Nothing Phone (2a) review

Display

The Nothing Phone (2a) has a very similar display to the Nothing Phone (2), at least as far as its basic specs go. The size is the same at 6.7 inches with a 20:9 aspect ratio. The resolution is also shared between the two and is set at 1080 x 2412 pixels. That works out to around 394 ppi, which looks perfectly sharp. You also get the same 120Hz refresh rate, as well as identical 10-bit colors and accompanying HDR10+ support.

Even so, the panels are not exactly the same. For one, the Nothing Phone (2a) lacks LTPO, which means that its refresh rate switching is a lot less dynamic than that on the Nothing Phone (2). Nothing claims the screen can achieve 1100 nits of full-screen brightness and 1300 nits peak. We ran our standardized testing and didn't manage to quite match these claims, but we still got a very respectable 981 nits out of our Nothing Phone (2a) unit. That's perfectly usable outdoors.

The minimum brightness at point white is just 1.9 nits.

Let's talk about the refresh rate for a bit. The Nothing Phone (2a) supports a total of three refresh rate modes as reported by the OS - 60hz, 90Hz and 120Hz. In terms of settings, there are three modes to choose from - Standard, which locks the refresh rate at 60Hz and High and Dynamic, both of which go up to 120Hz and have slightly different automatic switching behavior.

Both high and Dynamic modes increase the refresh rate to 120Hz when interacting with the screen. After a few seconds of inactivity, it automatically drops down to 60Hz. Both modes also recognize full-screen video playback in most apps and toggle a 60Hz refresh rate to save power. The one major difference between the two is that Dynamic mode tends to toggle 90Hz instead of 120Hz for many apps. That way, you still get a bit of extra smoothness in scrolling and animations but also save on more power.

As for high refresh rate gaming, we unfortunately didn't have much luck getting games to push past the 60fps mark regardless of which profile we used.

As we mentioned, the display on the Nothing Phone (2a) supports HDR10+. In terms of hardware decoding, the phone can handle HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. Just no Dolby Vision. The phone also has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing streaming apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams.

Battery life

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

One area of clear improvement for the Nothing Phone (2a) coming from the regular Nothing Phone (2) is the battery. The capacity has been upped notably to 5,000 mAh.

Past Nothing phones already have a track record of delivering solid battery life. The Nothing Phone (2a) did even better than these, with an excellent score of 15:53 hours. It scored excellent across the board, with no one test scenario lagging behind the rest.

Charging speed

The Nothing Phone (2a) charges at a maximum rate of 45W via Power Delivery 3.0 (there is no wireless charging available). It also offers some Quick Charge support, but not at full speed. There is no charger in the retail box, but Nothing has never included one in its retail boxes, so this is no surprise.

We got ourselves a good brand-name 65W PD charger and a 5A Type-C to Type-C cable for testing. Using that setup, we managed to get from zero to 29% in fifteen minutes, which is not ideal, but then speeds picked up a bit, and we got to 59% in thirty minutes. A full charge took us just over an hour. These speeds are far from the best available in this price bracket but are quite solid overall.

Speakers - loudness and quality

Just like the Nothing Phone (2), the Nothing Phone (2a) has a stereo speaker setup. It is a hybrid setup with the amplified earpiece acting like the second channel. The other speaker is positioned on the bottom frame. This inherently brings about some imbalance in the sound output since the two speakers aren't facing symmetrically.

Still, the overall quality of the sound output is pretty decent. It is comparable to the Nothing Phone (2), perhaps with a bit less bass. Not that the Nothing Phone (2) has an abundance of bass. At least you get nice and clean mids and undistorted highs.

In terms of loudness, the phone managed a GOOD rating in our testing.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Connectivity

The Nothing Phone (2a) is a 5G device with SA/NSA Sub-6 support on both Nano-SIM slots simultaneously. For positioning, there is support for GPS (no L5), GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS and QZSS.

Local connectivity is covered by dual-band Wi-Fi 6 ax as well as Bluetooth 5.3 with LE support. There is NFC on board as well. No FM radio or 3.5mm audio jack, though.

The USB Type-C port is backed up by a basic USB 2.0 data connection, with a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbps. There is USB Host/OTG support but nothing else fancy, like video output over Alt mode.

In terms of sensors, you get an lsm6dso accelerometer and gyroscope combo, a stk3acx light and proximity sensor. It is a proper hardware proximity sensor, which is great to see. Finally, there is a memsic mmc5603 magnetometer and compass combo. No barometer on board.