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Art et designTranscription
00:00Budget phones are fun, because pretty much with all of them, if you poke around hard
00:07enough, you will find the thing that they had to cut corners on.
00:10You'll find the thing that they trimmed back to get it to be a budget phone.
00:14And so if we're picking one for you, it's just a matter of picking the one that makes
00:17the trade-offs that you're okay with.
00:18Like maybe you love, you gotta have good build quality and cameras, well then iPhone SE is
00:23probably a good one for you.
00:24And then you know you're not gonna get a great screen or battery life or things like that.
00:28Or maybe you gotta have a great big screen, Samsung makes the Galaxy A54.
00:33Or maybe you gotta have good software and cameras, Pixel 7a.
00:38This phone is $350.
00:42And this, this is the designer one.
00:58So this phone is not going to win anyone over with raw specs.
01:02It's not gonna win by having the best camera or the best battery life of any budget phone.
01:08The performance isn't gonna blow you out of the water, but you could definitely argue
01:11that it's the prettiest $350 phone.
01:14So nothing has had this transparent aesthetic going for a while with their phones and then
01:17also the earbuds.
01:18This one definitely also has that.
01:20There's also a white version of this, I think it looks better.
01:24It also has like black buttons, so it's kind of this nice contrast, but you know, dark
01:28version looks cool too.
01:29And honestly, if the mission is to look like a nothing phone and not be mistaken for anything
01:33else, then yeah, mission definitely accomplished.
01:35The dual cameras in the middle near the top is pretty unique, kind of like a pair of eyes
01:40maybe.
01:41And the NFC coil actually surrounds the cameras.
01:43Then there are three bars of LEDs making a glyph design around the camera circle again.
01:48Then it's kind of this split design.
01:50The bottom half is like a PCB inspired look, apparently inspired by the New York City
01:55subway map.
01:56And nothing's already shown people this, like there's been some reactions to the design
01:58already.
01:59Some people love it.
02:00Some people actually hate it.
02:01I don't know.
02:02It's a bit asymmetrical, so it's unconventional for sure, but I think it's nice.
02:05Not gonna lie.
02:06But even if you don't like it, at least you can say it's at least somewhat visually interesting.
02:11You know, there's some textures, there's some exposed screws and some text and that little
02:15red square.
02:16It's not functional.
02:17It's just purely to look cool.
02:18So I appreciate that.
02:20And if you do like this look, but have maybe a more boring phone that you're not willing
02:23to give up, then channel sponsor dbrand has you covered with their something skins.
02:27So if you haven't heard of it already, dbrand has performed some, and these are their words,
02:32not mine, creative plagiarism on nothing's whole design language, both in light mode
02:37and dark mode.
02:38So I'll leave a link below if you want to check those out.
02:40But guess what?
02:41It's an extremely competitive price bracket.
02:43So you get a good looking phone, but you still will have to make some sacrifices to get it.
02:47So first of all, it's clear plastic, not glass at the back, which, you know, I'm sure
02:52Zach will get to this phone at some point, but I think it'll be easier to scuff and
02:57scratch but harder to shatter like glass would be.
03:00So, but I think it's a reasonable trade off.
03:02It's also a textured plastic frame as well.
03:05So it looks like aluminum, but it's this plastic all the way around the phone to the point
03:09where this phone actually ends up feeling surprisingly light in the hand for how big
03:13it is.
03:14But we should, we should just get to that.
03:15This is a huge, it's a jumbo size phone.
03:18It's gigantic.
03:19Some people might not love that, but I think a lot of people like really big screens and
03:23you get the natural advantages that come with a big phone, which is a big battery and a
03:27big screen.
03:28So this is a relatively giant 6.7 inch display corner to corner.
03:32It's literally ultra phone size and it gets pretty bright too.
03:35So definitely not flagship bright because we have some crazy numbers these days, but
03:391300 nits peak brightness is very visible in bright indoor lighting and bezels are
03:44even all the way around the front of the phone.
03:46So aesthetically, I have no complaints.
03:49And then even at this price, it's ammo led.
03:51It has an optical fingerprint reader under the glass.
03:54It's variable refresh rate up to 120 Hertz and it even has 2160 Hertz PWM dimming.
04:00So if you don't like the back of this phone, at least the front of it that you're actually
04:03looking at all the time is pretty impressive for 350 bucks.
04:06But I'd say an even bigger strength of this phone is battery life.
04:10So battery always comes from like three main things, basically, obviously having a huge
04:14physical battery, also good software and an efficient chip.
04:19We'll get to the software, but this phone has a 5,000 milliamp hour battery.
04:22That's literally bigger than their flagship phones from nothing.
04:26So really big battery.
04:28It doesn't have wireless charging, but it does have 45 watt wired charging, which is
04:33pretty good.
04:34That's zero to full in an hour.
04:36And the chip it's running is this little thing called the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Pro.
04:44So this was my biggest question mark actually going into testing this phone because you
04:47know, nothing teases the specs and stuff ahead of time.
04:50So we find out it's a MediaTek chip and I'm not sure if this one's going to perform the
04:54way I've been used to some other phones.
04:56Like they're showcasing all these, you know, specifically handpicked benchmarks results.
05:00Of course they will, but conveniently they only compare it to a two year old nothing
05:04phone one, which had that mid range 778G plus from Qualcomm.
05:08Now I'm not expecting flagship stuff for 350 bucks, but like what's it going to land
05:14at?
05:15This feels like a make or break part of the phone.
05:17And I've been pleasantly surprised.
05:19Now it's not going to win any prizes with the raw specs.
05:22And I definitely don't think it'll earn anybody's money with the benchmark scores alone.
05:26You look at those numbers, you're like, okay, not a total shock here.
05:30But as far as actual performance, when you use the phone, the way I'd put it is it's
05:34respectable.
05:35I really feel like that is a testament to the software and how well it's working together.
05:39So at this point we're on nothing OS 2.5 on top of Android 14 and you already have seen
05:46nothing phone software with the dots and the aesthetic and all that stuff, but it's clean.
05:51There's no bloatware and there is a solid focus on fast and smooth.
05:57It kind of feels like a, like a throwback to the old one plus magic back in the day.
06:02But with regular use, this phone is quite smooth and snappy.
06:05Sometimes the fingerprint reader shudders a little bit like when you're first unlocking,
06:09but for the most part, if you're just using the phone, doing stuff like messaging or flipping
06:12through a couple apps, email, web browsing, taking your pictures, this is a smooth phone.
06:19It's pretty similar to what they did with the nothing phone one with the 778.
06:24It's very solid with everyday use and the second you try to do super high end stuff
06:28like gaming, then you'll see where the benchmarks come up short, where you start dropping frames
06:33and all that.
06:34So again, this is a $350 phone and I am definitely not complaining about that.
06:39Now, nothing has had some time now to build up their aesthetic and their identity and
06:44what they really want a nothing phone to be.
06:47And I got to say, they have a lot of unique, really identifiable things going on here that
06:51you may like or dislike, but they're all here.
06:53So aesthetically, they've got the dots everywhere.
06:56So the stock apps have this dots aesthetic and the thin font to go with it.
07:00The back arrow in Android is made of these dots and they have this extensive built out
07:05selection of nothing widgets now, most of them with the dots theme as well.
07:09So you can have this very consistent home screen aesthetic.
07:12And then there's other little stuff like you can enlarge a single app icon to fill up four
07:16spots on your home screen for a unique home screen grid.
07:19I don't know, you might be into that.
07:21There's also this nice little animation with the folders on the home screen.
07:25Also this new thing which lets you add a glass effect to your wallpaper so it's blurred behind
07:30your home screen for better visibility.
07:31I actually really like that.
07:33There's also AI wallpapers now.
07:35So you can jump into the wallpaper studio and create the most soulless combo art the
07:41world has ever seen in just a few taps.
07:44There's also third party icon pack support on the home screen with instant one touch
07:49previews.
07:50And then of course, the glyphs.
07:52So this phone still has some lights on the back.
07:55It's less lights in the flagship than the phone too, but about the same amount of functionality.
08:00So there's one vertical light on the right and a small one down here on the bottom left
08:03and then the big top one arcing around the top left.
08:06This is the one that works with the glyph countdown timer.
08:10Maybe you'll find that useful.
08:11The blinking notification glyph when your phone is down, I still wish I could just customize
08:15it a little bit more.
08:16I know they don't want to do RGB, but if this was RGB, I would totally have different colors
08:21light up for different app notifications and I would go to town with that.
08:24But you know, it still works with just white lights and it also does music visualizations
08:30to sync up with any music coming out of the speaker.
08:33So I don't know.
08:41Sure obviously some of this stuff is gimmicks.
08:43Some of this you may find useful like once or twice.
08:46I almost never use the countdown clock, but the one time I use it, it's kind of cool.
08:51Side note, I couldn't get the glyph composer to work at all on this phone.
08:54The UI worked, but it didn't light up the lights on the back.
08:57But you know, on super close up photos, maybe the glyph fill flash is decently useful.
09:02Sometimes useless other times, but hey, while we're on the subject, the camera, the cameras
09:07on the back here are serviceable.
09:10Like it's just practical to have cameras on the back of your phone and these, they're
09:13not good, but they're fine.
09:16I always feel like we go into budget phone reviews kind of knowing, okay, this isn't
09:19going to have cameras that blow me away.
09:21It's not going to be as interesting to test these, but you got to test them anyway and
09:25see what they're made of.
09:26So this has a different new 50 megapixel primary camera on the back.
09:29And then it has the same ultra wide camera as the nothing phone too.
09:32And actually also the same selfie camera.
09:34And look, it can take okay pictures, all right, passable pictures.
09:39I know 50 megapixels is a big number, but here's what I'll say.
09:42At this level, even in great lighting, the photos aren't particularly sharp.
09:46The dynamic range or depth of field aren't amazing.
09:49Like you're not buying this phone to take the greatest, most artistic photos and videos
09:54the world has ever seen.
09:55But what you do need is for it to be serviceable, to be quick enough for autofocus to work,
10:00for it to capture a moment, document scanning, video calls, sharing photos with people.
10:06And it does all that.
10:07And it's totally fine.
10:08And I can't complain.
10:09And really what's left a bigger imprint on me using this is that compared to their other
10:14flagship phones, almost all of the features are still here.
10:18Like the only one I'm not actually seeing on this budget version of the phone is macro
10:22mode.
10:23And that theme of keeping a lot of the stuff from the more expensive phones and not doing
10:27these like artificial cuts, that's what feels good about this phone as a budget phone to
10:32me.
10:33It actually feels like they're trying to give people all of the nothing phone experience
10:38for less money.
10:39Now we definitely can't say it's one-to-one.
10:41There's obviously cuts, especially with hardware, like there's no wireless charging.
10:44Like I said, it's IP54 instead of IP68.
10:48It's plastic instead of glass and aluminum.
10:50But I like that once you start to get to use the phone, especially with the software
10:55features, experience wise, I don't feel nearly as many artificial feeling cuts as we've seen
11:00on other phones.
11:01Like there's no pro mode in the camera that's missing from the budget phone.
11:05All the same advanced settings, the experimental features, all the home screen features with
11:10nothing OS, it's all here on this cheaper phone.
11:13And the crazy part to me is like, they obviously want to compare this to a lower end phone.
11:17So they compare it to the phone one and my natural instinct is like, I'm ignoring that.
11:21Of course they're comparing it to the old phone.
11:24But when you actually look at that two-year-old phone, you kind of see how far they've come
11:28and you look at the things that are actually better about this budget phone.
11:32This nothing phone 2a has a bigger, brighter screen with thinner bezels.
11:38It has a larger battery with faster charging, a higher processor clock speed, a higher
11:43resolution front camera, and a wider variety of refresh rates than the phone one.
11:49No wonder they want to show us the phone one.
11:51But in general, if you're looking for the TLDW, yes, this is a good solid all around
11:58budget phone.
11:59And the way nothing has been tracking with software, it appears, I mean, they're promising
12:03three years of Android updates with this phone.
12:05I think this will be a good budget phone to own for the next couple of years.
12:09Well done, nothing.
12:11Well done.
12:12Thanks for watching.
12:13Catch you guys in the next one.
12:15Peace.