some concern now I will say it handles most things I personally throw at it without issue and again the OS itself is so clean and so well optimized that you probably won't notice any significant issues with performance in day-to-day tasks but you know things like the phone taking longer than usual to boot up or the camera app lagging a bit when taking lots of photos and even some videos showing signs of lagginess after they've been captured which I can't go back and fix or check out this weird glitch that happens when I try and open a timer via the lock screen those are the sorts of things that you'll notice in terms of performance suffering a bit with the phone 2A there have also been some other little occasional glitches in animation when I've been pushing the phone just that little bit too hard so that is also something to keep in mind but my Counterpoint to this specific compromise is that anyone buying a phone in this pricing category probably won't be able to find a phone that performs much better and again I largely think that this is thanks to the phone's beautiful software experience but with that being said it is important to highlight that if you were hoping that somehow nothing had pulled off some sort of miracle in terms of performance with this phone yeah that ain't quite the case all right the second medium-sized compromise in my opinion which actually some people might not see as much of a compromise at all but it is the lack of wireless charging and I got to be honest during my briefing calls before this phone was announced this one probably hit me the hardest for some reason given that the nothing team chose to include wireless charging on the phone one despite its ridiculously low price point I thought that this was always going to be a non-negotiable with nothing phones forever into the future but alas that has obviously been proven not to be the case and I think my disappointment doesn't necessarily relate to the phone 2way itself but more to the fact that now nothing has made the call to remove wireless charging from their Baseline phone it means they're probably going to be more willing to get rid of it in future phones as well like who knows maybe they'll eventually only Reserve wireless charging for their Flagship phones in the future now obviously don't know if this is going to be the case at all but as far as I'm concerned I actually really hope that this is the first and last nothing phone without wireless charging okay and so then we come to the last pretty large compromise that this phone makes which is as you might have guessed the cameras now again for $350 can I really complain about the cameras not being that great no not really but I think the point needs to be made that if you're the sort of person who loves having at least one great camera on your phone then I don't think that this is the phone for you now to be clear in very good lighting conditions with subjects that are unnerving such as you know pictures of architecture or Landscapes even pictures of adults who know how to stand still for more than half a second then with the mainlands you can capture okay to decent photos but if like me you're someone who has kids and you want to take some quality pictures of them playing and having fun or perhaps you have pets and you take lots of photos of them even in decent lighting you'll struggle to capture photos without an emotion blow and then in less than optimal conditions yeah probably not even worth your time in fact to paint a bit of a picture I was struggling so much with the cameras on this phone that for the first time in about 2 years I had to resort to using a gcam port which did help a bit with producing better looking images but I couldn't find one that supported the ultra wide Camera Plus although you can remap a double press of the power button to open the gcam mod your phone needs to be unlocked to use it which can be a little bit annoying depending on the scenario on top of that I also had a recent overseas trip during which time I was using the nothing phone 2ay and whilst I was away I wanted to be able to capture some quality photos and videos with my phone and whilst I did capture some photos and videos with the 2-way as you're seeing on screen right now I was not at all confident to take it as my only camera so I actually ended up taking the iPhone 15 Pro as well just so that I could guarantee that I was going to be able to get some quality shots an iPhone for goodness sake I am an Android user and if I was using any other Android phone like my pixel 8 Pro or the Galaxy s24 or s24 Ultra there's no way I would have felt the need to pack an iPhone for shooting photos and videos now again it's 350 bucks so can I really complain particularly given how many good things there are about this phone no not really that being said I think this is where Google and Apple's impressive computational photography truly shines because no matter how much you spend on a pixel or iPhone whether it's 1,000 bucks or 500 you know you're going to be able to produce fantastic images and I think that's really the best place to end this video because ultimately if you are someone who holds a lot of value in being able to capture quality photos and videos using your phone then the phone 2A is probably not the phone to get but if not and you also don't care about the lack of wireless charging and the slightly subpar performance then as far as I'm concerned you are not going to find a better phone for the [Music] price [Music]

Channel: Sam Beckman

Views: 64,536

Keywords: sam, beckman, nothing phone 2a, nothing phone, nothing phone 2a review, nothing phone (2a), nothing phone 2, nothing 2a, nothing phone 2a camera test, nothing phone 2a camera, nothing phone (2a) review, one month later, nothing phone 2a long term, nothing phone 2a one month later, long term review, nothing phone 2a gaming test, nothing phone 2a vs nothing phone 2, nothing phone 2a specs, nothing phone 2a vs, nothing phone 2a battery test

Id: qomwDFp70Fs

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024