Nothing is a young brand founded in London by former OnePlus employees. Initially launched with inexpensive headphones, the ear (1) a competitive smartphone, the Phone (1), the brand then ventured into premium lands with the Nothing Phone (2).
Premium is good for making a name for yourself, but not for making a living. So Nothing changes its tune and releases the Nothing Phone (2a). A bit like a Pixel 7a compared to Pixels, its objective is more or less to offer the Nothing experience at a lower price. Let’s see if the contract is fulfilled.
Price and availability Nothing Phone (2a)
The Nothing Phone (2a) is sold at a price of 349 euros in its 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage version and 399 euros for the 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage version. It exists in two colors: black and white.
Pre-orders are open from March 6 and the phone will be available in stores from March 12.
Note that a launch event will take place on March 8 at Station F in Paris in partnership with the operator Free where around a hundred copies will be sold in advance. Of the goodies will be distributed on this occasion.
Design: not a cheap Nothing Phone
Nothing has always wanted to stand out through the design of its devices. Particularly on its smartphones, two elements contrast with the rest of the production: the play on transparency and the lights on the back of the device. The whole challenge of the Nothing Phone (2a) is to retain this DNA by offering a cheaper smartphone, count 350 euros for the Phone (2a), compared to 679 euros for the Phone (2).
The affair is rather successful. First for transparency, Nothing swaps glass for plastic. Incidentally, the back abandons the rounded appearance of its predecessor for something flatter. The elements visible under the plastic are fewer: we can still see the cable which connects the motherboard at the top of the smartphone and the lower part of the phone, passing over the battery, which contains, among other things, the speaker bottom and the USB controller.
Of course, this tablecloth has been stylized to give it a nice curve to highlight the smartphone. Nothing explained to us that it was inspired by the New York subway map for this element.
A real dividing line separates the upper part of the phone from the rest. At the top, you will find the photo block, which for the occasion has been placed in a central position. Exit the comparisons with the iPhone which irritated internally, hello the comparisons with Wall-E, the robot from the Pixar film. Indeed, if usually a central photo block places the two modules one on top of the other, Nothing has decided to arrange them horizontally. Add a circle around these two and it’s impossible not to see a head and two eyes.
For information, under the circle is the NFC chip. Nothing claims that materializing it should help users locate it and therefore use it on a daily basis.
Around this circle we find three LED strips which partly make up the aesthetic of Nothing smartphones. These have 26 addressable zones, so it is less than the 33 of the Phone (2), but more than the 12 of the Phone (1). In our eyes, the fact of having retained the Glyph interface is a good point, especially since they retain most of the functionalities of the Nothing Phone (2). We will detail this further in the software section just below.
Glyph and Nothing OS 2.5: life widgets are available to you
The Nothing Phone (2a) ships with Nothing OS 2.5 (Android 14) and will benefit from 3 years of major updates (up to Android 17) and four years of security patches. A completely respectable average in this price range.
Nothing has a very special history with their interface. From their first smartphone, the young brand wanted to stand out by offering its own interpretation of Android: Nothing OS was born. This first version, although interesting, seemed imperfect and relatively buggy. There is a clear reason for this: at the time, Nothing outsourced the development of its overlay.
Since Nothing OS 2.0, the interface has been completely rebuilt by an internal team, including many former OnePlus employees. This is not insignificant: OxygenOS, the OnePlus interface, has often been cited as a reference in the industry for those looking for a simple, light and fluid interface. This aligns with Nothing’s ambitions for Nothing OS 2.5.
Three good reasons to be interested in Nothing’s work on the interface
Three elements clearly distinguish this interface from others. Let’s review them.
One, the one that immediately jumps out at you, is the monochrome and pointillism aesthetic. It must be said, this is frankly successful and immediately allows you to immerse yourself in a world different from its competitors. Furthermore, this is a small feat, since Nothing had to negotiate with Google to be able to modify its Monet algorithm so that it no longer draws on the colors of the wallpaper to apply them to the icons, but let them go monochrome.
The second strength of Nothing OS lies in its very Widget-oriented approach. As a reminder, these are interactive interface elements placed on the home page which allow you to interact with an application without opening the latter, or which can serve as somewhat stylized shortcuts to an app. By playing a little with the different Widgets, coupled with monochrome, it is possible to obtain a home page that is both very effective and minimalist. We can thus move away from the diptych “either I use the application drawer, or I have dozens of application pages” to open a third way with a home page where there is everything without this one is too busy.
The third element that distinguishes Nothing OS from the rest of the market is obviously its management of its LEDs, the famous Glyph interface. Here you will find most of what you could do with the previous Nothing Phones. Here is a list which is intended to be as exhaustive as possible:
- Glyph timer;
- Essential notifications;
- Volume indicator;
- Glyph Composer (we haven’t been able to get it to work on our test model at the moment);
- Glyph Torch;
- Glyph progression (on Google Calendar, Uber and Zomato);
- Return to glyph;
- Bedtime;
- Music visualization;
- Camera countdown.
Battery life: excellent, but not very fast on charge
Although we did not have time to fully test this smartphone before the publication of this guide, it has already started its journey within the 01Lab. We already have a first result on autonomy which we share with you here.
Autonomy was once the prerogative of inexpensive smartphones, but this dynamic has been completely reversed since high-end chips better manage their heating, first with the iPhone 13 Pro then the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on the other hand. Android. However, this remains an essential criterion for a smartphone and the competition could not be tougher.
In this context, the Nothing Phone (2a) manages to do well. Here are our results:
Battery capacity Versatile autonomy Loading time
In terms of autonomy, whether compared to the Nothing Phone (2) or to smartphones sold under 500 euros and therefore not far from its price range, the Nothing Phone (2a) dominates the discipline by offering more of one day of use on our protocol. As a reminder, this simulates the continuous use of a smartphone with all traditional uses: video, music, web search, gaming, etc.
On the charging side, the Nothing Phone (2a) fares a little less well despite its 45W power delivery support. Please note that the charger is not supplied with the phone. Regardless, it still takes more than two hours to go from 0 to 100%.
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