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✅ 💿 Retro design inside and out
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✅ 📺 Large bright, colorful and contrasting front screen
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✅🫰 Optimal performance for everyday apps and basic games
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✅ 🤫 Silent notifications appear when you switch to Glyph
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✅ 🔋 Large capacity battery size
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✅🏷️Unbelievably low prices
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❌ 📷 Camera photos look too contrasty with off-color highlights
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❌ 😰 Power is too low for high resolution and high frame rate games
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❌ 📞 Limited purchasing options and no device support
Most budget phones are plain on the outside and inside, with enough basic features to get you through the day as a basic smart device. The $350 Nothing Phone 2a (yes, only $350) is an incredibly affordable phone that looks and functions no different from your basic budget phone. It has more personality than most Android devices, with a transparent back, central camera, and handy Glyph notification light. Nothing’s distinctive retro design is also reflected in the (optional) monochrome version for Android, filled with dot-matrix graphics and widgets.
You also get quite a lot of phone for $350, with a large 6.7-inch AMOLED screen, dual high-resolution 50MP cameras, and a massive 5,000mAh battery. The Nothing Phone 2a isn’t for everyone (quite literally), as wireless carrier support is limited and you’ll have to jump through hoops to get your hands on one. Details are explained below. However, if you’re looking for an affordable phone, there’s nothing quite like the Nothing Phone 2a, and nothing that offers nearly as many features for the incredibly low price of $350.
👾 Retro atmosphere. Everything about Nothing Phone 2a is retro. This phone is an absolute callback with a camera in the center of the back and features a transparent design reminiscent of the Game Boy Pocket from the 90s. We’d love to see the actual circuitry, battery, and other components through the Phone 2a’s plastic back, but instead we’re treated to intricate lines inspired by Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway maps. It features a panel.
A budget phone has never looked this good
📺Large screen at a low price. The Nothing Phone 2a has a large 6.7-inch display that you’d expect to find on a flagship phone rather than a budget phone. Its large display isn’t marred by unsightly bezels either. Basically, the entire front of the device is all screen, with a screen-to-body ratio of 91.65%.
🎲 Black (and white) is better. The Phone 2a’s screen isn’t just bigger, it’s a high-quality, jet-black AMOLED display. The amazing contrast you get with this AMOLED screen really works perfectly with the monochromatic design palette of Nothing’s widgets and app icons. Of course, the AMOLED display also produces nice, bright colors that pop off the screen. Whether you’re looking at web pages, photos, videos, etc., the Nothing Phone 2a’s screen is a delight.
🎩Top screen specifications. From a technical side, the Phone 2a’s display is also impressive with an adaptive 30-120Hz refresh rate and 1,300 nits peak brightness. These are both specs you’d expect from a flagship phone rather than a budget model, and they make it easy to see what’s on the display even on bright, sunny days, making it easy to see what’s on the display even on bright, sunny days Scrolling felt very smooth regardless.
🤫 Silent notifications. The back of the Nothing Phone 2a looks pretty much the same, thanks to its clever Glyph interface. Most phones use the camera’s flash to notify you of notifications, but Glyph extends this by using his three light groups with a total of 11 LEDs. That’s a third fewer LEDs than the 33 LEDs on the Nothing Phone 2, but there’s still enough lighting zones to tell when you’ve received an email or a text message. Starting with the Phone 2, Nothing added a little more practicality to its light-up lines to display timers, Uber rides, and charging progress.
There’s more to this $350 Android smartphone than its attractively low price.
🤏 Less is more. To enable these features, including those listed above, you must “switch to Glyph”. It may seem silly to flip the screen over to see less information, but I like how it quiets my phone and removes distractions. Also, the progress bar may give you all the information you need at a glance instead of reading exactly how much time is left on the timer. I wish I could always use Nothing’s Glyph interface instead of holding my phone face down.
🚧 More uses to come! The practical use of Nothing’s Glyph is still quite limited. For example, it doesn’t work with Gmail yet. Glyph works with most of Android’s other must-have apps, such as Google Calendar, and lets you create your own custom ringtones. However, other than that, Glyph only works with a few third-party apps like WhatsApp and Uber. We haven’t released any Glyph Developer Kits since early February this year, so we hope to see them working with even more apps by the end of the year.
🐻 The bare essentials. Typically, most budget and Android phones come with a lot of bloatware (like extra versions of Messenger and Calendar), but Nothing OS 2.5 comes with absolutely none. There are no preloaded apps here – all you get is the stock Google suite of apps, a smooth and fast visualization of Android 14. Seriously, Nothing’s monochromatic UI looks disgusting, and the use of a dot matrix font on the clock only adds to the phone’s retro appeal. .
⚙️ Not your average tip. Nothing Phone 2a is Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 3rd generation This is the chip found in most Android smartphones. Thanks to its 8 cores and 2.8 GHz clock speed, this phone doesn’t run any slower than any premium model I’ve previously tested. I was also able to keep many apps open at the same time with 12GB of RAM. Phone 2 uses RAM Booster technology to further expand the memory up to 20 GB of RAM, converting free storage into temporary memory, which helps you play games on this phone.
🎮 Not exactly a gaming phone. Although the Nothing Phone 2a is comfortable to operate in daily life and AI applications, it doesn’t offer the best mobile gaming experience. While playing Honkai: Star Rail, I encountered some graphical issues, including frame drops and slowdowns. Also, while playing Call of Duty Warzone and CoD Mobile, I had to lower the visual settings to medium to get the games to run at his 60fps. You can also forget about running games at 120Hz, which seems like a waste for this phone’s fast display.If you’re looking for the best mobile gaming experience, try Nothing Phone 2 or One Plus 12R.
📸 Big camera, big photos. The Nothing Phone 2a has two 50MP cameras, wide and ultrawide, plus a 34MP selfie camera. Every camera captures an amazing level of detail, like the bubbles in a cappuccino or the lines of dry paint on a sculpture. Both of his 50MP sensors on the back of the phone are fairly large, allowing you to capture just the right amount of subject separation and get the out-of-focus bokeh you’d expect from a large mirrorless camera.
🌄 It’s not a perfect picture. However, the rear camera falls short when trying to capture dynamic range. After a month of shooting with the Phone 2a, I’ve noticed that the contrast in my photos is too strong, leaving only bright highlights and dark shadows, with some of the detail and color getting squashed to either extreme. . Highlights also have their own problems with clipping, which causes loss of detail and color in bright areas. This especially happened when shooting in bright daylight or when taking photos of objects that were partially pure white.
🔋 Large capacity battery that can be used for a long time. The Nothing Phone 2a also offers a respectable lifespan thanks to its large 5,000 mAh battery.Only for top-end Android smartphones like samsung galaxy s24 ultra and google pixel 8 pro Provide as much capacity as possible. What’s even more impressive is that the Nothing Phone 2a processor consumes power so efficiently, even while gaming, that he can get through the day with 40% battery left.There was no need to reach out moffy power station pro The same goes for this mobile phone.
⚡ Very fast charging. The Phone 2a also features 45W fast charging, and while we can’t say anything about it getting you back to 50% power in just 20 minutes, our tests using two different 65W chargers did charge the Phone 2a to 55%. It turns out it took me 30 minutes to do that. Charging from empty for 15 minutes only restored 28% of battery life. The Nothing Phone 2a doesn’t have any kind of wireless charging.
🔪 Incredibly expensive? The Nothing Phone 2a’s $350 price tag is very attractive, but it’s a bit of a pain to buy. It is only available directly from the Nothing website and must be purchased as part of the “Developer Program.” You don’t actually have to develop anything after purchasing the device, but you should know that there is only a 14-day return period and there is no support for the device in the United States. Additionally, phone service may be spotty or unreliable depending on your carrier.
🛜 5G for some. Another pitfall of the Nothing Phone 2a is that it’s not designed to support all US networks. AT&T and T-Mobile users will receive the most 5G support, while Verizon will have 4G LTE at best. I used the Nothing Phone 2a for a month and was able to use T-Mobile’s 5G network most of the time while driving around the country, including New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. The only time your phone will go back to LTE or 4G speeds is when you’re driving down the highway or exiting a subway tunnel, which is pretty normal even for regular phones. iPhone 15 Pro Max.
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✅ 📱 Want to buy the most valuable Android smartphone at the lowest price?
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✅ 🌈 You need a device with a large, bright and colorful screen that is virtually bezel-less
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✅ 👨🎤 I want a mobile phone with a unique and gorgeous design
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✅ 🤖 Requires lean and average version of Android
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❌ 📵 5G support is limited at best, so you’re a Verizon customer
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❌ 📦 Need a return period longer than 14 days and support for your device beyond that?
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❌ 🎮 You need to play the latest mobile games in the highest quality and 120Hz
Kevin Lee is the creative director at The Shortcut. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.
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