The Nothing Phone 2 is a premium mid-range smartphone that was released just recently by the former head of OnePlus, Carl Pei. It has a unique design with a transparent back and a series of LED lights that light up in different patterns to indicate notifications, charging status, and more. I have been daily driving this phone for three weeks, updated the phone to the latest firmware, and here are my thoughts about it.
What’s In The Box?
The Nothing Phone 2 comes in an interesting package. To get to the phone, you have to tear open the box. The white square box opens up like a book and inside, you can find the phone, a new transparent USB-C cable, a transparent SIM-removal tool, and a safety and warranty information.
Design and Build
Thanks to the LEDs on the back, the Nothing Phone 2 has a unique design that is sure to turn heads when compared to the never ending sea of Android smartphones out in the market.
The back of the phone is made of transparent Gorilla Glass (Nothing didn’t say which version), which allows you to see the phone’s internals. There is also a series of LED lights that Nothing called “Glyph Interface”, that light up in different patterns to indicate notifications, charging status, and more. But, the LEDs are all in white, except for a tiny red one that indicates you are recording video.
The phone is available in two colours: White and Dark Grey, which is the one I have here. The colour made the LEDs stand out even more, as the contrast between the dark colour and the LEDs seemed to make them shine even brighter compared to the White variant. However, this colour also made the fingerprints more noticeable.
So, how practical is the Glyph Interface? I don’t use it very much, to be honest. I’m the kind of person who placed my phone down on the back and just look at the screen for any notifications. Which seems more practical and faster for me. Even though the LEDs are very fancy, in my opinion, they don’t really help all that much, except for one situation. You can use the Glyph as a torch and for taking photos and videos while you are in low-light situations.
Other than that, the phone feels solid and well-built, and the top and sides of the back now smoothly curve into the frame, making it comfortable to grip. The phone only has an IP54 rating, so it has limited protection against dust and water. It would be better if its higher, but I imagine that would increase the cost of the phone.
Display
The Nothing Phone 2 has a 6.7-inch LTPO OLED display with a 1-120Hz refresh rate. The display is sharp and vibrant, and it offers excellent viewing angles. Nothing claims the phone has a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. While I have no way of verifying that, but I can say that I have no issues reading or using the phone even under intense sunlight.
The 120Hz refresh rate makes the display feel very smooth, and it’s especially noticeable when scrolling through apps, webpages or playing games.
The phone offers two display colour modes: Alive and Standard. The Alive mode makes the colours become more saturated and pop, while the Standard mode is more colour accurate, I presume, since I don’t have a colour-accuracy measurement tool.
Performance
The Nothing Phone 2 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, which is one of the most powerful processors on the market. While it’s not the latest and greatest, the phone is very fast and responsive, and it can handle even the most demanding tasks.
In my daily usage, apps open quickly and smoothly, and even demanding games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile run without any hiccups. The phone also handles multitasking well, I can switch between different apps without any lag. Although, occasionally the phone will warm-up even when I’m not putting heavy load on it.
The phone also has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is plenty of memory for most users. If you want a phone with expandable storage, this not the right phone for you. If you want more storage, you have to pay for the pricier 512GB variant.
Audio
The Nothing Phone 2 features a hybrid stereo speaker setup, where the front-facing earpiece serves as one speaker, and there’s another, louder and bass-enhanced speaker located near the USB port.
The audio quality is satisfactory, with noticeable bass, clear vocals, and well-defined high notes. However, I wish the phone could have produce a slightly richer sound. Overall, the audio performance is decent, but nothing to shout about.
Also, this is yet another smartphone that has abandon the forever useful 3.5mm headphone jack, so you have to stick to wireless earbuds or get a USB-C dongle.
Camera
The Nothing Phone 2 has a dual-camera system on the back, consisting of a 50MP Sony IMX890 main sensor, a 50MP ultrawide sensor. There’s also a 32MP front-facing sensor for selfies.
The main sensor takes great photos in daylight conditions. The photos have good colour rendition, sharp, good dynamic range, and capture details nicely.
The ultrawide sensor performs similarly to the main camera, and it’s especially useful for taking landscape photos. But, the sharpness isn’t as good, there’s a bit of smearing if you look closely.
The 32MP selfies turn out to be quite okay. There is no noise, and the images exhibit good contrast with a wide dynamic range. The colours are consistently lively and mostly accurate, similar to the performance of the other cameras. However, the level of detail and overall sharpness in the selfies is not as impressive.
In low-light condition, the cameras struggle a bit. The photos are slightly more noisier, isn’t as sharp and as good compared to photos taken during daylight. But, it’s still acceptable.
Overall, the Nothing Phone 2 has a decent camera setup. Too bad there’s no telephoto sensor, maybe they will include that in the Phone 3. If you’re not a hardcore photographer, the Phone 2’s camera should more than enough to meet your needs.
Battery
The Nothing Phone 2 has a 4,700mAh battery, and it can easily last a full day on a single charge, even with heavy use. Nothing claims it takes 55 minutes to charge the phone from 0 to 100% using compatible 45W wired charger. Mine took around an hour using OnePlus 150W fast charger (because it doesn’t come with one).
In addition, the Phone also offers support for 15W wireless charging, but I didn’t get to try that due to lack of a wireless charger. It also has the capability to wirelessly reverse charge other devices placed on its back, but it’s limited to 5W. You are better off not using that, as it’s too slow, unless you are very desperate.
You can also monitor the charging progress by looking at the LEDs on the back. Fancy? Yes. Useful? Not really.
Software
The Nothing Phone 2 runs on Nothing OS 2.0, which is a custom version of Android 13. Nothing OS is a very clean, minimalistic, simple Android skin, and it’s free of bloatware. The phone also has a number of unique features, such as the Glyph Interface.
Nothing OS 2.0 comes with several new features. There are now monochromatic icons, which supposedly help minimise distraction compared to colourful icons. The next one is lock screen widgets. You can now add up to eight widgets and two lock screen shortcuts to the lock screen.
Besides that, Nothing has added the ability to adjust the app grid on your home screen with the option of having either four or five columns. Additionally, you can display App Labels for the apps on your home screen and have the option to add Google Search to the dock.
Also, you can now protect individual apps from prying fingers. This feature is very useful for locking the gallery app, banking app, Touch ‘n Go eWallet app, and other apps that you don’t want others to access without permission. Nothing has also added a feature that allows you to clone apps.
Lastly, they have released a Glyph Composer app that allows you to craft your own ringtones and Glyph. It’s kind of addictive, to be honest.
So, what are the downsides? For one, the haptic feels weak, and there’s no way to adjust vibration. Two, though Nothing has added several new features to the OS, it still feels rather limited compared to other brands. Hopefully, they will keep improving and add in more features in the future.
Is It Worth Your Money?
The Nothing Phone 2 is a good phone that offers a unique design, excellent performance, and a good camera system. But the phone is priced at RM2,999 (12GB/256GB) and RM3,499 (12GB/512GB), making it hard to compete with other flagship phones out there.
For example, the Samsung Galaxy S23 256GB version can be had for around RM2,900 and has a better chipset (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2), better software support, an IP68 rating, USB Type-C 3.2, and more.
Or the OnePlus 11 256GB version, which can be had for around RM3,200 online (after discount), is also using 8 Gen 2, has a bigger battery with wired 100W fast-charging, a very capable triple-camera setup, and an IP64 rating.
Personally, the Nothing Phone 2 is a tough sell right now. If the company decides to drop the price by a few hundred Ringgit in the future, then maybe it’s worth considering.
