Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Review: An Impressive Phone With One Major Flaw

The Nothing Phone (2a) was released in March, so it’s a little surprising that Nothing decided to launch a successor to it, the Nothing (2a) Plus, so soon, just four months later, in July. This one sports a couple of meaningful updates, like an upgraded MediaTek processor, a more advanced front-facing camera, and a slight $50 bump in price. After the bump in price, it retails for $400, which puts it among budget smartphone competitors like the $500 Google Pixel 8a. 

You have to go through a few hoops to buy the phone. You can’t simply snag this phone online. Instead, you’re required to sign up for its US Beta program and patiently wait your turn. This might put some potential buyers off, and honestly, it’s worth it for the most part, though its spotty fingerprint scanner might give you pause. 

Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Review: Design

Finally, some innovation.

The (2a) Plus has a polarizing design. You’ll either love it or hate it. I’m in the first category. Tired of the monotony that prevails in all of today’s smartphone designs, I miss the 2000s cellphone era when phones had personality and character. 

The phone case features a transparent enclosure that proudly showcases all of the phone’s innards. There are visible screws, ribbon cables, and an NFC coil. A pair of horizontal lenses reside in the upper half of the rear, which looks adorably like a pig’s snout. Three glyph lights surround the lenses, arguably this phone’s most exciting design element.

Just like I was happy about Motorola playing around with bright, funky colors on the Moto Razr+, I’m glad Nothing took a different approach with its flagship phone, too. What I like most about the design and overall build of the (2A) Plus is that it doesn’t look like a $400 phone. It features a robust body and excellent build quality, and you can’t tell what it’s worth just by looking at it. The controls–a power button on the right and a pair of volume buttons on the left feel nice and clicky, too. 

It’s also pretty light—at 190g, the Pixel 8a just barely beats it out at 188g. On the other hand, its IP rating has a lot of room for improvement. It’s currently rated at IP54, which is considerably lower than the IP67 on the Pixel 8a, making Google’s phone a bit better against the elements. 

Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Review: Glyph Interface

More pretty than functional.

The glyph interface on the Nothing (2a) Plus consists of three glyph lights that light up based on the activity you’ve set them to. You can enable Call Recognition and assign separate glyph patterns to your top few contacts so you don’t have to check your phone to see who’s calling manually. An Essential Notifications option sets persistent glyph patterns for your notifications so you don’t miss them. 

As the name suggests, activating the Music Visualization feature allows the glyph lights to sync with your music. You can also use the light strips as progression bars for various apps. For example, enabling the Volume Indicator makes the bar fill up when the volume is raised, and vice versa. Glyph Progress also lets you link to apps such as Uber and Zomato to check the status of your order quickly. The bar fills up as your order gets closer. 

The lights are syncing to my music playing on YouTube. GIF: Artem Golub / Gizmodo

The (2a) Plus would have been a perfectly functional phone without the glyph interface, but these bells and whistles are what make it special. In an era when I long for interesting and unique smartphone concepts, I really enjoyed my time with the glyph lights. I’ll admit that they’re not big on functionality and utility, but they offer those extra frills that enhance your overall experience.   

Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Review: Navigation

Terrible fingerprint reader.

The fingerprint reader on the (2a) Plus’ has something against my right thumb; it completely failed to read it. I tried deleting it and adding a new one, but the problem persisted. I’d give it a shot every time I unlocked the phone during my review period, but after five failed attempts every single time, it would take me to the pin input. After hundreds of failed tries, I gave up on it completely and switched to the pin for unlocking or verifying my identity. My left thumb, on the other hand, worked fine. I had high hopes for its software update, but that didn’t help remedy the faulty scanner either. This is a massive issue, considering inputting a four-digit pin takes much longer than briefly holding your thumb against a surface and because scanning with your right-hand feels easier and more intuitive for the majority. We reached out to Nothing for a comment or a fix but haven’t heard from them yet.

I instantly became comfortable with the navigation on this phone because it was similar to iOS. You swipe up to access the homepage, swipe right from the left side of the screen to go back, and do a hard swipe up followed by a right swipe to look at the apps running in the background. If anything, the swipes on the (2a) Plus were better because of haptic feedback. Switching to classic Android 3-button navigation is also possible for long-time Android users. 

The power button is customizable; with up to a few actions, it can trigger with a double click. I set mine to load up the camera app. Unlike on the Moto Razr+, the multitasking feature is much simpler on Nothing’s phone. Instead of swiping your finger across the screen twice, which often leads to mis-taps, you hold and drag your window to the top of the screen. It automatically appears in a little box and leaves you the rest of the display to carry out other tasks. 

The screenshotting gesture is not as intuitively designed. It requires you to place three fingers on the upper half of your screen, hold them for a second, and swipe them down simultaneously. Not only is this unnecessarily complicated, but it also involves chances of error and accidental taps. 

Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Review: Performance

Long-lasting battery life.

The 6.7-inch AMOLED display on the (2a) Plus delivers rich, vibrant, and well-saturated colors. It features sufficient crispness owing to the 2,412 x 1,084 screen resolution, and the 1,300-nit brightness makes sure the phone is usable in bright lighting. I spent a good chunk of my review period next to the huge, bright window in my bedroom on 20% brightness. For reviewing the camera, I stopped at Madison Square Garden on the way to my office and had no issues looking at the viewfinder under bright sunlight. 

Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo

The refresh rate offers you anywhere between 30Hz and 120Hz. In Settings, you can pick from Dynamic, High, and Standard refresh rate options. I set mine to Dynamic for most of the review period. Just keep in mind that High would drain your battery faster than usual, and Standard might come in the way of smooth animations. 

The (2a) Plus ships with 12GB RAM and 256GB ROM. It runs on Android 14 and the MediaTek 7350 Pro processor and maxes out at 3GHz. While the 12GB RAM was enough to carry out my multi-tasking needs smoothly, it was great to see that the RAM is expandable up to an extra 8GB. I found the base processor pretty efficient. Throughout my reviewing period, I didn’t experience any hiccups or lag even when cycling between apps.

The Geekbench 6.0 scores were 1198 for single-core and 2624 for multi-core, which isn’t very close to the 1690 for single-core and 4025 for multi-core that the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE offers for an extra hundred bucks. But with a MediaTek chip powering the (2a) Plus, it’s normal to expect modest Geekbench results. As long as you’re using this phone for everyday productivity and entertainment, you’re not going to complain.

I’m very impressed by the huge 5000mAh battery on the (2a) Plus. Most new smartphones usually offer around 4000mAh or less. I put on a 3-hour-long YouTube video at 480p with 20% brightness and 100% charge, and by the end of the video, the phone was at 71%. If you do the math, that’s roughly 10 hours. If you turn the brightness down, which I found myself doing when using the (2a) Plus in indoor settings or at night, it can easily last 11 hours or a little more.

Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Review: Camera

Excellent night photography.

I was thoroughly impressed with the Madison Square Garden photo shoot that I did on the (2a) Plus’s pair of 50MP cameras. The colors didn’t skew grey or excessively bright; they contained sufficient saturation. The pictures I took on my night stroll turned out great. I shot at 50MP (there is also a 12MP option to shoot with) and with the night mode enabled. The cameras did an excellent job of eradicating all noise. I had to zoom in on my night shots quite a bit to get to a level where the image started pixelating, and the text became illegible. There was some lens glare on one of the shots, but not enough to make the picture unusable.

Madison Square Park on the Nothing (2a) Plus. Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo

My night stroll. There’s a slight lens glare in the shot on the right. Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo

I was excited to test the Motion Photo mode on the (2a) Plus because I wrongly presumed it was for motion shots. The misleading feature is for live photos instead, similar to what you’ve seen on iOS.

The camera app lets you choose between a Natural and Vivid Mode, except there’s barely any difference. I like that the Vivid Mode hasn’t been overdone with unrealistic saturation or vibrance, but the difference could have been at least a little more noticeable. Our photography team member, Artem, thought the clouds looked a little more blue in Vivid Mode, but that’s it.

Natural Mode on the left vs. Vivid Mode on the right. Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo

The only frustrating feature of the (2a) Plus camera is that it doesn’t let you zoom in when you’re taking pictures at 50MP. You have to downgrade to 12MP to zoom in and out between 14mm or 0.6x and 240mm or 10x. The 50MP mode limits you to a maximum of 1x. You can’t boast a 50MP camera on your phone and then not let us zoom in unless we’re down to 12MP.

Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Verdict

The Nothing (2a) Plus over-performs in multiple departments but falls short overall because of its glaring fingerprint scanner issue. It sports a sufficiently large 12GB RAM but offers additional RAM as an option. Instead of the standard around 4000mAh battery, it features a 5000mAh one. What could have been a simple rear design—which would still have been very cool with the transparent housing and the visible screws and ribbons—features a glyph interface that lights up. Along with standard Android navigation, it provides the option to alternate to iOS gestures catering to the muscle memory of iPhone users.

The camera results are excellent in low lighting, which a lot of smartphones fail to deliver. The glyph lights may seem like a gimmick, but you can always disable them. Having said this, the problematic fingerprint reader is too big of a sin to forgive. It’s a shame it makes this otherwise great phone look bad. If you’re sure you’ll never use anything other than your left thumb or a pin, it’s safe to ignore it. But that’s too specific of a use case to recommend this device.