First, there was the Nothing Phone (2), and then came the Nothing Phone (2a). But now there’s the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus. But why? Well, let’s find out what’s good and not good about this RM1,999 or USD 460 smartphone, and how it is better compared to the previous Nothing Phone (2a).
Unboxing
Now, starting from the unboxing. The box comes in a box similar to the original Nothing Phone (2a), with the visuals of the camera in front and the specs and the variant at the back of the box.
Inside, there’s a white USB-C to USB-C cable, a SIM ejector tool, and some paperwork.
Design & Build
Okay, when it comes to the overall design and build quality, if you’re already familiar with the Nothing Phone (2a), then the (2a) Plus will feel very familiar too. It follows a similar design language as its elder brother. You’ll also find a similar distinctive camera bump with three glyph interface lights positioned around the camera.
Now, what’s great is that the phone still has a very nice, transparent design on the back, which is unique in the market. Now, this time, instead of a smoky translucent back of the (2a), there’s a fully transparent plastic back instead. But this allows you to clearly see the NFC coil, the screws, and the glyph interface, which does add a nice touch to the overall look.
Then, Nothing has also added a more metallic finish to enhance the premium feel of the design, and with clearer transparency, it’s even more noticeable. Now, this particular variant is the Grey color variant, where the light grey contrasts very well with the silver-colored coils.
The volume buttons are on the left, and the power button is on the right. So if you’re used to an Android smartphone that has volume rockers on the right-hand side, this new setup might take a little time for you to get used to.
Then, the phone also has a matte finish around the sides. Now, although Nothing hasn’t specified the type of material used at the sides, if it’s similar to the (2a), then it could likely be aluminum.
Overall, it does feel comfortable in the hands, as the Nothing Phone (2a) does, thanks to the pillow curve designs at the back of each of the sides. Finally, the phone has an IP54 resistance rating, which means that it can handle light water splashes.
Display
Now, to keep it simple, the display over here is the exact same one as you see on the Nothing Phone (2a). So if you’ve seen that one, you’ll be getting exactly what you see over here.
But just to recap, this phone comes with a 6.7″ AMOLED display with a resolution of 1084 x 2412 and supports HDR 10+ and 10-bit colors.
It also features Corning Gorilla Glass 5, which, as my fellow tech YouTuber JerryRigEverything or Zack would say, “scratches at level 6 with deeper grooves at level 7”.
There’s also a 120Hz refresh rate and a maximum touch sample rate of 240Hz, making scrolling super smooth. By default, it is set to 60Hz, but you can switch it up to “High” or the 120Hz in the display settings, or you can choose the “Dynamic” mode, which helps to automatically adjust and conserve battery life, more on my battery life test later.
While all of this sounds great on paper, I found that it did not live up to its claims in certain areas, and there are also some display issues that can be really frustrating, I will go into that in a minute.
I’ve seen some online suggesting that the display is brighter than the original (2a), which was interesting because both phones have the same exact display with the same 1,300 nits of peak brightness. Having used both, I personally don’t see any differences here.
If you love watching movies on your phone, what’s great is that this phone does come with Widevine L1 certification for Netflix. And speaking of Netflix, have you watched the new “Terminator Zero” show? Syed from our team says that it’s very good, but let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
So yes, overall the colors are nicely saturated and punchy, and the blacks are deep and rich. Combined with the great stereo speakers, it makes for an excellent device for watching videos.
It also has an under-display fingerprint sensor, and while it may not be the ultrasonic type like on flagship phones, this optical one was still pretty fast and accurate. You can even register up to five fingerprints here.
Sound
Usually, I wouldn’t have a dedicated topic on sound in my smartphone reviews, but as mentioned earlier, the phone has a seriously loud set of stereo speakers. When watching videos and movies especially, the sound output was so impressive that it was easy for me to make out the dialogue and also pinpoint even subtle noises in a video or during gaming.
Listening to music, however, is a slightly different story. Yes, they are loud, but because the speakers are mostly at their highest volume, the instruments can get a little drowned out.
But yes, considering the phone is within this price range, the speakers are really good, even compared to some flagship smartphones as well.
Camera
As for the phone’s camera setup, once again, it is the same as the (2a), where it has a dual camera setup with a 50MP main sensor and a second 50MP ultrawide lens. However, Nothing has included a bigger selfie camera, which is 50MP, compared to the previous 32MP. What’s extra lovely is the fact that it can shoot up to 4K 30FPS for the front camera, instead of just 1080p on the Nothing Phone (2a).
Ultrawide
The ultrawide lens by itself looks very nice. It has an extra tint of saturation, and the edges were not distorted, so overall, it looks great.
Main & Zoom
As for the main lens by itself, once again, it looks great, but there is quite a difference in saturation if you compare the ultrawide image at the same scene to the main lens.
Other than that, the quality was great. The 50mm zoom photo was also really nice, and you can go up to 10x zoom, which I wouldn’t recommend as there is a significant loss of quality.
Portrait Mode
Portrait mode for humans was great for edge detection and the subject-to-background blur, where there is a 2x mode in the camera app in portrait mode as well.
It also did decently on subjects and pets, especially for a phone that does not have a dedicated telephoto lens.
Selfie
The selfie photos were indeed a huge improvement, with amazing quality and dynamic range in regular selfie mode. The portrait selfie photos were truly amazing as well.
Night Photography
The nighttime ultrawide photos were nice too, performing well in the darker areas of the images and balancing the highlights well.
The skies on the main lens were brighter than how they were in real life, but it seems that the image processing played a huge role here. Overall, it was great up to 2x zoom, but definitely not great at 10x zoom.
Nighttime portrait photos of humans performed as great as the daytime shots, which was really nice to know. I did turn on the glyph lights during this particular mode, and there was no difference at all.
So I went to an area with lesser light and took a photo of myself using the rear cameras like this, and yes, there is a difference because the glyph light provided extra light, hence the pictures were less blurry, as seen in this comparison photo side by side when zoomed into my face. So yes, this does come in handy if you really need that extra bit of light.
Video
[Check out all the sample video footage, including a vlog test, in my YouTube video]
As for the video, I was really blown away by the video quality on the phone. The ultrawide lens, the main lens, and even up to 2x zoom looked nice.
Stabilization-wise, the ultrawide lens looked like flagship-quality stabilization, but the stabilization on the main lens was just decent. The 2x zoom video looked stable through the viewfinder or when looking at it through the phone, but it was quite a weird situation.
Then, of course, the real hero for the video was the front camera, as it can record up to 4K 30FPS. And yes, the quality was amazing and the stabilization was definitely one of the best – very flagship level indeed.
At night, the ultrawide rear lens looked as great as the images, but of course, the main lens performed really well too, and the 2x video was decent as well. Image stabilization-wise, there were some jitters in the ultrawide lens, but just a bit less on the main lens.
When it comes to video stabilization once again, through the phone, the 2x zoom video looked very nice and stable when I was looking at it through the phone, but as mentioned, in post, it had a peculiar way of trying to make the overall video stabilized.
Gaming
Now, let’s move on to gaming, because the chipset on this phone has seen a bit of an upgrade. It comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 7350 Pro, which is indeed more powerful than the Dimensity 7200 Pro on the Nothing Phone (2a).
Nothing claims that this phone is about 10% more powerful than the previous model, and it’s designed with gamers and multitaskers in mind.
But that all aside, with all the things mentioned, I have to say that in terms of the gaming performance, the phone pretty much lives up to those claims, as it handled everything I threw at it quite well. I tested out games like Call of Duty Mobile and Pokémon Go, and both ran smoothly. Now sure, these are not the most demanding games, but the phone managed to handle them almost flawlessly at 120Hz with mid to high-level graphic settings.
Heat also wasn’t an issue either; even without an air-conditioned room, the phone stayed cool throughout. The phone even ran Genshin Impact at medium settings with smooth frame rates. After about 18 minutes of gameplay, it did get a little warm, but nothing concerningly hot.
Now, while the gaming performance was quite solid, I have to admit that I wasn’t having the most enjoyable experience. In fact, I have to say that it was really frustrating.
Remember when I mentioned the issues with the display earlier? Well, I encountered significant problems with the display responsiveness that affected my gaming experience, and these issues led to mispresses and unregistered swipes, which threw off my overall gameplay. Hopefully, Nothing can address this with a software update or something.
What’s interesting is that these particular mispresses were a similar case when I was reviewing the OPPO Reno12 Pro a few months back, which makes me wonder whether or not these two phones are sourcing the same screens from the same supplier.
Battery
The battery on this phone is still the same at 5,000 mAh, but the charging speed has seen an upgrade, where it now supports up to 50W fast charging, up from 45W on the Nothing Phone (2a). It also has 5W of reverse wired charging and no wireless charging over here since it has a plastic back.
Nothing claims that the phone can last up to 2 days on a single full charge, and I, of course, did not quite reach that mark. But the battery life on this, especially the screen-on time, was really impressive.
On average, I was very pleased with the screen-on time, which got me around 6 hours and 17 minutes when I was at 10% battery. That was with the screen refresh rate forced to 120Hz, not the Dynamic option, and with the HDR display settings turned on, since I was using this more for watching videos, and movies, scrolling through social media, and gaming as well.
Overall, it was a very good battery life that I got on this Nothing Phone (2a) Plus.
Software
The software on this phone runs on the Nothing OS 2.6, and its user interface is based on Android 14. What’s good is that it promises us up to 3 major software updates, which I’m definitely thankful for, and I’m sure it will be for you too. As usual, the overall software experience for me has been great, and this is because I do appreciate the uniqueness of the Nothing OS.
However, if you’re someone who might get bored easily with the monochrome aesthetics, you might start to feel that it is a bit dull, but not for me. And of course, you can always customize it to your liking, since it is Android after all.
However, I do wish that this unique look would extend to every single icon. For example, apps like Call of Duty, Genshin Impact, and even Netflix are using their own icons instead of Nothing’s minimalist style by default.
And of course, Nothing OS offers a great range of custom widgets, from different clocks to compasses, and it’s all in line with the overall design language. I also had some fun playing around with the glyph interface settings, especially the composer feature, which lets you create your own custom 10-second ringtones.
It took me back to my old days of using Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. I had an Ericsson phone, but I don’t think it had such customization. But yes, I can create my own special ringtones with this.
I did have one minor nitpick, which is the lack of a dedicated gallery app. Currently, it defaults to Google Photos instead, and personally, I prefer to have a separate gallery app so I can choose which albums to back up on Google Photos. You know how Google is always out there to make you pay for more storage, so this doesn’t give me that option.
Speaking of backing up photos, the phone comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And of course, by now, there’s almost no such thing as microSD card support for smartphones, so 256GB is all you have, so keep that in mind.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, this Nothing Phone (2a) Plus, in my opinion, is a bit of a tricky one to recommend. On one hand, it does come with a better processor, an improved selfie camera, and faster charging as well. But on the other hand, those upgrades are relatively minor compared to what the Nothing Phone (2a) already offers.
If you’re thinking of upgrading from an older smartphone, then yes, I would say that this is a solid choice. It has a great display, some of the loudest speakers on a smartphone, and a very good software experience, especially if you’ve never used a Nothing phone before.
However, if you’re already using the Nothing Phone (2a) or another phone with similar specs, then you might want to hold off for a bit.
And while the RM1,999 or USD 460 price is okay, given that it’s mostly an incremental upgrade over the (2a), and considering the issues I mentioned earlier, like the display (and hopefully no other issues after that), a price around RM1,899 or USD 430 would have felt more reasonable.
But do check out my review of the Nothing Phone (2a) over here if you haven’t seen it.
