After just months of launching the Nothing Phone 2a smartphone in India, Nothing has announced the Nothing Phone 2a Plus in the market. The smartphone brings incremental upgrades to the camera, performance, charging speeds, and display of the smartphone. When Nothing recently reached out to talk about the Nothing Phone 2a Plus, I honestly wondered if Nothing was just pulling the same trick as some other brands that have been launching repackaged phones that are essentially the same on the inside. What else was I supposed to think? The phone comes just months after the Phone 2a’s launch. I was thinking there would just be slight improvements here and there. That’s what the ‘Plus’ should mean. Anyway, I went for a briefing on the phone, and I took my doubts along. However, you can trust Nothing to surprise you when you least expect it.
I already quite loved the Nothing Phone 2a, and that was a big reason why I was sceptical about the Nothing Phone 2a Plus. But after spending a few days using the Phone 2a Plus as my primary device, I can say that Nothing has knocked it out of the park with this one. Nothing took the feedback on the Phone 2a seriously and has made a bunch of improvements to the phone, including performance, NothingOS, charging speeds, and other aspects. But what really makes the Phone 2a Plus impressive is its pricing.
The Nothing Phone 2a Plus has been launched in India in two variants. The 8GB RAM model, which is exclusive to the Indian market, is priced at Rs 24,999 on the first day of sale, while the 12GB variant is priced at Rs 26,999 on the first day. This price goes up to Rs 27,999 and 29,999 respectively once the launch price offer is over. I think that’s fantastic pricing. The smartphone would be a really solid choice in this price range. However, this also means that the Nothing Phone 2a Plus also kind of competes with its own Nothing Phone 2a. So, should you buy the Nothing Phone 2a or the Phone 2a Plus? Let's find out.
This is a little unconventional, but I am going to share my verdict at the beginning of this review. I think the Nothing Phone 2a Plus makes sense for anyone looking for a smartphone in the sub-Rs 30,000 price segment. It has a good display, a gorgeous design that is sure to turn heads (trust me and go for the grey variant), better charging speeds, and decent cameras. You also get the NothingOS experience, which is neat, clean, intuitive, bloatware-free, and a little bit futuristic, all at the same time. Even if your budget is a little tight, I would ask you to push a little and go for the Phone 2a Plus over the Phone 2a. The smartphone promises 3 years of software updates and 4 years of security updates, which means you are set for the next three years at least. However, if you are an existing Nothing Phone 2a user, I would suggest you wait for the Nothing Phone 3 or next year’s Nothing a-series.
If you are in the first category wanting to buy a new phone, read along for a detailed review of the Nothing Phone 2a Plus.
The Nothing Phone 2a Plus has made some small upgrades to the phone’s design, but they have really brought out the whole transparent design aesthetic. The smartphone now uses a metallic finish for the exposed coils at the back of the phone, and the variant I have is grey. Together, the grey body and the metallic coils really make the phone’s design. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is probably one of the best-looking Nothing phones.
The Nothing Phone 2a Plus continues to use a plastic body, the same as the Nothing Phone 2a, which also keeps the weight of the phone in check. The phone is very comfortable to hold and, despite the plastic back, it offers a good grip –– the matte finish sides get credit for that. The device is also lightweight, weighing 190g. At the back, the camera setup still looks the same with two horizontally-placed cameras that look like two eyes, which somehow remind me of Weebo from the film Flubber.
On the front, the Nothing Phone 2a Plus sports the same display as the Nothing Phone 2a, boasting a 6.7-inch full HD+ AMOLED screen with a peak brightness of 1300 nits, a 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate, and a 240 Hz touch sampling rate. However, it now features an upgraded pulse-width modulation (PWM) dimming, which has been enhanced to 2160 Hz.
I reviewed the Nothing Phone 2a earlier this year, and I have now been testing the Phone 2a Plus for a few days, and while the design of the phone is surely an upgrade, you don’t actually see a big difference in the display. But that’s fine, because the display still has good colours, with a good distinction in deep blacks and greys, and stays well legible even on a bright sunny day. Besides the colours of the display, the display has good responsiveness. The adaptive brightness is also very efficient. I never felt the need to re-adjust the brightness, whether I was scrolling through social media or playing Hogwarts Mystery on the phone.
The Nothing Phone 2a Plus features the same battery as the Nothing Phone 2a, which is 5,000mAh in capacity. However, what has improved is the charging speeds. The Phone 2a offered 33W charging speeds, which was a bit underwhelming, especially when smartphones in a similar price segment offer around 100W fast charging support. However, Nothing heard the feedback and bumped up the charging speed to 50W. Now that’s not exactly great. It took me about 40-45 minutes to charge the phone from 0 to 100 percent.
Nothing claims that charging the phone for just 20 minutes can give you a day’s battery, but that has not been my experience. After charging the phone to full, after about 7 hours of usage, my battery is generally drained by 50 percent. That’s with low brightness settings, but with glyph, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi on the entire time. But the rest of the 50 percent usually lasts me till the end of the day, which for me is around 10 pm. However, on days when I was testing the device with more graphic-intensive games or watching videos on it, the phone ran out of battery a few hours sooner.
Basically, if you are a light user who attends to a few calls here and there and uses a few social media apps on the phone, you will easily be able to get a day’s battery life from the phone. However, if you are a moderate to heavy user, who watches a lot of videos, plays games, or multitasks on the phone, the Phone 2a Plus may need a second charge within a day.
Over the Nothing Phone 2a, the performance of the Nothing Phone 2a Plus is definitely better. I have been using the Nothing Phone 2a Plus as my main device for about a week and I have no complaints. I haven't played many games on it, but when I played Asphalt 9 or Hogwarts Mystery, the experience was smooth with no lag. That was also true with the Phone 2a. But with the Phone 2a, long sessions of gaming or watching videos would significantly drain the battery. That does not happen on the Phone 2a Plus. Gaming on the Phone 2a Plus is also better, and that’s probably because of the updates to the game mode.
The game mode on the Phone 2a Plus now has a tap function for quick access to the Game Dashboard during gameplay. Incoming calls now appear in a pop-up, with added support to reject third-party app calls and a one-tap callback feature after rejecting a call. The minimal display has been optimised to show more information in landscape mode, and notifications can be blocked during gameplay to reduce distractions.
I also used the Phone 2a for multitasking between work and social media apps, taking multiple calls, using a personal hotspot, and running the Spotify app almost all day. Even with all that, the phone offered flawless performance.
Besides the improvements to the chipset on the phone, Nothing has also made some upgrades to the NothingOS. The Nothing UI is definitely a big reason why I enjoyed the phone so much. NothingOS has everything just right –– it’s intuitive, it’s easy to use, it’s bloatware-free, and it’s customisable. It’s near-stock, but it has its own identity. From the last time I was testing the Nothing Phone 2a, the OS has received several upgrades. There was an issue with missing icon packs that have been fixed. There are also new widgets on the phone which were added a while back, apparently, but I have only had the chance to test them with the Phone 2a Plus. My favourite being the camera preset widget, where you can preset which lens, which mode, and which filter you want, so the camera will open with exactly those settings every time you tap on the widget. The one I have preset is the 50mm portraits widget.
Additionally, Nothing shared early access to a new widget on the Phone 2a Plus with us. Integrated with AI, the Nothing OS now includes a News Reporter widget. This will follow the ChatGPT integration. This widget provides a daily news digest read aloud by CFO Tim Holbrow. Users can select from eight genres, including business, entertainment, and technology, with AI summarising articles from trusted sources and converting them to audio. Each summary lasts one minute, with eight stories refreshed every morning. No signup is needed. If you are kicking your
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