The Nothing Phone 2 has me excited again for mid-range phones

After months of leaks and teasers, Nothing has finally launched its second phone, the Nothing Phone 2. The Phone 2 marks a big step forward for Nothing: while the company’s previous phone, the Phone 1, was only available in UK, Europe, Japan and India, the Phone 2 is the company’s first to be officially available in the infamous US market. I’ve been using the phone for about a week and a half now, and while I can’t share a full review yet, I do have some first impressions.

In this hands-on, I’m only going to touch on a few aspects of Nothing Phone 2: specs (which you can see above), hardware design, Glyph interface, Nothing OS 2.0, pricing, and availability. I won’t comment on performance, camera quality, charging and battery, or display details – it will all be in the review. Stay tuned for that.

Hardware design

The Nothing Phone 2 carries on the Phone 1’s distinct design language, with a similar transparent back that shows off some refined internals and Nothing’s trademark Glyph interface. The most immediately noticeable differences from one generation to the next are the Phone 2’s size — it has a 6.7-inch display, a bit larger than the Phone 1’s 6.55-inch panel — and color options. . While the Phone 1 comes in black or white, the Phone 2 comes in white and a kind of smoky gray.

That gray color helps bring out yet another new detail: the components beneath the clear back panel have more texture than on the Phone 1, which makes the Phone 2 even more visually appealing, with light playing on the little bumps and ridges in ways interesting. Unlike the Phone 1, which had flat glass on the back, the Phone 2’s back panel curves slightly at the edges to meet the metal frame (Nothing calls it a “cushion”).

The Glyph lights on the back of the phone are a little different this time around, with an updated layout and more individually controllable zones than on the Nothing Phone 1. However, they still only light up in one color – these aren’t tiny RGB strips.

Those differences aside, the aesthetic here is very much in line with the Nothing Phone 1. Nothing tells me it was intentional, that the company wants to establish a solid, recognizable visual identity that can carry over to future generations of devices. I can’t complain: while it’s not radically different from year to year, the Nothing’s design language is still unique and striking compared to most other phones today.

Glyph interface

The Nothing Glyph interface is back in the Phone 2. The basic principle is the same: under the transparent rear glass you will find strips of LEDs. When you get a notification, they light up. You can assign different notifications to different light patterns and create your own ringtone/glyph combinations using Nothing’s Glyph Composer feature.

However, there are some useful new additions. You can configure notifications from any app as Essential Notifications, which cause one of the glyph strips to light up and stay on until you view or dismiss them. That alone makes the Glyph lights much more useful — you can hold your phone face down and still know at a glance if it needs your attention.

There’s a new Glyph Timer feature that uses one of the Glyph strips as a kind of progress bar for timers — though, oddly enough, only those set by a particular widget or phone settings, not the Clock app. Nothing has also built an experimental feature for the Uber app that shows your ride progress using the Glyph interface. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet; it’s clean in theory, but I guess I’d still keep an eye on my phone screen if I was waiting for a ride.

No OS 2.0

Nothing’s software looks basically the same on the Phone 2 as it does on the Phone 1. The company has applied the same light touch to Android 13 customization as it did with Android 12 – the UI here closely resembles Google’s Android flavor .

There are some subtle differences, though. While the Phone 2 mostly uses Google’s apps — Phone, Messages, Calculator, Clock, and more — there are a couple of Nothing-branded apps and a handful of widgets in the company’s distinct dot-matrix style. Thankfully, there’s no bloat: no pre-installed games or social media, and no apps that double as functionality (looking at you, Samsung).

You have the option of adding Nothing widgets to your lock screen, though I don’t know if any of them are useful enough to warrant forgoing notification real estate. You can also explode individual app and folder icons on your home screen to fill four dots instead of one if you like, and Nothing’s launcher has a feature that optionally forces all app icons to appear monochrome, too. those that don’t yet support dynamic themes. You can also use the standard icons, the appropriate Material You theme, or custom icon packs from the Play Store.

Nothing OS 2.0 isn’t drastically reinventing how you’ll interact with your phone, but Nothing has made some smart changes that slightly improve the stock Android experience with a very small learning curve. I think it’s a great approach.

Price and availability

The Nothing Phone 2 is available for pre-order starting today at nothing.tech. In the US, the base model with eight GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage costs $599. You can upgrade to 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage for $699 or 12/512 for $799. Open availability begins July 13.

With a starting price of $599, the Nothing Phone 2 is surprisingly affordable given its hardware. Based on my time spent so far, it could be a good alternative to other upper-mid-range options like the Pixel 7, and even more expensive choices like the OnePlus 11, for many people.

The phone is unlocked and certified to work on both AT&T and T-Mobile, but not Verizon. That said, the phone will still work on Verizon’s network, but 5G is limited to sub-6, with no mmWave.

And there’s more

That’s all we can share for now, but I’ll have more to say about the Nothing Phone 2 in the future. For info on performance, camera quality, and more, keep an eye out for our full review.