So, it's been 6 months since I bought the Nothing Phone 2, and you've probably got
some questions. Like, has it lived up to the hype, or is the Nothing Phone 2 just
a beautifully designed phone full of useless gimmicks? To unpack that, first, let's take a
look at the Glyph interface on the back of the phone, which lights up with a bunch of LEDs to
convey different information. This interface, paired with the transparent back design,
gives the Nothing Phone 2 a look that stands out from any other phone out there. It's just
a stunning design. In person, it's comfortable to hold in your hand, with its 20.2 grams of weight,
which is anywhere from 20 to 30 grams lighter than other phones of this size,
like the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the S24 Ultra. Even though this phone looks like an iPhone with
its aluminum side rails, Nothing has smoothed their edges so the phone doesn't feel as sharp
as iPhones 12 to 14 did. It's the closest I've seen an Android phone come to matching
an iPhone's shape. Even the power button and volume buttons are on different sides.
At the time I ordered my phone, I also really liked that Nothing made it easy to order a clear
case and a screen protector right from their site. It makes it easy to still appreciate the
phone's design while protecting both sides of it. Though, I do wish the case didn't attract so many
fingerprints. When you use the phone bare, it actually doesn't show fingerprints on the back
that much. So, hats off to Nothing for making that design choice. When people said the Glyph
interface was a gimmick, I took that to mean that it wouldn't actually do anything useful,
and that hasn't been true. There are actually some things about it that I found really useful
for the past 6 months, which has mainly been the Essential Glyph. It's a light on
the Glyph interface that stays on when you get a notification that you deem important. You can
set this up in settings for which apps you want the Essential Glyph to light up and even which
contacts from that specific app. It's a really nice way to keep your phone's screen down and
only pick it up for important notifications. The other parts of the Glyph interface I've liked are
the volume rockers. You can also wiggle the phone to see the current charge level via the charging
meter Glyph and the Glyph Torch, which gives you a flashlight but one where you're not going to be
blinded by it because of that diffused light. All of the other Glyph stuff I haven't really used,
though, like the recording light, which I think is an interesting idea to let people know when you're
recording them or making sure your camera is recording if you can't see the screen. Now there's
also a Glyph progress bar, which will light up as your ride or delivery gets closer to you or if you
now have an upcoming meeting approaching. But 6 months in, the services that it integrates with
are just Uber, Zato, and now Google Calendar. That's a pretty limited integration set.
Nothing also released a Glyph Composer app to let you create custom patterns and sounds, which
is just kind of fun to toy around with. The next thing I really like about this phone is its screen
quality. It's surprisingly good. The Nothing Phone 2 sports a 6.7-inch flexible LTPO AMOLED
display that can go up to 120 Hz for super smooth scrolling, and it looks great with good viewing
angles and excellent clarity. I really like the default white balance of this particular display,
and Nothing actually lets you adjust it further in display settings, which I think is really smart.
Now, the hardware is only half the experience of the phone. The other half is Nothing OS, which,
yes, is Android but a very stylized version of it. Nothing has added its own monochromatic flair with
pops of bright red. This aligns with Nothing's stance that tech should be less distracting to
you, and making app icons not look like bright pieces of candy can make them less enticing to
click on. With a Nothing icon pack that you can download, they also have stylized widgets and
folder customizations as well to match. Overall, I found this OS to be very fluid and very close to
the barebones experience you get with Pixel OS. There's no crapware to be found on this phone,
and Nothing has actually made some pretty interesting improvements to the Android OS
in general, with app cloning probably being the most useful one. The way Nothing implemented this
is dead simple. If you have multiple logins for something like Snapchat or Instagram, for example,
and you want to be logged into multiple accounts at once, you can just simply clone the app. Now,
some other Android phones like Samsung phones do let you do this, while other Android phones
like the Pixel will not let you do this unless you use a third-party launcher. Another useful feature
is being able to add fingerprint verification to get into certain apps, like Photos, for example,
which theoretically makes it harder for someone who stole or just picked up your phone to get
into certain parts of your phone. Now, about the only downside I found with Nothing OS is,
part of Nothing's design language is really leaning into being form over function. The
weather app is a great example of this. Because of Nothing's insistence on their iconography being
so geometric, mostly made out of circles, it can sometimes make it harder than it needs to be to
figure out what you're looking at. Because Nothing OS doesn't use almost any color on purpose,
that can actually make it harder to glance through an app like weather and perceive
information hierarchy and ranges. The best way to illustrate this is to look at a weather app
that does it a bit better, which in this case is the Apple Weather app. See in Apple's weather
app how it's completely obvious what the current conditions are because that's the background and
how they use color like blue for rain, yellow for sun, and color gradients for temperature
ranges. All of this use of color helps organize the information and give it a bit of hierarchy,
which Nothing could definitely replicate a bit more in their app.
Next, let's talk about some other things with this phone. As far as its performance overall,
it's been snappy. The games I've played on it have run fine with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen
1 chip. The face unlock and fingerprint unlock on the phone have been good and reliable as well. Its
speakers are decent, as well as its mic quality. Here's how that sounds: [audio description]. All
right, and this is what the Nothing Phone 2's mics sound like. I'm just using the built-in recorder
right now. I'm talking into where the speaker of the phone is, but now let me hold it up like I
was on a phone call. And this is probably the best that the mics are going to sound because I'm not
actually on a phone call right now, so they're not getting super compressed. So that's what
they sound like. Let me know in the comments how do you think it sounds. Battery life has
also been pretty great. It's easily been able to last me all day with its 4,700mAh battery.
Now what about the camera? Is it actually good? When I first got the phone, I was not at all
impressed with its camera system. It wasn't very consistent, would have issues processing colors on
people's faces correctly, and I just wasn't wowed with Nothing's photo processing overall. Nothing
did, however, make several updates to the system during my review period, and to help me figure
out exactly where this camera stands in terms of the competition, I've mainly been comparing it
to the Pixel 8 because these phones are both in the same price range. Overall, it's a mixed bag,
but the Nothing Phone 2 does hold its own against the Pixel 8, even outright beating it in certain
scenarios. For daytime photos, the Nothing Phone 2 has a tendency to oversharpen some images,
and I found that the Pixel 8's color science is a bit more true to life. However, with selfies,
I liked what I got out of the Nothing Phone 2 more with its better bokeh and coloring.
For daytime videos, the Nothing Phone 2 was as good if not better than the Pixel 8 with
its contrast and having a tendency to produce fewer digital artifacts in parts of the frame
with a lot of movements like running water. The biggest downside with video footage is,
by default, it's not really stabilized. Nothing does have an action mode for stabilization,
but you can't use it with 4K. For night photography, I'd give the edge to the Pixel
for its better colors and overall look. Night videography, however, is a different story.
The Nothing Phone 2 produces a noisier but much sharper image with better dynamic range compared
to the Pixel. Just don't use the night mode with a Nothing Phone 2's video because that's going to
produce some pretty garbage footage. The camera also includes a macro mode, but I do wish it had
auto-detection and switching like Apple and other smartphone manufacturers have implemented with
their camera systems. And the level feature of the camera app is a bit wonky. It looks like it almost
stutters. It definitely isn't smooth. Another thing I liked about Nothing's camera app was
they added an easy-to-get-to expert mode where you can capture raw photos. But I do wish they had a
similar pop-out to the Pixel camera app that lets you trigger raw in the regular photo area as well
for when you don't need to go into expert mode but you might still want to capture a raw photo.
Moving on from the camera, one of the other big downsides I've encountered with the
Nothing Phone 2 is actually its volume steps. The Nothing Phone 2 has like 15 volume steps,
which I believe is Android's default, but I often found it difficult to find the perfect
volume level for what I wanted to listen to. I think they should copy what Samsung, Pixel,
or even what the iPhone does and give you way more volume steps for more granular control. The
other main downside is actually with Nothing as a brand and specifically their support. I bought the
Nothing Ear 2 buds to review over the summer, but they ended up hurting my ears. And when I
returned them, they delayed my refund because they needed to charge me a $15 shipping fee,
which Nothing charges for all returns where someone just didn't like the product. Instead
of just subtracting that fee from the original amount I paid, they needed me to pay the fee
via PayPal. So I did it, but the whole thing came across as pretty amateurish. You'd think Nothing,
being a smaller company, would have an advantage of not having its department
set up like this from the get-go. So for the time being, I'd only recommend getting
a Nothing device from a third-party retailer like Amazon that has a better return policy.
So aside from those downsides, there are a few other improvements I think Nothing could make
to this phone. The first is when you first set up the Phone 2, the Google app is available when
you slide over to the left, which feels very antithetical to Nothing's mission to have your
phone distract you less. That feed is often just filled with clickbait garbage, and I'm guessing
Nothing has to have it enabled by default in order to use Android. But if that's not the case,
they should definitely disable it by default. And then the other improvement I think Nothing could
make is to add an area in settings where users can submit feedback on bugs and feature requests,
like Google and others do in their software. So that's everything I've liked and disliked about
the Nothing Phone 2, and I do recommend it for anyone who wants a larger Android phone that's
not going to break your budget, a phone that has a cool aesthetic, and for those who don't
need or want a top-of-the-line smartphone camera system. If that's you, I think you'd be really
happy going with a Nothing Phone 2. Nothing's entire goal with their brand is to make tech feel
cool again and pull people out of their apps for fewer distractions. With features like the Glyph
interface and it's a similar theme we've seen with other devices like the recently launched Rabbit
R1. And while I don't really think Nothing has accomplished all of that with the Nothing Phone 2,
what they have done is built a quite respectable mid-range Android phone that does provide a slick
experience with a decent camera and a very unique aesthetic that truly differentiates it from the
rest of the smartphone market. Now, if you want to see more of my thoughts on other smartphones
or my thoughts on the Pixel 8 specifically and what features it has, you can see more of my
videos by clicking here, here. And don't forget, if you like this video, hit that thumbs up button
below and subscribe for more. For 6 months later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.