WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.960 Alright, so you're telling me the Nothing Phone 2a runs with the Pixel 7a in terms of performance, 00:00:04.960 --> 00:00:13.760 runs cool, and starts at 330 euros? I mean, yeah, I get it. There's some issues on paper. 00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:19.040 It's using a MediaTek chipset, which in the past has basically been a budget. 00:00:21.360 --> 00:00:25.520 But this is looking like a very complete package this time around. 00:00:26.080 --> 00:00:31.440 Oh, I like that it's not super heavy. Dude, I was looking for a phone to take with me on my trip, 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:35.280 because I need one for my kids to borrow for the plane. I picked up one of the most recent iPhones. 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:39.600 It'd been a little while. It was like, damn, these things are heavy. Packaging wise, you get a whole 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:45.840 lot of... not much. It's not nothing, but it isn't much. You've got a sim removal tool. 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:49.280 Apparently the cable is supposed to go here, but Ars didn't have one in the box. Maybe that's 00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:54.080 because it's an early unit. And you get a phone. There is a lot to like here. Obviously, 00:00:54.080 --> 00:01:00.160 nothing is design language is back in partial force. You're not going to get any of the fancy 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:05.360 lights on the back, but personally, I love the transparent back. And I also love that this is 00:01:05.360 --> 00:01:09.600 one of the first bones I've seen in a little while that doesn't have a gigantic camera bump on it. 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:16.000 We've got two 50 megapixel cameras back here, one regular, one ultra wide, both with Samsung sensors. 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:20.800 And that's not the only thing that they've done to help shave down costs. I already mentioned 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:26.800 they've gone with a MediaTek chipset. So it's the Dimensity 7200. But while MediaTek doesn't 00:01:26.800 --> 00:01:32.400 have the same kind of brand recognition that Qualcomm might have, this is not exactly your 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:38.400 Grandpa's MediaTek chipset. It's using the latest TSMC 4 nanometer process. It's got 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:43.120 eight cores paired with eight or 12 gigs of RAM with their RAM booster feature that essentially 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:49.040 allows apps to run over from memory into storage and practice. We found that in a phone configured 00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:53.680 like this with a decent amount of memory, it didn't make a measurable difference in anything 00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:58.480 that we were looking at. But hey, maybe it's a cool idea for Apple. You're going to take that, Andy? 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:04.240 Apple doesn't put enough RAM in their devices. He has no defense even. Even the Apple fanboys 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:09.680 can't defend it. There are more compromises. You won't find a coil here for wireless charging 00:02:09.680 --> 00:02:16.560 because there isn't any. And the USB-C port on the bottom is only USB to just like the 00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:22.400 non-pro versions of the latest iPhones. But it supports 45 watt wired charging and that's a 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:28.000 5,000 milliamp hour battery in it that in our testing performed admirably. We ended up with 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:34.800 about 14 hours in our longevity test, which is playing back YouTube videos at 250 nits and 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:41.280 a full charge was only 63 minutes. Pretty nice considering what value phones used to be like. 00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:46.640 And the same can be said of the display. Yeah, the Pixel 7a outperforms it, hitting higher peak 00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:51.360 brightnesses and small Windows. So you're going to get a better HDR experience out of that phone. 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:58.000 But the nothing phone 2a managed to hit about a thousand nits peak brightness full screen in SDR. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:01.600 So you'll be able to use it under any conditions. I realize I'm getting ahead of myself a little 00:03:01.600 --> 00:03:04.880 bit here though. I haven't talked about the design pretty much at all. We've got the lock 00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:08.640 button on the right, volume rocker on the left. I already showed you guys where the 00:03:08.720 --> 00:03:14.480 sim location is. It's right next to that USB-C port and that's about it. Always canceling 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:22.080 microphone here. And ah, yes, the glyph lighting interface does make a return, but in a much 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:28.080 simplified form. So here, let's go ahead and, uh, oh, gestures are enabled by default. So no 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:33.040 bottom buttons, although you can reactivate them if you really want to. And then let's, uh, 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:39.520 let's see. Glyph lights on. Hey, there we go. And that's just a brightness slider. Okay, what the? 00:03:40.720 --> 00:03:43.840 Hello? That's on. Okay, what just happened? 00:03:45.520 --> 00:03:49.840 This is like, this must be like watching my grandparents use a computer. Okay, now they're on. 00:03:52.400 --> 00:04:00.080 What, they're gone now? No they're, okay. There you go. That's cool. 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:07.600 You gotta get them full points for style, you know? This is one of those devices you look at and go, 00:04:07.600 --> 00:04:14.000 man, why would I pay a huge premium for design when this exists? It is so cool. And sure, 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:18.080 I might not be the arbiter of what is cool and what isn't, but do you really disagree? 00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:23.440 It looks freaking awesome. I gotta say, as someone who doesn't really care that much about the skin 00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:29.440 on my phone, yeah, this makes less of a difference to me than it might to some people, but I can't 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:34.880 deny that it looks really good. As cool as it looks, I'm more interested in how it slides though. 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:40.320 It's not LTPO OLED. Okay, so you're not going to get those one hertz variable refresh rate values 00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:44.400 and you're not going to get that super high peak brightness, but you are still going to get inky 00:04:44.400 --> 00:04:48.880 blacks. It still manages variable refresh rate down to 30 hertz, so you will get some power 00:04:48.880 --> 00:04:54.640 savings there. And as we saw already, it gets, in my opinion, bright enough, especially when you 00:04:54.640 --> 00:05:00.880 consider the price. Some might complain about the 1080 by 2412 resolution, but in my opinion, 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:08.080 even at this size, it's not a problem unless you are extremely keen eyed. The first thing that I 00:05:08.080 --> 00:05:12.240 tend to do with the device is turn the text size all the way down because I'm all about 00:05:12.240 --> 00:05:17.280 information density. So let's do that and have a look. I mean, come on, I get you want to show off 00:05:17.280 --> 00:05:22.000 how well you can see, but even if I had a screen that ran at a higher resolution natively, I would 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:26.320 probably still turn it down to 1080 just for the power savings and increase in battery life. 00:05:26.320 --> 00:05:30.400 It's got Corning Gorilla Glass 5. It's flat. So if you're one of those people who doesn't like 00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:35.840 curved glass, then you can suck on my Note 9 and you can buy this phone. Personally, I like the 00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:40.400 curved glass, but I also get it. The bezels are pretty reasonable again for a more value-oriented 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:45.360 device. A big question mark for me though is the camera. First of all, can I double tap for camera? 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:52.320 Yes, I can. Thank you. Oh, interesting. It struggles a little more than some of the 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:58.160 more premium phones compensating for the exposure issues that shooting into this light generally 00:05:58.160 --> 00:06:02.480 has. That's in case you guys were wondering why I'm always taking pictures in such suboptimal 00:06:02.480 --> 00:06:09.440 conditions on set. What I'm looking for is how much this light source blows out the rest of the 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:15.440 image. And you can see the answer for this phone is at... I would expect, based on what I've seen 00:06:15.440 --> 00:06:20.720 so far, that under better conditions, it will fare quite a bit better. And the answer is, 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:26.800 it does. That processing is pretty slow. That's one of the things that Qualcomm has done a really 00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:32.320 good job of over the last five years, is building neural processing and image processing capabilities 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:37.920 into their chipsets that are just better than what you're going to get on a budget chipset. 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:43.120 With that said, this is not behaving like a budget chipset either with respect to this. 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:48.880 Sure, the processing times are taking a while, but damn, that is like really good. 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:54.320 Here, just for context, okay? Just for context. I know it's an older flagship, 00:06:54.320 --> 00:06:59.440 but this is what passed for a flagship phone like five years ago. Come on, buddy. You can do it. 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:05.280 Let the phone app open eventually. I take back all the nice things I just said. 00:07:06.160 --> 00:07:11.680 It just got crushed by a Note 9. Now, there's things people will like more about the nothing 00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:19.520 image. It's poppier, but like, that is not what that looks like. Okay, it's in shadow. 00:07:19.520 --> 00:07:25.200 That's what it looks like. This light, the Note 9 blows it out. You can see it's clipped, 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:31.920 but the nothing phone just has no idea what's going on here. Like, this looks like too light 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:36.160 side by side when it is not. That's a white wall with a little bit of spill on it, 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:41.440 just like we're looking at here. Ironically, the ultra-wide handles that light source a lot better. 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:47.520 If you're a shutterbub, this might not be the thing for you, but it'll definitely do in a pinch. 00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:55.280 Selfie camera, though? 32 megapixels and, you know what, again, maybe I'm getting bamboozled 00:07:55.440 --> 00:08:03.520 here, but all of this is very usable. Like, very usable. Let's say, for example, instead of a blank 00:08:03.520 --> 00:08:09.600 space, you had friends, you could put them there. Not bad. And to their credit, they're not overdoing 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.480 the processing on the selfie camera. I see this so much, even from big brands, where they have 00:08:14.480 --> 00:08:18.480 all these effects and everything turned on. It's like, no, that's what a tech bro who's pushing 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:23.680 40 looks like, for better or for worse. Feel like I've aged 10 years in the last decade. 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:30.160 For video, she'll do 4K, 30fps, and the lab reported that the audio recording quality was 00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:37.920 actually surprisingly decent. So that's a pleasant surprise. What's up, y'all? 00:08:39.680 --> 00:08:44.640 Not bad at all. Really not bad. I mean, it's no iPhone, but it also caught, like, what the 00:08:44.640 --> 00:08:51.040 tricks did the iPhone start at these days? Okay, technically, the iPhone SE still exists for 429, 00:08:51.040 --> 00:08:56.320 but get real. So 13 starts at $600 US. 00:08:56.320 --> 00:09:03.520 13 starts at $600 US. Yeah, I would take this over that in a heartbeat. It's got an aluminum frame. 00:09:03.520 --> 00:09:09.600 It's IP54 rated, which admittedly is not really par for the course anymore. It's as good as the 00:09:09.600 --> 00:09:14.880 nothing phone 2, but I would like to see that up to an IP67 rating. And I guess now's the time 00:09:14.880 --> 00:09:19.760 for us to explore nothing OS a little bit. We ended up using this instead of the stock 00:09:19.760 --> 00:09:27.680 Android experience for our testing because, well, we liked it. It's more than just a theme on your 00:09:27.680 --> 00:09:34.960 desktop. There's kind of similar to Carl Payne's previous employer OnePlus, thoughtful customizations 00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:40.400 to the stockish Android experience. And we didn't find that it had a noticeable impact on performance 00:09:40.400 --> 00:09:49.120 or battery life, which is all we can really ask. Right there. Right there. Back button on the right 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:56.560 side. Is that so much to ask? See, thank you. Nothing. Thanks for nothing. OS. And to everyone 00:09:56.560 --> 00:10:00.320 who can't be bothered to do that, thanks for nothing. I just, I like the back button on the 00:10:00.320 --> 00:10:04.160 right. Okay, we've got to do a quick audio test. Does it have an amplifier to your 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:08.000 peace speaker? I guess we're about to find out. I wouldn't expect it at this price. I'll be impressed 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:15.760 if it has it. It does. Not bad stereo imaging either. And that's something that has really 00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:21.200 improved in the last two, three years. My goodness, has it gotten a lot better across the industry. 00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:27.120 And not just phones, laptops too. Just these tiny little devices with these tiny little speakers 00:10:27.120 --> 00:10:35.600 sounding like they're coming from all around you. A little muddy, not the loudest thing I've ever heard. 00:10:38.960 --> 00:10:42.960 Very reasonable considering the price. You know, I didn't really think about it until I was sitting 00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:48.080 here using the phone some more, but the glyph interface is kind of perfect for me. I have this 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:52.160 problem and you'll have seen it actually here. The editor will have seen it. Roll the clip of me 00:10:52.160 --> 00:11:01.520 getting interrupted by my phone notification. The nothing phone 2a. Look, I'm very popular. Okay. 00:11:01.520 --> 00:11:06.480 I forget what I have my phone set to very, very often. And so I'll end up with it on when I'm 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:10.560 supposed to be filming and then I'll end up leaving it muted when I'm supposed to be accessible to 00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:16.240 my family or my colleagues. And so if I could just use their flip to glyph, see a little phone 00:11:16.240 --> 00:11:19.840 flashing out of the corner of my while I'm filming, but put it in my pocket and have the 00:11:19.840 --> 00:11:25.200 notifications go, that would be kind of awesome. Some of the functions of the glyph interface 00:11:25.200 --> 00:11:28.960 are less applicable to me. You can use it as a countdown timer, for example. Why do you need 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:34.560 to spend more than 350 bucks on a phone? Oh, speaking of $350, it's unfortunately not available 00:11:34.560 --> 00:11:39.840 in the U.S. outside of their developer program where it costs $350. So it's not available, but 00:11:39.840 --> 00:11:44.960 it is. And the pricing is perfectly reasonable. So what does that even mean? I'm not even going 00:11:44.960 --> 00:11:49.280 to speculate why that is, but it's $350 for a developer membership and you get a phone, 00:11:49.280 --> 00:11:54.560 sure, whatever that means. This is cool. They apparently have NTFS optimizations for moving 00:11:54.560 --> 00:11:59.360 files to and from Android and Windows. That matters to me a lot. I'm one of those dinosaurs 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:04.880 that still offloads my photos from my phone with a cable. And man, is it ever slow. Oh, 00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:07.760 ringtone sound pack. Glyph composer. 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:15.520 I have the ideas to be annoying and get my attention. 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:26.000 Wow, boy, would that ever be effective. Delete. Never exist again. Thank you. 00:12:27.520 --> 00:12:31.200 There's a few more lab's notes on the phone. It's Wi-Fi 6, but speeds were 00:12:31.280 --> 00:12:39.520 as expected for a device of this caliber. It uses Bluetooth 5.3 only, but at least Bluetooth 00:12:39.520 --> 00:12:44.400 connectivity was extremely stable. And so was the performance of the in-screen fingerprint 00:12:44.400 --> 00:12:49.440 sensor with it registering 28 out of 30 times across what is a mostly anecdotal test. They 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:54.640 were also very pleased with call quality, which is something that, you know, it should be good for 00:12:55.520 --> 00:13:01.920 a phone. Now, that leaves the last big question, and that is, how long exactly will you be using 00:13:01.920 --> 00:13:07.920 this phone for? Nothing is promising three years of updates with four years of security updates, 00:13:07.920 --> 00:13:13.280 which is not on par with some of the really big players in the space anymore. But at this price, 00:13:13.280 --> 00:13:19.440 I consider to be extremely reasonable. Better than nothing, you might say. No, exactly the same as nothing. 00:13:19.680 --> 00:13:27.200 Look, if they don't want people making these jokes, then they should call their company 00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:33.360 something not stupid. Yeah, I don't mean stupid. I mean, meme-able.