After the success of our last teardown post here on the community, we’re back with another! This time we’re taking a look inside Phone (2a) Plus, our latest smartphone. With a fresh look on the outside and some meaningful upgrades inside, what better way to explore what’s new?
Once again, with some help from our colleagues on the manufacturing side of the business, we bagged ourselves a pre-dissected Phone (2a) Plus in the new grey colour, saving us from most of the fiddly disassembly. We worked with London-based photographer, David Wilman, a maestro of macro, to capture some closeups in as much detail as possible…
External surfaces:
Kicking things off, let’s talk about the largest components - those that you’ll be touching whenever you use your smartphone…
🔵 Display
On the front of Phone (2a) Plus you’ll find a 6.7” AMOLED display, but in this image we flipped it over for a new perspective … the rear features a large heat spreading copper surface. Note the selfie camera and proximity sensor cutouts at the top and the slanted square cutout near the bottom for the in-display fingerprint sensor to see through. You’ll also spot the display connector in the bottom right corner, which feeds through a hole in the midframe and connects to the motherboard via a flexible printed circuit (FPC).
🟡 Midframe
The midframe brings everything together - the true skeleton of (2a) Plus. The cavities and shapes in this part help to illustrate how everything slots together. You can see the volume and lock button connectors leading away from the sides of the frame and heading to the top to join the motherboard. What you can’t see is the antennas which are embedded within the midframe to ensure great reception.
🔴 Rear Cover
With the rear cover of Phone (2a) Plus removed, it easier to see where grey colour is added and how it contributes to the overall device design. You’ll also spot cutouts for the rear cameras, flash and the venting hole.
Motherboard (Top)
Now on to the motherboard, the most intricate part of any smartphone. In the image below you’ll see the topside of the board as it would appear in a new device, with a layer of heat-spreading copper and metal shields covering the integrated circuits (ICs) beneath; interesting, but we can go deeper…
After using a hot air gun and some careful tweezing, we’ve removed all of those shields (and some thermal paste) to reveal all of the chips beneath. You may spot that some of the components look a little toasted after the hot air treatment…worth it though 😏 There’s almost too much to label here, so to keep things simple we’ve labelled some of the larger components for you:
🟡 MediaTek Dimensity 7350 Pro SOC - the star of the show in Phone (2a) Plus - the MediaTek Dimensity 7350 Pro 5G processor is a world exclusive to Nothing. Featuring TSMC 4nm Gen 2 technology, with 8 cores running up to 3.0 GHz – nearly 10% faster CPU than Phone (2a). It’s supported by an ARM Mali-G610 MC4 GPU clocking at 1.3 GHz, which is 30% faster when gaming than Phone (2a).
🔴 UFS2.2-256GB Storage + LPDDR4X-12GB RAM
🟠 Charging IC
🔵 NFC Controller IC
🟣 RF PA IC
🟤 Proximity and ambient light sensor
🟢 RF transceiver IC
Motherboard (Rear)
The other side of the motherboard is equally as intricate with a load more IC’s. We also find a series of connection points that link all of the other components around (2a) Plus to the motherboard, everything from the cameras to the Glyph LED’s.
🔴 Daughterboard connector
🟣 Camera connector
🟡 Display connector
🔵 USB C connector
🟠 NFC connector
🟢 Power connector - battery
🟤 Glyph connector
⚫️ Camera flash connector
Phone (2a) Plus Camera System
(2a) Plus features our first triple 50 MP camera system, with all three sensors supporting HDR photo capture and 4K video recording. Phone (2a) Plus’ selfie camera captures 4K video at 30 FPS, a notable upgrade from Phone (2a)’s 32 MP sensor. You’ll notice the bigger footprint of the primary camera, owing to its integrated optical image stabilisation (OIS).
🔵 Primary - 50 MP: Samsung, f/1.88, 84.5º - 1/1.57″ sensor
🟡 Ultra wide - 50 MP: Samsung, f/2.2, 114º - ½.76″ sensor
🔴 Front Facing/selfie - 50 MP: Samsung, f/2.2, 81.2º - ½.76″ sensor
Lower Device Components
There’s an assortment of small but significant components towards the bottom of Phone (2a) Plus. Most of these link to the daughterboard and connect to the motherboard via an FPC (flexible printed circuit):
🔴 Dual SIM Tray
🟣 Daughterboard including SIM tray and bottom firing mic
🔵 Speaker assembly
🟡 Linear haptic motor
🟠 In-display fingerprint sensor
🟢 USB-C port - Phone (2a) Plus has rapid 50W Fast Charging, which means it can be charged to one day’s power in under 20 minutes, nearly 10% faster than Phone (2a).
The underside of the Glyph Interface
And finally, maybe my favourite arrangement from this photo series, a selection of components from the upper area of Phone (2a) Plus, including a look at the underside of the Glyph Interface. Note the copper for heat dissipation on the rear of the primary camera, the large earpiece speaker that helps to deliver stereo audio when listening to content and that big graphite tab that hangs below to transfer heat:
🔴 Earpiece speaker
🟣 Front facing camera
🟡 Rear cameras
🔵 Rear camera bracket
🟠 Camera Flash connector
🟢 Glyph segment C
⚫️ Graphite tab
We hope you enjoyed diving into Nothing Phone (2a) Plus’ fresh look and internals with us - we had a lot of fun putting this all together for you!
Drop into the comments below and tell us about your favourite details from this teardown series for your chance to a Phone (2a) Plus, simply ‘like’ this post and leave 1x comment below ⬇️
[Giveaway now closed]
T&Cs:
The giveaway will end on Tuesday, 10 September 2024 at 11am BST. One community member who has ‘liked’ and commented on this discussion according to the criteria above will be selected at random and sent 1x Phone (2a) Plus in the colour of their choice. A member of the Nothing team will be in touch via DM here on nothing.community to notify the winner. The winner must respond to this DM within 48 hours to claim, or will forfeit their prize and a new winner will be selected. Please note, there are some regions we may not be able to ship to. Nothing staff and members of their family are not eligible to participate or win. Any spam accounts or accounts that we deem suspicious will be excluded from the random selection process. Nothing reserves the right to adjust the giveaway and its terms and conditions and entry requirements at any time.
The winner will need to provide some personal data to claim their prize. Read our privacy policy for more information. You can familiarise yourself with our privacy practices, and contact us at privacy@nothing.tech if you have any questions.
