Nothing Phone 2 - A tragedy

Jerin Jose · 2025-05-08T13:34:06+00:00

Nothing Phone 2 is referred to as flagship phone from Nothing brand. Is nothing all about smooth software experience? Don’t a flagship deserve a good camera?...

etidorhpa

caffeineash Ok I can understand that. It should be at least as good as you first used it or better. I bought the 3a pro as soon as it came out and was so disappointed that my LUT system doesn’t work and been waiting for a fix. Lets just hope the company fixes all our bugs quickly.

NishantSharma_zyAiLf4yKN

I have used Flagship Samsung S series phones as my last two phones. With Samsung, I have a complaint that I have to deal with two mail apps, two app stores, and lots of Google and Samsung pre-installed apps. Samsung keeps raising the prices of its phones, and I want to get rid of dual apps; I wanted a clean stock Android experience. Then Switched to Nothing Phone 2. After using it for years, I came to know Stock Android is clean but doesn’t have any features. After using Samsung flagships for years, switching to Nothing feels like nothing; there are just a couple of special features that are the only things available on Nothing.

Using quick shortcuts on the home screen.
Adaptive minimal icons for every application.
Quick shortcuts on the lock screen.
Very useful and cool-looking widgets if available.
Minimal UI.

Now I’ll tell you the cons/ limitations of the Nothing OS over the Samsung one ui.

The clock app from Google is shit compared to Samsung.
The calculator app is the worst by Google. In Samsung, you can do whatever is scientific, converters, etc. There is no phone by Google.
In Samsung, the customisation is built in with an added good lock module. You can tweak anything; I really mean anything from looks to gestures to UI elements, size positions, and working of the overall ui within the system applications. No third-party app is needed.
It comes with a photos app that starts syncing your photos with any mistaken touch confirmation, but stopping the system takes a lot of steps. And features work only when you upload a photo to the cloud. But in Samsung, a proper gallery app is provided that can do so much stuff with that convenience. Nothing Gallary ever matched. Also, Nothing’s own gallery does not work as a system app on Nothing’s phone. What a piece of crap. Also, it’s just 8-9% of what Samsung Gallery offers.
Nothing animations are okay, but if you installed any third-party launcher, just forget the fluidness, and animations go back to 2007-8. Animations were broken using third-party launchers.
The mediocre camera’s portrait mode blurs the main subject a lot, not just the background.
Nothing to tell as there is nothing in it to tell more.

It’s such a basic phone that I have to use a third-party gallery, photo editor, file manager, and whatnot. Stock android is not that good in the name of clean they bald the experience overall.

SiddheshShanbhag

NishantSharma_zyAiLf4yKN Nothing Gallery is basically a photo viewer, nothing more than that. It has no photo edit features or inbuilt filters to customise photos. Don’t know why they rolled out such an incomplete app in the first place. I mean we were demanding Nothing gallery alright but with photo editing features, filters, etc. If we are to use Google Photos or any other gallery for the same purpose, i see no point in having this app on my phone.

Spark

SiddheshShanbhag It’s still in beta 🙂

Nothing is a “new” brand, Give them some more time (few years) 😉

AndrewFielding

SiddheshShanbhag Google actually already has a not so well known Gallery app, in the Play store. Nothing gallery app appears to be the same with a Nothing reskin. Never quite understood the demand for a dedicated gallery app when Google photos does it all already, seems like a waste of developer resources in a small new player in the phone space. Ok, saves a few unnoticeable milliseconds.

etidorhpa

SiddheshShanbhag It does have an editor and a filter feature. Look again.

Coldpaw

etidorhpa Where is it? If I tap on the little pencil (edit) on the lower right, Nothing Gallery just asks to open a different app. Same happens when I want to set an image as wallpaper.

PinoLY

Coldpaw As @etidorhpa says in the Nothing Gallery there are editor and filter options.

Jerin Jose

PinoLY any screenshot on how the edit option look like and what are the features available

PinoLY

Jerin Jose

PinoLY these are in Google photos

PinoLY

Jerin Jose These are in Nothing Gallery…

Jerin Jose

It goes to google photos app and all the features are part of google photos app

Coldpaw

You most likely have the action assigned to always use Google Photos for editing. When I tap the icon, I get a prompt which gallery app to open and can set it to always perform this action via the selected app.

Jerin Jose

After the recent update there are so many issues.

Even if connected to Bluetooth headphones, calls can only be attended through phone or speaker.. not able to hear in headphones (only during calls means normal call as well as whatsapp calls)
The volume again seems to be very low until higher levels
The camera quality is very bad.
Delay in notifications . Sometimes notifications show up only when unlocked.
Sometimes notifications sound will not work. Only after 2 to 3 notifications, sound will come

etidorhpa

Jerin Jose Can you trade it in for a phone 3?

Jerin Jose

etidorhpa cannot trust in Nothing again

Vishal Mistry

Agreed on every single thing.
These nothing fanboys who bought the popular phones 2a or 3a won’t get it.
Nothing never truly used the word flagship but they did indirectly market it as that by saying again and again it is our most premium offering, Phone (1) was a budget phone. @etidorhpa And isn’t the meaning of the word Flagship “the best brand can offer” which it was at the time. But that isn’t the matter of focus.

The cameras are straight up terrible. You take 10 shots at the same time. 3 or 4 will be different. Reddish skintones, over-exposed sunlight, halo effect, too much hdr etc. It’s improved from launch but nowhere close to what it could’ve been. Even after two years, the camera is still inconsistent. Every 4k video stutters for 2-3 seconds in the start.

The latest update has made the battery significantly worse; my SOT has decreased from 6 hours+ to 4.5 hours. I have to use the phone at 60hz to save some battery.

The phone software is great, stable and simple, I love that. It’s fine if they don’t give us the latest stuff fast here because it’s not urgent. But the camera, battery, some critical software bugs like you get “Processing Notification” toast message which makes your phone unusable for 3-5 seconds.

Also the gallery is very barebones for now for months. Needs some features.
But all of this for 2 years, idk if I’ll come back to this brand next time or not.

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