Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Nothing is affordable now – Nothing Phone (2a)”.
All right so you’re telling me the nothing phone 2A runs with the pixel 7A in terms of performance, runs cool and starts at 330. I mean yeah. I get it. There’S some issues on paper. It’S using a mediatech chipset, which in the past has basically meant Bunch. It, but this is looking like a very complete package this time around. Oh, I like that.
It’S not super heavy dude. I was looking for a phone to take with me on my trip cuz. I need one for my kids to borrow for the plane. I picked up one of the most recent iPhones.
It been a little while I was like damn these things are heavy packaging wise. You get a whole lot of not much. It’S not nothing, but it isn’t much. You’Ve got a Sim removal tool.
Apparently, the cable is supposed to go here, but ours didn’t have one in the Box. Maybe that’s because it’s an early unit and you get a phone. There is a lot to like here. Obviously, nothing’s design language is back in partial Force, you’re not going to get any of the f lights on the back.
But personally I love the transparent back, and I also love that this is one of the first bones I’ve seen in a little while that doesn’t have a gigantic camera bump on it. We’Ve got two 50 megapixel cameras back here, one regular one Ultra wide, both with Samsung sensors and that’s not the only thing that they’ve done to help shave down costs. I already mentioned they’ve gone with a mediatech chipset, so it’s the dimensity 7200, but while mediatech doesn’t have the same kind of brand recognition that Qualcomm might have. This is not exactly your grandpa’s mediatech chipset.
It’S using the latest tsmc 4 nomer process. It’S got eight cores paired with eight or 12 gigs of RAM with their RAM Booster feature that essentially allows apps to run over from memory into storage and practice uh. We found that in a phone configured like this with a decent amount of memory, didn’t make a measurable difference in anything that we were looking at but hey. Maybe it’s a cool idea for Apple you going to take that Andy Apple doesn’t put enough RAM in their devices. He has no defense. Even even the Apple Fanboys can’t defend it.
There are more compromises. You won’t find a coil here for wireless charging because there isn’t any and the USBC port on the bottom is only USB 2, just like the nonpr versions of the latest iPhones, but it supports 45 W wire charging and has a 5,000 milliamp battery in it. That in our testing performed admirably, we ended up with about 14 hours. Our longevity test, which is playing back YouTube videos at 250, nits and a full charge, was only 63 minutes, pretty nice, considering what value phones used to be like and the same can be said of the display yeah, the pixel 7A outperforms it hitting higher peak brightnesses In small windows, so you’re going to get a better HDR experience out of that phone, but the nothing phone 2A managed to hit about 1,000 nits Peak brightness full screen in SDR, so you’ll be able to use it under any condition.
I realize I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit here, though I haven’t talked about the design. Pretty much at all. We’Ve got the lock button on the right volume rocker on the left.
I already showed you guys where the Sim location is it’s right. Next, to that USBC port and that’s about it – noise, cancelling microphone here and ah yes, the glyph lighting interface does make a return, but in a much simplified form. So here let’s go ahead and uh! Oh gestures are enabled by default. So no bottom buttons, although you can reactivate them, if you really want to and then let’s uh, let’s see, glyph lights on, hey there we go and that’s just a brightness slider, okay, what the hello! Now it’s on! Okay! What just happened this like this must be like watching.
My grandparents use a computer okay, now they’re on they’re what they’re gone now? No, they, okay, there you go there, that’s cool! You got to get them full points for style. You know this is one of those devices you look at and go man. Why would I pay a huge premium for design when this exists? It is so cool and sure I might not be the Arbiter of what is cool and what isn’t.
But do you really disagree? It looks freaking awesome. I got to say as someone who doesn’t really care that much about the skin on my phone yeah. This makes less of a difference to me than it might to some people, but I can’t deny that it looks really good.
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So, let’s do that and have a look I mean come on. I get you want to show off how well you can see, but even if I had a screen that ran at a higher resolution natively, I would probably still turn it down to 1080. Just for the power savings and increase in battery life, it’s got corn and Gorilla Glass. 5, it’s flat! So if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like curved glass, then you can suck on my Note 9 and you can buy this phone personally, I like the curved glass, but I also get it.
The bezels are pretty reasonable again for a more value oriented device. A big question mark for me, though, is the camera. First of all, can I double tap for camera? Yes, I can thank you ooh interesting M. It struggles a little more than some of the more premium phones compensating for the exposure issues that shooting into this light.
Generally, has that’s in case you guys are wondering why I’m always taking pictures in such suboptimal conditions on set. What I’m looking for is how much this light source blows out the rest of the image, and you can see the answer for this phone is a lot. I would expect, based on what I’ve seen so far, that under better conditions, it will Fair quite a bit better, and the answer is it: does that processing is pretty slow? That’S one of the things that Qualcomm has done a really good job of over the last five years is building neural processing and image processing capabilities into their chipsets that are just better than what you’re going to get on a budget chipset with that said, this is Not behaving like a budget chipset either with respect to this sure the processing times are taking a while, but damn that is like really good here just for context: okay, okay, just for context, I know it’s an older Flagship, but this is what passed for a flagship Phone like 5 years ago, come on buddy. You can do it look.
The phone app will open, eventually oo. I take back all the nice things. I just said it just got crushed by a note. 9. Now, there’s things people will like more about the nothing image. It’S poppier but like that is not what that looks like okay, it’s in Shadow! That’S what it looks like this light. The note 9 blows it out. You can see it’s clipped, but the nothing phone just has no idea.
What’S going on here, like this looks like two lights side by side when it is not that’s a white wall with a little bit of spill on it, just like we’re looking at here, ironically, the ultra wide handles that light source a lot better, F shutter bud. This might not be the thing for you, but it’ll definitely do in a pinch, selfie camera, though 30 2 megapixels, and you know what again, maybe I’m getting Bamboozled here. But all of this is very usable, like very usable, let’s say, for example, instead of a blank space, you had friends, you could put them there, not bad and to their credit, they’re, not overdoing the processing on the selfie camera.
I see this so much even from Big Brands, where they have all these effects and everything turned on. It’S like. No, that’s what a tech bro who’s, pushing 40 looks like For Better or For Worse, feel, like I’ve aged 10 years in the last decade, for video she’ll do 4K 30 FPS and the lab reported that the audio recording quality was actually surprisingly decent.
So that’s a pleasant surprise: what’s up y’all, not bad at all, really, not bad! I mean it’s no iPhone, but it also C, like the freak said, the iPhone start at these days. Okay, technically, the iPhone SE still exists for $ 429, but get real, so 13 starts at 600. Bucks us 13 starts at $ 600 us yeah. I would take this over that in a heartbeat, it’s got an aluminum frame, it’s IP 54 rated, which, admittedly, is not really par for the course anymore. It’S as good as the nothing phone 2, but I would like to see that up to an IP67 rating – and I guess now’s the time for us to explore nothing OS a little bit. We ended up using this instead of the stock Android experience for testing, because well they liked it.
It’S more than just a theme on your desktop there’s kind of similar to uh Carl pay’s previous employer OnePlus, thoughtful customizations to the stockish Android experience, and we didn’t find that it had a noticeable impact on performance or battery life, which is all we can really ask Right there right there back button on the right side. Is that so much to ask see? Thank you. Nothing thanks for nothing OS and to everyone who can’t be bothered to do that. Thanks for nothing. I just I like the back button on the right. Okay, we’ve got to do a quick audio test.
Does it have an amplified? Earpiece speaker? Oh, I guess we’re about to find out. I wouldn’t expect it at this price I’ll be impressed if it has it, it does not bad stereo Imaging either and that’s something that has really improved in the last 2 3 years. My goodness has it gotten a lot better across the IND and not just phones, laptops too just we have these tiny little devices. With these tiny little speakers sounding like they’re, coming from all around you a little muddy, not the loudest thing. I’Ve ever heard very reasonable. Considering the price you know, I didn’t really think about it until I was sitting here using the phone some more, but the glyph interface is kind of perfect.
For me. I have this problem and you’ll have seen it actually here. The editor will have seen it thr roll the clip of me getting interrupted by my phone notification, the nothing phone 2A. Look, I’m very popular okay. I forget what I have my phone set to very, very often and so I’ll end up with it on when I’m supposed to be filming and then I’ll end up, leaving it muted when I’m supposed to be accessible to my family or my colleagues. And so, if I could just use their flip to gliph, see the phone flashing out of the corner of my eye, while I’m filming but put it in my pocket and have the notifications go that that would be kind of awesome. Some of the functions of the glyph interface are less applicable to me. You can use it as a countdown timer, for example.
Why do you need to spend more than 350 bucks on a phone? Oh speaking of $ 350, it’s unfortunately not available in the US outside of their developer program where it cost $ 350. So it’s not available, but it is, and the pricing is perfectly reasonable. So what does that even mean? I’M not even going to speculate? Why? That is, but it’s $ 350 for a developer membership and you get a phone sure whatever that means this is cool. They apparently have NTFS optimizations for moving files to and from Android and Windows that matters to me a lot I’m one of those dinosaurs that still offloads my photos from my phone with a cable and man.
Is it ever slow bring it home the sound pack glyph composer? If the idea is to be annoying and get my attention, wow boy, would that ever be a itive uh uh Delete never exist again. Thank you. There’S a few more Labs notes on the phone. It’S Wi-Fi 6, but speeds were sorry as expected for a device of this caliber. It uses Bluetooth 5.3. Only but at least Bluetooth connectivity was extremely stable and so was the performance of the Inc screen fingerprint sensor with it registering 28 out of 30 times across.
What is a mostly anecdotal test? They were also very pleased with call Quality, which is something that you know. It should be good for cuz, it’s a phone now that leaves the last big question, and that is how long exactly will you be using this phone for? Nothing is promising 3 years of updates with four years of security updates, which is not on par with some of the really big players in the space anymore. But at this price I consider to be extremely reasonable better than nothing you might say, no exactly the same as nothing look. If they don’t want people making these jokes, then they should call their company something not stupid, something yeah.
No, I don’t mean stupid. I mean memeable subscribe to Short Circuit, see you later .