After leaving OnePlus, a phone company founded on December 16, 2013 by Pete Lau and Carl Pei who parted ways with OnePlus in October of 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic, founded a new company on October 29, 2020 called “Nothing Technology Limited” in London where he currently serves as its CEO.
This brief review would be focusing on the “Nothing Phone 2” since the original “nothing” phone wasn’t made available in the States.
In this brief review, I’ll be looking at the following:
- Setup Screen and Language Selection
- SIM Card Support
- Your Information
- Biometrics and optional stuff
- Restoring your Apps
- Software—Looking at the System Settings
- The Glyph Interface and the Glyph Composer
- Screen Reader Action Support
- The Camera
- Audio and Microphone
- OS updates and Security Patches
- Conclusion—My thoughts
SETUP SCREEN AND LANGUAGE SELECTION
As described in the unboxing video, the “Nothing2 Phone” is a 6.7-inch phone with the following storage and RAM configurations:
128gigs of internal storage with 8GB RAM, 256Gigs of Internal storage with 12gigs of RAM and 512GB of internal storage with 12gigs of RAM.
The Power button is located on the right side of the phone, while the volume buttons are located on the left side of the screen.
This phone has a “boxy” feel to it, reminiscent of the “Fruitvale” AKA iPhone.
The phone has 2 rear cameras in the way of a 50MP wide and a 50MP ultrawide cameras.
For a front shooter, it sports a 32MP camera.
The phone is equipped with stereo speakers with no headphone jack nor and SDCard.
The SIM Card Tray is found to the left of the SBC slot at the bottom of the phone.
Powering the device is a 4700mAh battery.
When you get to the setup screen, there’s a bright red button in the middle of the phone is the “next” button.
By default, the language is set to the UK English; thus, if you don’t want the UK English and TTS voices to be your default, then you will need to tap on the item that says “English UK,” which pops up a list of languages you can choose from by checking the one you prefer, thus making the one you just checked the default language.
Failing to do so will not allow you to use another language as the default after setup (at least that was my experience and I had to do a factory reset).
You can then proceed to tap the “next” button.
SIM CARD SUPPORT
This phone comes with two Nano SIM Card slots with no E-SIM support.
Thus if you are interested in an E-SIM, this phone is not for you.
YOUR INFORMATION
Once you’ve gone through the typical setup and the connectivity related stuff, you are then taken to the screen where you can either input your existing Google information in the way of your email and then if you wanted to bring your apps and settings from your old phone, you would then have to provide the PIN for the old phone whose apps and settings you would be restoring to this phone.
BIOMETRICS
Upon finishing inputting your stuff and choosing to bring or not bring your apps from your account, the next screen you come to is the one having to do with Biometrics; that is, Fingerprint, PIN and Face unlock (although I didn’t see the Face-unlock when I was setting mine up until after I received a couple security patches and found it in the “Security section” in the System Settings.”
Tendencies are that I simply missed it during the setup.
AGREEMENT AND OPTIONAL STUFF
The next screen you come across is the “Nothing” agreement and privacy policy.
Tapping “Agree” takes you to a second screen of optional stuff called “Experience improvement program.” that you can either turn off or keep as they are by default, switched on.
These include the likes of:
System stability program,
Nothing notifications, etc.
RESTORING YOUR APPS
Upon tapping next on the screen of the “Experience Improvement Program,” you are taken to the screen where you can now choose the restore point from your Google account to restore to this phone.
This means, that it would show the phones that you can restore from with their backup date(if you have more than one phone and restore points).
It should be noted that the restoration will bring all of your apps to this phone, but will not bring your customized folders.
Thus, if you have created folders, those won’t be brought alongside with the apps.
It is also important to note that when it finishes the restoration, it will dump all of your apps onto home screens, thus, if you have many apps, you may wind up having a lot of home screen.
Mine wound up with some sixteen home screens.
SOFTWARE—LOOKING AT THE SYSTEM SETTINGS
The Nothing2 Phone is powered by the “Nothing OS” which is very similar to the stock Android found on Pixel phones.
Before getting into the “System Settings,” let take a quick look at the “Quick panel.”
The “Quick Panel” has the typical setup where you find both the “Internet icon to the left and the “Bluetooth to the right of it.
It’s worth noting here that these two icons are perpetually showing up in their positions, regardless of the page that you are on within the “Quick Panel.”
In other words, whether you are on page 1, 2 or 3 of the “Quick Panel,” both the “Internet and the Bluetooth icons” would be showing at the top of the devices.
It’s also worth noting that, unlike most Android devices wherein, upon tapping on either the “Internet” or “Bluetooth” icons toggles their status to off or on, the ones on the “Nothing2 Phone” simply opens up the utility you just tapped on.
I find that to be a good implementation.
I’d also like to mention here in passing, that these two buttons, that is, the “Internet and the Bluetooth icons don’t have a direct labeling on their icons, rather, the label is below the actual buttons.
Now, let’s move our focus to the “System Settings” and see what items we come across.
Tapping the “Open Settings” found to the left of the “Power Menu” at the bottom of the “Quick Panel” takes us to the “System Settings.”
Here, we encounter the following items:
The first items we encounter near the top are the “Network and Internet” found on the left and to the right of it, is the “Connected devices” which houses things like “Bluetooth,” VPN, Hotspot,” etc.
Again, these are arranged in a row with “network” to the left and the “Connected devices” to the right.
Below that, then we have the rest of the items in a list-view as:
- Apps, recent apps, default apps…
- Notifications, Notifications history, Conversations…
- Glyph Interface, Customize Ringtones and more, (tapping this item shows the following items: “Ringtone, Notification, and below that across the screen is the “Glyph light” with an “on/off” switch found on the right side of it. Below that we come across a heading that says: “Features” and these include: “Flip to glyph,” “Glyph timer—Visual countdown,” “Glyph Composer” (which when tapped on takes you to the Play Store where you can download the app. Once downloaded, it places an icon of the app on your Home Screen and tapping on it either on the Home Screen or right here in the “Glyph Interface,” will open up the app where you can use it to compose your own ringtone. Below that is the “Visual feedback” that is, whether you want those dancing lights at the back of your phone when you receive notifications or not. Some of these include: Actions from the Assistant, Volume, etc. Then at the very bottom, there’s a warning that talks about the fact that these lights may not be suitable for those with epilepsy or folks that are sensitive to light. Thus, if you fall into that category, then you may want to keep the glyph light off. Something we refer to as the “Christmas Tree Maker” on the Blind Android Users podcast last year when we talked about the very first phone from “Nothing,” the “Nothing1 Phone.”
- Battery,
- Storage,
- Sound and vibration, volume, do not disturb, etc.
- Display, fonts, Dark mode, etc.
- LockScreen, shortcuts, widgets, AOD (Always On Display) etc.
- Customization—Wallpapers, colors, icon pack, app grid, etc.
- Accessibility,
- Security and privacy—LockScreen, permissions, biomatrix (this is where you can find the likes of the Fingerprint reader, PIN and Face-unlock) etc.
- Location,
- Safety and Emergency,
- Passwords and Accounts, Saved passwords, Autofill, Sync, etc.
- Digital well-being, Parental control, etc.
- Google, Services and preferences,
- Experimental Features—Try upcoming features in advance. Tapping on this reveals the following: “Connect to Tesla,” Air pod support (show the battery and icon of the connected Air pod) “Enhance touch response for specific games” (enabling this might affect battery usage) and “Glyph Progress with third-party apps.
- System, Languages, Gestures, date and time, Backup, etc. This is where you find System updates in the way of OS updates and Security patch updates. The Nothing2 Phone like the Pixel phones have a three-year OS support at a four-year bi-monthly Security patch support.
- “About Phone” is the last item here.
THE GLYPH AND THE GLYPH COMPOSER
I already discussed the Glyph and the Glyph Composer above and if you want to hear what the sounds sound like from the “Composer,” then you would want to take a listen to the Audio Review.
SCREEN READER ACTIONS
Just like many of the launches out there and especially like the Pixel Launcher, the “Nothing” OS does support Screen Reader Actions.
THE CAMERA
The camera of the “Nothing2 Phone” unfortunately does not tell you when a face is there in the rear-view nor when the front shooter is in use.
Thus, those of you who are big time selfie users, may want to install something like the “Open Camera” From the Play Store.”
AUDIO AND MICROPHONE
The Audio playback is good but regrettably, the microphone recording isn’t that great.
You may again, take a listen to the “Audio Review” to hear what it sounds like and make your own decision.
I used two different apps in recording audio—The Hi-Q and the ASR Recorders in testing the mic.
UPDATES AND SECURITY PATCHES
As indicated in the “System, Languages, etc.” under the “System Settings,” “Nothing will give you a three-year OS support” with a four-year bi-monthly Security patch support.
Mine got 2 updates after setup and sits on the June 1st Security patch.
CONCLUSION—MY THOUGHTS
The “nothing Phone 2” to me looks like a hybrid between the Fruitvale AKA iPhone and the Pixel phone.
The Physical aspects resembles the Fruitvale phone in its “boxiness” the Power button on the right and the volume buttons on the left.
Unlike the Pixel phone where you would need to turn on the switch in the Security area under the “Screen lock” using the PIN which has to be at least a 6-digit in order to not tap the “OK” button to unlock the phone after entering your PIN, the “Nothing2 Phone” will, automatically, like the Fruitvale phone, unlock your screen once you have entered the last digit and also allows this with even just 4 digits.
If you intend on buying this phone, then be sure that you are going to keep it as returning it takes jumping through hoops in order to do so.
I do want to mention here in passing also, that I don’t like the haptics of this phone.
I normally don’t have those turned on, but I wanted to feel what they are like on this phone and I am not a fan of them.
For additional comments, you can take a listen to the Audio Review about all of this.
The “Nothing Phone 2” is a good phone if none of the above issues I pointed aren’t deal breakers for you as it is a solid phone with a very good price for such a phone running a flagship chip from last year.
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