The Nothing Phone 2A Plus Review: A Unique Design and Solid Performance

Shooting with the camera is that if you do record at 4K, you can't change between the lenses so whichever one you start recording at you are stuck at. Whereas you can switch between the lenses when shooting at TDP also, I can pause it, yes I can, but I can't rotate the camera between the front and rear though, um, but yeah just a thought, my only criticism would be that there aren't a ton of modes and options to play with although there is an expert mode if you want to tinker and also of course, the smallish sensors can struggle in lower light now if you've used a Nothing Phone before this will all feel very familiar to you.

The phone is actually running Nothing OS 2.6 on top of Android 14 and it's one of my favorite UIs, one of my favorite software on an Android phone, it feels as fast as a Pixel and there's no bloatware or ads, we get some really useful widget options, tons of customization whether you want a colorful traditional look to your home screen or a more monochrome and minimalist aesthetic, it's just fun to play around with and it feels like Nothing keeps adding these cool experimental features that then get baked into the next version of Android.

Also, the AI-generated wallpapers are actually really good unlike a lot of rivals they've also introduced ChatGPT so you can search with text your voice or images right from the home screen. And even though we have a mid-level chip inside Everything feels fast and responsive and certainly that 120Hz refresh rate helps compare to say the Pixel 8A which is 90Hz.

However, there are a few compromises with the 2A Plus first one in terms of software, we only get three years of support, three years of full OS updates which is kind of the minimum going forward at the moment Samsung offers seven years I think pixel's on six years so it would be good to see Nothing extend that support a little bit still no wireless charging I appreciate that does cost more and they probably have to redesign the phone a little bit but I do use wireless charges a fair bit and that is a bit of a pain point for me.

There's also no eSIM support with the 2A Plus which is a bit frustrating especially as I travel quite a bit and also it's just not that significantly different from the 2A that we've had for a couple of months now, a slight refresh on the design, a slightly faster chip, a slightly better selfie camera, 5-watt faster wire charging in a couple of tweaks that's about it versus the regular 2A and it is a bit more expensive, the 2A starts at £329 or for the same spec, 12+256GB it is £50 more than the 2A.

If you're looking to spend the same amount on a phone, I would probably save £1 and go with the regular 2A. And if you do fancy going for the 2A Plus at that £400 price point, then you only get 20 off the Pixel 8A and also the Galaxy A55 is in the similar ballpark so it does have some stiff competition at that price point.

Overall though, I really like the new Nothing Phone 2A Plus it's got such a unique design, solid all-round performance, camera battery lovely software, and it's just a fun and innovative company to invest in. So, more options are great and it is a terrific phone at this price point if you buy one, you will not be disappointed.

I left a link below but personally I probably just stick with the regular 2A especially now that you can find some discounts on it but what do you make of the Nothing Phone 2A Plus? Would you consider buying it and for a similar price would you go for this or the Pixel 8A? Let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed the video, a cheeky like And subscribe would be fantastic and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is where it all started the nothing phone one and then we moved on to this guy let's get the glyphs going we've got the nothing phone 2 here but then we had the nothing phone 2A a slightly cheaper more affordable version you can see theyve limited to the glyphs just the top half here really really like the 2A and then just a few weeks ago we had this special edition 2A which is very R2-D2 I actually love this design but now let me introduce you to the nothing 2A plus which despite the plus name is actually the exact same size as the 2A uh as you can see here initially I thought the plus would be bigger it's not so what exactly is the 2A plus what makes a stand out and why would you want to consider buying one given it's actually a little bit more expensive well essentially it's a slight refinement and a slightly higher spec version of the 2A as we get a new processor a new selfie camera a slightly refreshed design with some new materials and a couple of other tweaks here and there otherwise it's exactly the same same screen same software same flashy flashy glyph lighting so let's start on the outside and we get two new colors with this very snazzy gray and also a new refined black model uh I really do like this it kind of feels like they've just taken the 2A special edition I still can't unsee R2-D2 but kind of made it more like a monochrome flavor with a hint of silver and I really love this contrast with a kind of metallic finish on the inside the review guide for this tells of fusions of Nano coating and proprietary ink formulations anthropomorphized NFC coils with a sort of eyes brain and body aesthetic marketing fluff aside it does have a lot of character like the 2A though the 2A plus here is glyph lighting is still reserved just for the top half of the phone I think that cuts down on their cost a little bit compared to the nothing phone two you can see you've got the full Back Body there with its lighting some people think it's a bit gimmicky and obviously you can only use it when the screen's face down or away from you but you know it sets apart from every other black glass rectangle on the market I quite like it and assuming you're pretty close to your subject you can also use it as a bit of a fill light but aside from the new colors and a few material tweaks everything else is the same as the 2A same size same weight it's a 6.7 in screen but it weighs just 190 G it's 8.6 mm thick Gorilla Glass 5 on the front ip54 SPL Flash and dust resistance so it is a big phone but like the iPhone the rounded corners and particularly the lighter weight actually makes it very comfortable to hold and use and the screen is still fantastic especially at this price point as I say 6.7 in 120 HZ AMOLED it's a full HD Plus resolution with brightness peing at 1300 nits in outdoor HDR use and I do also appreciate we have a 2160 HZ pwm or pulse width modulation which can help reduce ice strain particularly at lower brightnesses when you're doing Doom scrolling in bed at night but really there are two headline upgrades with the 2A plus with the first one being the chip nothing say it should be about 10% faster and that's roughly what my tests show as well and side by side with the nothing phone 2 and also the phone 2A and you can see that it is a more significant boost in the graphics department but still some way behind the regular phone 2 which uses an aging Snapdragon 8 plus g 1 and the new chip is paired with the same 8 or 12 gigs of RAM with 128 or 256 gigs of storage so the new chip gives us a nice little boost and I guess makes it just a bit more future proof but it's not a GameChanger by any stretch still though it performed well in the games I threw at it Diablo Immortal ran smoothly at medium settings even during some pretty heated combat and you can also toggle on performance mode in the game menu if you don't care about battery life and just want a few extra frames speaking of battery though inside here they've squeezed in a 5,000 mamp cell now that is the same as the regular 2A but I've noticed a couple of small changes versus that I actually ran an overnight 12-hour YouTube test at 50% brightness that's the only way people watch my videos if I just put on a tech chat playlist run it through the night uh but I noticed after 12 hours this still had two percentage points more 31 remaining versus 29 so there was a slight boost there although on the flip side during the 3D Mark extreme Wildlife test because we do have a slightly higher powered chip this actually used two percentage points more battery overall probably evens out to be the same what is different though is the charging we now have 50 W wied charging uh with the 2A Plus versus 45 W on the 2A again not a big difference so about 10% faster charging and a full uh 0 to 100 will take about an hour still though unfortunately no wireless charging which is disappointing let's talk about this camera won't take too long because it's exactly the same as the regular 2A the only difference is the front selfie camera which we'll test in a second but I'm shooting this at 4K 30 still no option for 4K 60 unfortunately but maybe for the price we can forgive it yeah this is my little Hometown on a beautiful day and switching to the front camera the first thing I noticed is that I can now shoot in 4k with the front selfie camera on the 2A plus uh still limited to 30 FPS but the regular 2A tops out at 1080p so high resolution there I'm holding these at Arms what do you call arms length ahead of me get the sun directly on me that's very bright today see how it coats with the uh well very shiny forehead there what do we think much different now even though on paper the main and Ultra wide lenses are exactly the same as the 2A there are some very subtle differences we've got a slightly stronger bokeh on the 2A plus here and the lighting on these petals have a more natural Shadow it's less flat looking as if the dynamic range has been improved and the there's the tiniest bit more texture to shots but it's pretty trivial however switching to the front-facing camera with its new 50 megapixel sensor up from 32 on the 2A selfies are notably sharper with more texture better dynamic range and while it can still look a little bit overprocessed in shots overall it's a decent step up but the camera as a whole I reckon does a pretty good job with its 50 megap main lens we don't have a telephoto but the high resolution of the main lens gives us a good quality 2x crop and we also have a 50 megap ultrawide so technically it's a triple 50 megap setup portrait shots are fine in good light with the main lens although the bouquet can look a bit artificial and I don't know what's happening around these leaves to be fair nothing have been pretty good about improving the camera with updates so hopefully this gets better with time the main lens does also have ois and Eis stabilization built in which handles these old couble streets pretty nicely as I walk along shooting in 4k of course I also decided to make this video on the hottest day of the year so far so please ignore my sweaty t-shirt uh one thing I have noticed though shooting with the camera uh is that if you do record at 4K you can't change between the lenses so whichever one you start recording at you are stuck at whereas you can switch between the lenses when shooting at TDP also can I pause it yes I can I can pause the video can't rotate the camera between the front and rear though um but yeah just a thought my only criticism would be that there aren't a ton of modes and options to play with although there is an expert mode if you want to Tinker and also of course the smallish sensors can struggle in lower light now if you've used a nothing phone before this will all feel very familiar to you and this is actually running nothing OS 2.6 running on top of Android 14 and it is one of my favorite uh uis one of my favorite softwares on an Android phone it feels as fast as a pixel and there's no blow wear or ads and we get some really useful widget options tons of customization whether you want a colorful traditional look to your home screen or a more monochrome and minimalist aesthetic it's just fun to play around with and it feels like nothing keeps adding these cool experimental features that then get baked into the next version of Android also the AI generated wallpapers are actually really good unlike a lot of Rivals they've also introduced chat GPT so you can search with text your voice or images right from the home screen and even though we have a mid-level chip inside Everything feels fast and responsive and certainly that 120 HZ refresh rate helps compare to say the pixel 8 a is 90 HZ so far so good then but there are a few compromises with the 2A plus first one in terms of software we only get three years of support three years of full OS updates which is kind of the minimum going forward at the moment Samsung offers seven years I think pixel's on six years so it would be good to see uh nothing extend that support a little bit still no wiress charging I appreciate that does cost more and they probably have to redesign the phone a little bit but I do use wireless charges a fair bit and that is a bit of a pain pain point for me and there's also no eim support with the 2A plus which is a bit frustrating especially as I travel quite a bit and also it's just not that significantly different from the 2A that we've had for a couple of months now a slight Refresh on the design a slightly faster chip a slightly better selfie camera 5 watt faster wire charging in a couple of tweaks that's about it versus the regular 2A and it is a bit more expensive the 2A starts at £329 or for the same spec so 12 + 256 it is34 4 9 which is 50 Quid less than the 2A plus so at that same spec 12 gigs of RAM 256 storage this is £50 more although actually right now on Amazon I've seen deals for the 2A around the 300 mark and I think given the differences between them I would probably save £1 and go with a 2A and actually if you do fancy going for the 2A Plus at that 400 price point then you only 20 off the pixel 8A and also the Galaxy a55 is in the similar ballpark so it does have some stiff competition at that 400 price point overall though I really like the new nothing phone 2A plus it's got such a unique design solid allround performance camera battery lovely software and it's just a fun and Innovative company to invest in so more options are great and it is a terrific phone at this price point if you buy one you will not be disappointed and I will leave a link below but personally I probably just stick with the regular 2A especially now that you can find some discounts on it but what do you make of the nothing phone 2A plus would you consider buying find this and for a similar price would you go for this or the pixel 8A let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed the video a cheeky like And subscribe would be fantastic and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chatthis is where it all started the nothing phone one and then we moved on to this guy let's get the glyphs going we've got the nothing phone 2 here but then we had the nothing phone 2A a slightly cheaper more affordable version you can see theyve limited to the glyphs just the top half here really really like the 2A and then just a few weeks ago we had this special edition 2A which is very R2-D2 I actually love this design but now let me introduce you to the nothing 2A plus which despite the plus name is actually the exact same size as the 2A uh as you can see here initially I thought the plus would be bigger it's not so what exactly is the 2A plus what makes a stand out and why would you want to consider buying one given it's actually a little bit more expensive well essentially it's a slight refinement and a slightly higher spec version of the 2A as we get a new processor a new selfie camera a slightly refreshed design with some new materials and a couple of other tweaks here and there otherwise it's exactly the same same screen same software same flashy flashy glyph lighting so let's start on the outside and we get two new colors with this very snazzy gray and also a new refined black model uh I really do like this it kind of feels like they've just taken the 2A special edition I still can't unsee R2-D2 but kind of made it more like a monochrome flavor with a hint of silver and I really love this contrast with a kind of metallic finish on the inside the review guide for this tells of fusions of Nano coating and proprietary ink formulations anthropomorphized NFC coils with a sort of eyes brain and body aesthetic marketing fluff aside it does have a lot of character like the 2A though the 2A plus here is glyph lighting is still reserved just for the top half of the phone I think that cuts down on their cost a little bit compared to the nothing phone two you can see you've got the full Back Body there with its lighting some people think it's a bit gimmicky and obviously you can only use it when the screen's face down or away from you but you know it sets apart from every other black glass rectangle on the market I quite like it and assuming you're pretty close to your subject you can also use it as a bit of a fill light but aside from the new colors and a few material tweaks everything else is the same as the 2A same size same weight it's a 6.7 in screen but it weighs just 190 G it's 8.6 mm thick Gorilla Glass 5 on the front ip54 SPL Flash and dust resistance so it is a big phone but like the iPhone the rounded corners and particularly the lighter weight actually makes it very comfortable to hold and use and the screen is still fantastic especially at this price point as I say 6.7 in 120 HZ AMOLED it's a full HD Plus resolution with brightness peing at 1300 nits in outdoor HDR use and I do also appreciate we have a 2160 HZ pwm or pulse width modulation which can help reduce ice strain particularly at lower brightnesses when you're doing Doom scrolling in bed at night but really there are two headline upgrades with the 2A plus with the first one being the chip nothing say it should be about 10% faster and that's roughly what my tests show as well and side by side with the nothing phone 2 and also the phone 2A and you can see that it is a more significant boost in the graphics department but still some way behind the regular phone 2 which uses an aging Snapdragon 8 plus g 1 and the new chip is paired with the same 8 or 12 gigs of RAM with 128 or 256 gigs of storage so the new chip gives us a nice little boost and I guess makes it just a bit more future proof but it's not a GameChanger by any stretch still though it performed well in the games I threw at it Diablo Immortal ran smoothly at medium settings even during some pretty heated combat and you can also toggle on performance mode in the game menu if you don't care about battery life and just want a few extra frames speaking of battery though inside here they've squeezed in a 5,000 mamp cell now that is the same as the regular 2A but I've noticed a couple of small changes versus that I actually ran an overnight 12-hour YouTube test at 50% brightness that's the only way people watch my videos if I just put on a tech chat playlist run it through the night uh but I noticed after 12 hours this still had two percentage points more 31 remaining versus 29 so there was a slight boost there although on the flip side during the 3D Mark extreme Wildlife test because we do have a slightly higher powered chip this actually used two percentage points more battery overall probably evens out to be the same what is different though is the charging we now have 50 W wied charging uh with the 2A Plus versus 45 W on the 2A again not a big difference so about 10% faster charging and a full uh 0 to 100 will take about an hour still though unfortunately no wireless charging which is disappointing let's talk about this camera won't take too long because it's exactly the same as the regular 2A the only difference is the front selfie camera which we'll test in a second but I'm shooting this at 4K 30 still no option for 4K 60 unfortunately but maybe for the price we can forgive it yeah this is my little Hometown on a beautiful day and switching to the front camera the first thing I noticed is that I can now shoot in 4k with the front selfie camera on the 2A plus uh still limited to 30 FPS but the regular 2A tops out at 1080p so high resolution there I'm holding these at Arms what do you call arms length ahead of me get the sun directly on me that's very bright today see how it coats with the uh well very shiny forehead there what do we think much different now even though on paper the main and Ultra wide lenses are exactly the same as the 2A there are some very subtle differences we've got a slightly stronger bokeh on the 2A plus here and the lighting on these petals have a more natural Shadow it's less flat looking as if the dynamic range has been improved and the there's the tiniest bit more texture to shots but it's pretty trivial however switching to the front-facing camera with its new 50 megapixel sensor up from 32 on the 2A selfies are notably sharper with more texture better dynamic range and while it can still look a little bit overprocessed in shots overall it's a decent step up but the camera as a whole I reckon does a pretty good job with its 50 megap main lens we don't have a telephoto but the high resolution of the main lens gives us a good quality 2x crop and we also have a 50 megap ultrawide so technically it's a triple 50 megap setup portrait shots are fine in good light with the main lens although the bouquet can look a bit artificial and I don't know what's happening around these leaves to be fair nothing have been pretty good about improving the camera with updates so hopefully this gets better with time the main lens does also have ois and Eis stabilization built in which handles these old couble streets pretty nicely as I walk along shooting in 4k of course I also decided to make this video on the hottest day of the year so far so please ignore my sweaty t-shirt uh one thing I have noticed though shooting with the camera uh is that if you do record at 4K you can't change between the lenses so whichever one you start recording at you are stuck at whereas you can switch between the lenses when shooting at TDP also can I pause it yes I can I can pause the video can't rotate the camera between the front and rear though um but yeah just a thought my only criticism would be that there aren't a ton of modes and options to play with although there is an expert mode if you want to Tinker and also of course the smallish sensors can struggle in lower light now if you've used a nothing phone before this will all feel very familiar to you and this is actually running nothing OS 2.6 running on top of Android 14 and it is one of my favorite uh uis one of my favorite softwares on an Android phone it feels as fast as a pixel and there's no blow wear or ads and we get some really useful widget options tons of customization whether you want a colorful traditional look to your home screen or a more monochrome and minimalist aesthetic it's just fun to play around with and it feels like nothing keeps adding these cool experimental features that then get baked into the next version of Android also the AI generated wallpapers are actually really good unlike a lot of Rivals they've also introduced chat GPT so you can search with text your voice or images right from the home screen and even though we have a mid-level chip inside Everything feels fast and responsive and certainly that 120 HZ refresh rate helps compare to say the pixel 8 a is 90 HZ so far so good then but there are a few compromises with the 2A plus first one in terms of software we only get three years of support three years of full OS updates which is kind of the minimum going forward at the moment Samsung offers seven years I think pixel's on six years so it would be good to see uh nothing extend that support a little bit still no wiress charging I appreciate that does cost more and they probably have to redesign the phone a little bit but I do use wireless charges a fair bit and that is a bit of a pain pain point for me and there's also no eim support with the 2A plus which is a bit frustrating especially as I travel quite a bit and also it's just not that significantly different from the 2A that we've had for a couple of months now a slight Refresh on the design a slightly faster chip a slightly better selfie camera 5 watt faster wire charging in a couple of tweaks that's about it versus the regular 2A and it is a bit more expensive the 2A starts at £329 or for the same spec so 12 + 256 it is34 4 9 which is 50 Quid less than the 2A plus so at that same spec 12 gigs of RAM 256 storage this is £50 more although actually right now on Amazon I've seen deals for the 2A around the 300 mark and I think given the differences between them I would probably save £1 and go with a 2A and actually if you do fancy going for the 2A Plus at that 400 price point then you only 20 off the pixel 8A and also the Galaxy a55 is in the similar ballpark so it does have some stiff competition at that 400 price point overall though I really like the new nothing phone 2A plus it's got such a unique design solid allround performance camera battery lovely software and it's just a fun and Innovative company to invest in so more options are great and it is a terrific phone at this price point if you buy one you will not be disappointed and I will leave a link below but personally I probably just stick with the regular 2A especially now that you can find some discounts on it but what do you make of the nothing phone 2A plus would you consider buying find this and for a similar price would you go for this or the pixel 8A let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed the video a cheeky like And subscribe would be fantastic and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"