The first Nothing Phone impressed us with its solid all round performance, its low price and of course its flashing lights. But it never officially made it to the US aside from an unusual beta program. This second-generation phone is here to change that.
When it goes on sale in the US and the wider world from July 16, the Nothing Phone 2 will have a range of upgrades from the processor to the design. And at only $599 (£579), it’s still a relatively affordable option. Although it’s facing some increasingly stiff competition, in particular from Google. The Pixel 7A’s dual rear camera is the best you can get for the money, and its pure Android 13 software is slick and easy to use.
While we expect the Nothing Phone 2’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor to deliver better performance than the Pixel 7A’s Tensor G2 chip, the Nothing Phone will need to offer more than just raw power to justify the additional cost over the Pixel’s $449 price tag.
A familiar, flashy design
Visually, there’s not been a big departure from the first generation. The back is still transparent, letting you see a little inside the phone, including the exposed screwheads and various connecting segments. The glass is gently curved at the edges now to give it a slightly more premium feel when you hold it.
But it’s the flashing lights — or glyph, as Nothing calls it — that’s the big family resemblance here. Those LEDs light up the back of the phone and can alert you to incoming notifications, or for alarms, or can be used to show battery charge status or simply as a basic fill light when you’re recording video.
Nothing Phone 2 is Flashier than Ever
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The Phone 2 provides a bit more customization over the glyph this time round, allowing you to create custom light patterns for certain contacts or apps. There’s also a glyph timer that will gradually tick down as it reaches zero, but it can also give a convenient visual cue of other time-related things such as when your Uber is going to arrive, so you can put it down and focus on sorting out your hair while keeping an eye on its progress. Nothing says it’ll be working with other app developers to integrate this functionality.
The glyph lights certainly made the original phone stand out against the competition and while they are arguably something of a gimmick, it’s nice to see a bit of fun and flair in phones. Especially in mid-range phones like this where interesting designs tend to take more of a back seat in order to keep those prices down.
But the lights aren’t the only physical things to care about; the aluminum frame is recycled, there’s a fingerprint scanner invisibly hidden beneath the display, and it’s IP54 rated to help keep it safe when you have to take calls in the rain. The 6.7-inch display is big and bright enough to do justice to vibrant games or for watching YouTube videos on the move, and its adaptive refresh rate lets it drop down to only 1Hz to help preserve battery life or ramp up to 120Hz for smoother gaming.
Older chip with big potential
Powering the Nothing Phone 2 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor backed up by either 8GB or 12GB of RAM. That’s a slightly older generation processor, but it’s still a potent chip that you can fully expect to handle most things you’d ever want to throw at it, from video streaming to photo editing or gaming. Nothing says it used an older chip as it wanted something tried and tested that would offer a more stable platform at a more reasonable price, and I think that’s probably a fair trade-off. Bear in mind that the 8 Plus Gen 1 chip is in both the OnePlus 10T and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 — two absolute powerhouse flagships launched only last year, so don’t worry about the Nothing Phone 2 being able to handle any of your daily essentials.
The Phone 2 runs Android 13 at its core, but Nothing has done a lot to customize the interface. It’s a very monochrome experience, with a heavy reliance on dot-matrix style texts and icons. There are a variety of widgets that use these designs, and even the app icons are black and white to keep with that minimal monochrome aesthetic. That could make it quite difficult to find the apps you want if you rely on those color cues, but you can turn this off in the settings if you want.
A feature that I can see being quite handy is creating folders of apps on your homescreen and hiding them behind an icon — I’m imagining filling this folder with my work-specific apps like Outlook, Zoom and Slack and then covering them up with the briefcase symbol so I don’t have to look at them on my weekend. Lovely stuff.
It supports 45-watt fast charging, which Nothing says will take it from empty to full in 55 minutes. That’s decent enough, although it’s a way behind the 80- or 100-watt charging we’ve seen on other phones outside the US. At this price, though, I can’t argue too much. It has 15-watt wireless charging too, as well as reverse wireless charging if you want to use your phone’s battery to power up your headphones or, another phone entirely.
Is the Nothing Phone 2 a good phone to buy?
If you’re after a flashy phone that stands out from the crowd, then Nothing’s latest is in a league of its own. Those lights do make a statement, and while I can’t say I have any great desire to use them in everyday life, you may well find them useful. Beyond that, the phone does have a lot going for it, with its big screen, its potent processor and its cool-looking software.
Article source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/the-nothing-phone-2-and-its-flashy-lights-debut-at-599/#ftag=CADe34d7bf