Nothing Phone (2a) Plus

A distinctive phone for those who want great battery life and a stunning screen without paying a fortune

- ALEX WALKER-TODD

Nothing can be confusing. This British phone maker not only loves to throw brackets into its names, which we will ignore for the sake of clarity, but extra letters, too: the £329 Phone 2a (see issue 356, p73) is a cutdown version of the £519 Phone 2 (see issue 349, p72), but the new Phone 2a Plus doesn’t increase its screen size as the name suggests – it instead brings a slight uplift in performance and camera hardware.

For £70 more, you’ll benefit from a beefier Dimensity 7350 Pro chip, which delivers a modest boost compared to the Dimensity 7200 Pro powering the standard Phone 2a. And I mean modest: it proved 3.5% faster in CPU tests such as Geekbench, 6% quicker in AI benchmarks and 12% faster in GPU tests.

Challenging 3D titles such as Zenless Zone Zero still default to “low” settings at 30fps and deliver consistent performance at that level. If you want to dial things up to “high” at 60fps, though, the 7350 Pro is happy in bursts; I only noticed dropped frames and heat build-up after about 20 minutes of play time.

The Phone 2a’s rear dual 50MP sensors (a Samsung GN9 for the main sensor and Samsung JN1 for the ultrawide) remain unchanged from the Phone 2a. As such, you shouldn’t expect iPhone-rivalling shots, but it’s fine in good light. Nothing also offers a Vibrant mode to boost colours, which uses AI to analyse what’s in-frame and serves up real-time insights to show you what changes it’s making to your image.