Motorola Edge 30 two-minute review

The Motorola Edge 30 is a slim, light, good-looking phone with a great screen and an attractive price tag. Its camera is also competitive, given the phone's price, and the Edge 30 isn't too shabby when it comes to performance either, whether thumbing through the interface, browsing the web, or blasting your way through games.

What holds back the Edge 30 from being an across-the-board champ is its battery. It's smaller than we'd expect from a phone today, and that compromise is no doubt how Motorola achieved the phone's 6.8mm profile.

The Edge 30's camera is also noteworthy. It combines a high-resolution 50MP primary camera with OIS, and the ultra-wide camera crams in autofocus. This ensures it captures a range of quality shots – from close-up macro snaps to landscapes, mid-range photos, and more. While Motorola's photo processing is heavy-handed, at the price, the Edge 30 is still a solid camera phone. 

If you're not a power user who uses your phone non-stop and needs a battery that can keep up, the Motorola Edge 30 is a mighty option. It's perfect if you're after a brilliant, big screen, a decent camera mix, and very slender styling. 

If you're sold on Motorola, but not on the Edge 30, then check out some of the best Motorola phones on the market, and if you're on a tight budget, here's our list of the best cheap phones out right now.

Motorola Edge 30 review: price & availability

You might expect a phone with a super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate screen to cost flagship dollar, but at the time of writing this review, the Edge 30 costs as little as £279 in the UK, though its RRP is £379 – still a great price for that display. 

While you can't pick the Edge 30 up in the USA, you can get the Edge (2022), which has similar specs, a slighting beefier battery and design, and that costs $499 ($599 with a bundled tablet). The Edge 30 is also not available in Australia, though the Edge 30 Neo is a nifty alternative, and costs AU $599.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Motorola Edge 30 review: design

• Exceptionally thin and light
• No headphone jack
• Water repellent design

The Motorola Edge 30 is nothing short of waif-like. Its skinny profile measures just 6.8mm, and it weighs 155g. For context, an iPhone 14 Pro Max measures 12.03mm when including the camera bump, and weighs 240g. Motorola's slender contender still sports an ample footprint, thanks to its ample 6.5-inch screen.

When it comes to build quality, the Edge 30 feels about right for a midrange, relatively affordable phone. It's made of plastic around the sides and back, so definitely isn't super premium. But still feels relatively special, with a frosted finish around the back and that super-thin body.

The Motorola Edge 30 is splashproof, with a water-repellant design, and the display is protected by Gorilla Glass 3. In the box, you get a case to help add a little extra life-proofing, and thanks to the plastic back, only one side of the phone is likely to smash if you drop it. This all means it probably isn't as fragile as some glass-on-glass phones like the Nothing Phone 1.

Unsurprisingly for a phone this thin, there's no headphone jack, and ports are limited to a single USB-C port at the base. On the right side are all the buttons – volume and power, and around the back is a modest camera bump.

Thanks to easy-to-grip, flat sides, we didn't find the Edge 30 slippery or fiddly to use despite being so thin, and the slightly rounded sides add a pleasant, soft quality to the hold.

So while Motorola's thin phone isn't the most premium around, we'd say it strikes the right notes given its price. Could its style be a bit more refined? Absolutely. Does it feel like it's made of plastic? Definitely. But it also still feels unique, a great balance of life-proof, slender, and fit-for-purpose.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Motorola Edge 30 review: display

• 6.5-inch Full HD+ AMOLED
• 144Hz refresh rate
• Best-in-class display

The Motorola Edge 30 has a 6.5-inch AMOLED screen. This is already a great start for the price, but its 144Hz high refresh rate is unheard of and makes the phone's screen best-in-class for the price.

Going into a bit more detail on those two points – AMOLED, and 144Hz, lets' start with explaining AMOLED displays. Typically, they feature richer-looking images with deeper blacks than LCDs. This gives pictures displayed on them higher contrast and makes them look more dynamic. These are all characteristics carried forward by the screen on the Edge 30.

As for what 144Hz means – it refers to the number of times the screen refreshes per second. Typically, screens are 60Hz, so refresh 60 times per minute. Lately, midrange and high-end phones have tended to cap out at 120Hz – that's the refresh rate of the iPhone 14 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Motorola blows expectations out of the water by including a 144Hz panel on the Edge 30 – speeds usually reserved for gaming phones.

The higher the refresh rate, the smoother content looks when swiping through feeds, and menus, and playing compatible games.

The Motorola 30's screen is also 10-bit, so showcases up to a billion colors, and supports HDR10+ footage. It also gets nice and bright for comfortable viewing in most conditions at around 700 nits, though if you're in extremely bright direct sunlight, you might struggle a bit.

As for clarity, with its Full HD resolution, despite not being the sharpest screen in the phone shop, at its price, the 1080 x 2400 pixel display is exactly what we'd expect. And with its expansive 86 percent screen-to-bezel ratio, its small borders ensure everything looks immersive. 

If we really had to nitpick, the screen's weakest area is brightness – and even that is competitive at the price, making the Motorola Edge 30's display its high point.

• Display score: 5 / 5

Motorola Edge 30 review: software and performance

• Runs Android 12
• Basic Motorola Ready For support
• Snapdragon 778G+ chipset
• In-display fingerprint scanner

With Motorola's interface being the same across all its phones, if you're coming from an old Moto phone, you'll know what to expect. It’s clean and simple, with much less added software than in rival phones from Xiaomi, Realme, and Samsung. What you might not have seen before, though, is Ready For – a way of pairing the phone to an external display wirelessly via Miracast. 

The Ready For feature also enhances the pairing experience with a PC, so your Edge 30 can double up as your webcam, and you can easily manage your mobile life from a Windows device. This worked well in our tests and is a fantastic value add at the price. One point to note, the phone doesn't support video out via the USB-C port, so Ready For projection can only be fired up via Miracast, or when hooked up to a PC.

There’s a Moto app to turn the handful of Moto extra features on and off, a Motorola Notifications app (this one is largely bloatware), and Dolby Atmos, which is behind the phone’s audio optimization.

What are those extra Moto features? Peek Display, Attentive Display, and Gestures. Peek Display is a custom lock screen that lights up when you pick up the phone while in standby. It shows the time, battery life, and icons, to denote any recently received notifications.

At the heart of the Motorola Edge 30 experience is Google's Android 12 operating system, and the light approach to software skinning means you get to see the visual changes Google made in this version of the OS. Feature toggles in the drop-down menus sit in colorful blocks, for example, and you can choose the color to alter Android’s personality a bit.

The interface experience isn't let down by the hardware on the Edge 30, thanks to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chipset. This isn't a speedster when it comes to 3D gaming, but for general day-to-day tasks, it hits the mark. What makes the Edge 30 feel even more premium is its 144Hz screen, which takes UI smoothness to another level.

Anyone who games will probably want to know how the phone benchmarks, and the Motorola Edge 30 scores fairly for the price, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 2677, and a 3D Mark score of 2791 on the Wild Life benchmark.

This all means that while performance is far from flagship – a little worse than top-tier phones from a couple of years ago, it's still good enough for most apps and games to run smoothly.

Also handy, the phone has an in-display fingerprint scanner, which is not always seen at the price, and it worked quickly for secure unlocking.

• Software and performance score: 4 / 5

Motorola Edge 30 review: camera

• 50MP primary camera with OIS
• 50MP ultra-wide camera with autofocus
• 2MP depth sensor

The Motorola Edge 30 has three rear cameras, though only two actually take pictures – the primary and ultra-wide cameras. The third camera is a depth sensor, so should help with cleaning up portrait mode style photos (the ones with blurry backgrounds and sharp foregrounds), but you won't take pictures using it standalone.

Starting with the hardware, and the fact the main camera has optical image stabilization, which helps compensate for handshake when capturing photos and videos, is a great start. 

While the camera uses an OmniVision sensor – known for not being quite up to snuff when compared to Sony and Samsung sensors, at the price point, the Edge 30 is a competent camera phone. For context, the much pricier Motorola RAZR 2022 features the same main camera and captures similar results.

Specs-wise, the OmniVision OV50A sensor reads well – it measures 1/1.55 inches, and the large sensor (for the phone's price) is matched with an f/1.8 lens.

As for the ultra-wide camera, it's a 1/2.76-inch Samsung S6KJN1 sensor, matched with an ultra-wide 118º field of view, f/2.2 lens.

Motorola Edge 30 review: camera samples

Motorola is known for pumping its smartphone photos with contrast, so they look dramatic, but miss out on dynamic range. This means dark areas can look like blobs of black, lacking discernable detail. Far from limited to Motorola's affordable phones, the quality is visible from the cheapest through to the premium, 200MP Edge 30 Ultra.

While this isn't quite so easy to justify when paying premium prices, the effect doesn't hold the Edge 30 back too much. Its photos still pack ample image detail. Colors are vibrant, and the phone performs relatively well across environments, mainly struggling with high-contrast artificial light and very dark scenes.

Also handy, the Edge 30's camera is fully featured on a software front. You can take RAW photos, adjust manual settings, and you can do so across both cameras. So while its hardware and processing aren't the best out there, enthusiasts can override Motorola's processing easily.

As for video capture, the Edge 30 can record up to 4K video at 30fps, and the footage looks fair. Noise handling isn't great, but things look steady enough, and in well-lit environments, results are on the money.

• Camera score: 4 / 5

Motorola Edge 30 review: battery life

• Small 4,020mAh battery
• Supports 33W charging
• Ships with fast charger

The Moto Edge 30 battery story has wins and woes. The wins come in the form of the charging speeds, times, and the fact you get a fast charger in the box. Powering up at 33W, while the phone isn't the fastest charger at the price, it powers up in around 45 minutes – great going.

As for the Edge 30's battery woes – that comes in the form of how long it lasts with intensive use. 

One hour of playing a simple 2D game, Marvel Snap, at 60 percent brightness drained the battery by 35 percent – so if you want a long-haul flight gaming phone, pack a charger.

A power-hungry day of being a tourist, roaming, using 5G, photo and video capture, and map usage will likely leave you needing a top-up by the early evening. Moderate use, though, did surprise us. We were able to get through a full day when we used the phone normally. That means Spotify listening on the commute, occasional YouTube watching, messaging, and replying to emails.

If you don't consider yourself a power user, therefore, and appreciate a sleek profile over the possibility of two-day battery life, the Edge 30's modest milliamp hours could suffice.

• Battery score: 3 / 5

Motorola Edge 30 score card

Should I buy the Motorola Edge 30?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

• First reviewed January 2023

Nothing Phone 2: Two-minute review

The Nothing Phone 2 is such a rarity in today’s phone world, it’s hard to believe it even exists. It’s an affordable phone made by an independent company with some simple, effective, and unique ideas. It’s also a good phone. If you’re bored with the same old flat slabs and colorful icons, the Nothing Phone 2 may be exactly what you want. 

That doesn’t mean the phone isn’t a bit overhyped. The glyph interface looks cool, but in my weeks reviewing the phone before launch, I hardly used it. I wanted to use it more, but it just doesn’t do much and it doesn’t work with every aspect of the phone, not even close. When a feature looks cool and adds bulk but doesn’t actually make the phone better, we have a word for that: gimmick. 

There are great ideas hidden inside the Nothing Phone (2). Samsung and Apple would be wise to pay attention, though it wouldn’t be hard to copy things like larger app icons and a monochrome interface option to remove distractions. In other ways, though, the software felt buggy and a bit half-baked. Some app icons looked great when I got my review unit, but a later update broke things and made them incomprehensible.

Nothing has been working hard on software since the first Nothing Phone launched, but it still has a ways to go, and the Phone 2 leaves me questioning if Nothing, or any small phone company, can really compete against monstrously large development houses like Google and Samsung and Apple. 

The biggest weakness is the camera. Nothing claims the camera has been greatly improved, but compared to other smartphones in this price range the cameras are way behind. If you want a phone that looks good, get the Nothing. If you want a phone that makes you look good, get something else.

I think potential Nothing Phone 2 fans will see the device and something will click. If you find the glyph lights hypnotic, and you like where CEO Carl Pei is coming from with his minimalist and thoughtful interface, the Nothing Phone 2 won’t disappoint. It delivers much better performance all around than the first model while remaining affordable compared to big, boring flagships from Samsung and Apple.

Nothing Phone 2 review: price & availability

• Starts at $599 / £579 / AU$1,049
• Available directly from Nothing and in pop-up stores
• Not sold in carrier stores, no trade in offers

Nothing didn’t sell its first Nothing Phone 1 in the US, not officially at least, and the first phone was much less expensive at £399 / AU$749 in the UK and AUS. This time around, Nothing opted for more powerful components inside, a more premium design, and higher specs all around. The phone is more expensive, starting at $599 / £579 / AU$1,049, but it feels much more premium. 

To compare, the Nothing Phone 2 costs about the same as a fully loaded Google Pixel 7 (with 256GB of storage) or a OnePlus 11. There is no Samsung Galaxy S phone offered this cheap, not even the Galaxy S22 from 2022 that Samsung still sells. If you want an iPhone at this price you can buy a new iPhone 12 from Apple. 

This is an unusual price point, and the divide is because those more expensive phones are all available in carrier stores, which means you can get a discount if you trade in your old phone for a new one, and you can get a deal if you sign up for a payment plan or a carrier contract. The Nothing Phone 2 offers none of that. No trade, no deals. You give them the cash, they give you the phone.

Is the Nothing Phone 2 worth the price? It comes with a premium Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 mobile platform, but the OnePlus 11 is already on Gen 2. The Nothing Phone 2 isn’t beating any competitors on specs, so you’re really paying for the design. 

There’s nothing wrong with that. The design is truly unique and stands apart from the rest of the phone world. You can’t put a price on design, and if you’re happier every time you use the Nothing Phone 2 than you would be every time you use a boring, featureless black slab, then it’s worth the premium.

The big question is service and support, for which Nothing has an unproven track record. When a phone is sold in a US carrier store, it has been thoroughly tested and vetted by the wireless carrier to make sure it works exactly as well as customers expect. When no carrier will offer a new phone, it makes us question the phone’s reliability and support.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Nothing Phone 2 review: specs

The Nothing Phone 2 uses the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 mobile platform from Qualcomm. That was the best chipset Qualcomm offered in late 2022, but at the beginning of 2023 the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 2 chipset showed up in phones like the OnePlus 11 and the Samsung Galaxy S23. 

The Nothing Phone 2 display is top-notch with LTPO technology that lets the phone adjust the refresh rate to save power. It's also plenty bright; brighter than competitor phones at this price. 

Some Android phones are available with more than 12GB of RAM, but this phone should perform well with either memory configuration. For storage, 128GB will be enough for most people, but if you plan on recording a lot of movies or downloading seasons of shows from your favorite streamers, you'll want more space.

Nothing Phone 2 review: design

• More rounded and textured than Phone 1
• Very unique look and feel
• Glyphs are cool, wish they were used more

There is no mistaking the Nothing Phone 2, whether you’re inspecting it up close or caught off guard by its flashing glyph lights from far away. The phone feels bigger and heftier than competitors, even though it’s the same thickness as the Pixel 7 and the OnePlus 11. The dramatically rounded glass back makes it feel more substantial somehow. Perhaps it's the depth of seeing through the glass and into the phone. It’s not uncomfortably large, just bigger than expected. 

The rounded back has a bit of a death wish, unfortunately. The curved glass seemed to slip from every surface on which I placed it. It became a running joke during my review. I’d hear something clatter to the floor from the side table or desk. My kid or girlfriend would ask “What was that?” Then we’d both remember and nod and say “Oh right, Nothing” at the same time. 

If there were four phones on my desk, the Nothing Phone 2 would be the one to fall. Its smooth and shiny surface, married to a gently curved back, makes it more susceptible to falls, especially if there is any incline for gravity to do its work. Be careful with this phone, it isn't grippy and inertia won't help you. 

This wasn’t as much of a problem when I left the phone with its flat face down and used it the way I was supposed to: flashing glyph lights face up. The entire design of the Nothing phone, inside and out, is aimed towards not using it. Or making the phone harder to use so you use it less. Okay, I still don’t quite understand the ethos behind Nothing design, except that it promotes familiar tropes of mindfulness and reducing distraction that are in vogue right now.

To get there, the LED light pattern on the back, the so-called glyph, can also act as a timer. Right now it only works with Uber, but eventually, it could work with any app that has a countdown or a wait. As your Uber ride gets closer, one of the glyph bars lights up and then gets smaller and smaller. There is also a glyph timer that works the same way, shrinking as your time elapses. 

The idea is that you’ll use your phone less if you can use the glyph on the back instead of lighting up the screen to check on your Uber. You’ll be less distracted by your games and social network feeds and messages if you can glance at your pizza timer on the back of your phone, instead of swiping through your home screen. 

Does it work? Not really. Don’t get me wrong, the glyph looks very cool and seems capable of some neat tricks. It’s just that the phone doesn’t seem capable of taking full advantage of the glyph. 

There are supposedly hundreds of LED lights divided into multiple strips on the back of the phone, yet the best it can manage is some syncopated flashes and a single shrinking countdown strip? Where’s the rest? So much complexity is hardly being put to use, and it feels like a missed opportunity. Tragic, considering this is the key selling point for Nothing Phone 2.

Durability is going to be an issue with the Nothing Phone 2. This sequel is more water resistant than the original Nothing Phone, but not by much. It can take a splash, but you can’t dunk it. Heavy rain could probably destroy this phone. 

What concerns me more is that big, curved glass back. My phone fell frequently during testing and I developed a hairline crack in the screen. It’s not noticeable unless I tilt the phone just so. The back is so far unblemished, but I’m worried. While Nothing did spring for one of the best mobile processors it could put inside a smartphone, it did not opt for the strongest Gorilla Glass on the outside. 

Once your phone breaks, what do you do? You need to work with Nothing directly. There is no third-party repair service for Nothing Phones. Unlike Samsung and Apple, which license third-party shops to repair the best iPhones and best Galaxy phones, with a Nothing phone you’ll need to rely on the company’s responsiveness, and such a new company has no track record to recommend them.

• Design score: 3 / 5

Nothing Phone 2 review: display

• Very nice display for the interface
• LTPO technology for power savings
• Brighter than competitors at this price

The Nothing Phone 2 uses a very nice display, just like the first device, but this time it gets a boost from newer technology to help with battery savings. Nothing relies on a monochromatic interface, so unless you are running an app, you’ll probably see mostly black and white. The OLED screen on the Nothing Phone 2 looks great with this design – dark and contrasty where needed – and it makes the skin feel very dramatic. 

With LTPO technology, the screen can slow down to one refresh per second or ramp up to 120Hz, as needed. That makes for an always-on display that won’t drain your battery significantly, and Nothing does a nice job designing the always-on screen and making it very useful. 

While the Nothing Phone 2 isn’t technically as sharp as its rivals, like the Pixel 7, it can get much brighter than other phones in this price range, and that’s a perfect trade-off. I had no trouble shooting photos on the Nothing Phone 2 display in bright sunlight or reading directions on a hiking map. 

Durability is a concern, as I’ve mentioned in the Design section. During my testing, my Nothing Phone 2 developed a small hairline crack in the display. It’s unnoticeable even if I rub my fingernail across it, but I don’t usually crack phone screens. This phone just has a very slippery, curved back that makes it easy to fall off a surface with any incline or slipperiness.

• Display score: 4 / 5

Nothing Phone 2 review: cameras

• Cameras are not very good overall
• Dynamic range and HDR are a serious problem
• In this price range the competition is fierce

Let’s be frank, if you really want a great camera on your smartphone and you only have $599 / £579 / AU$1,049 to spend, there are some surprisingly good options to choose from, and the Nothing Phone 2 isn’t one of them. The photos are improved over the last generation, but the last generation was a seriously inexpensive bargain phone. This is a premium model, albeit an affordable premium phone. The photos just aren’t very good.

The Nothing Phone (2) especially struggles with dynamic range and producing shots with a good HDR effect. That means that the dark spots in your photos are going to be very dark and you’ll lose detail to shadows. Most smartphones these days focus on improving dynamic range, so this is the most noticeable difference between Nothing and the competition, like the Pixel 7 and the OnePlus 11.

In fact, the Nothing Phone (2) was simply terrible at HDR shots. When I tried a selfie with the Chrysler building behind me, I could choose to properly expose the building or my face, but not both. Either the building was washed out, or my face was hidden in darkness.

I found the camera app to be a bit unresponsive and hard to use. When I tried to tap on an area to focus, the camera would often ignore my taps, especially if I was tapping just a bit off-center. Sometimes I would press the shutter button and it would not snap a photo. The volume key as the shutter button always worked fine, at least.

There are only two lenses on the Nothing Phone 2, unlike the Pixel 7, which gives you an ultrawide as well as a zoom lens. On the Phone 2, you only get wide and ultrawide. Don’t bother with the digital zoom, it leaves photos looking blocky and unusable. 

Even under the best conditions, I lost too much detail to blown-out highlights, which is just a further effect of bad HDR processing on this phone. Some photos looked nice, and the extra warmth that the Nothing Phone 2 adds to most shots actually makes food look more appealing. Still, I’d like to see serious improvements if Nothing is going to compete in this premium space.

I’m not going to beat up on Nothing more than this. There are distinct advantages to the Nothing Phone (2) and the camera isn’t among them, but there are other great camera phones at this price range. If the camera matters a lot, look elsewhere.

• Camera score: 2 / 5

Nothing Phone 2 review: software

• Unique and simple interface design
• Key improvements, like larger icons, have an impact
• Not enough integration of the glyph lights

When Nothing handed off this review unit, it talked about how many more software engineers it added to the team, and I can’t help comparing Nothing’s hundred or so developers to the thousands of software engineers working at Google and Samsung. The difference shows. With the Nothing Phone 2 you get a few good ideas implemented nicely, but the Nothing Phone 2 hardware is not well-integrated with the software. I wonder if the task is too great. 

First of all, my glyph lights kept turning off. There is a setting that lets you completely deactivate the glyph lights. I never touched that setting, but once a day I had to dive into the menu and reactivate the glyph. This was because I had a bedtime focus mode enabled, which turned off the lights. The system should be smart enough to turn them on again. 

I expected the glyph lights to be available and useful throughout the phone. Nothing offers a glyph timer, for instance, but it isn’t part of the normal Android Clock app. In other words, when I say “Google set a 6-minute timer,” I don’t get glyph lights. I just get the normal Google app. 

If I want the glyph timer, I need to find it, and it’s very hard to find because it’s buried in the Settings menu. You can’t even change the countdown time, not easily. You can set a six-minute timer and then have the same six minutes every time, but if you want five or ten, or a hundred minutes, it’s back to the Settings menu. 

If the basic glyph timer is so hard to use, you can imagine that the glyph lights are not easily integrated into the system. When you set an alarm, you don’t get glyph lights. If you play music, there is no dancing glyph music visualizer. I was continually searching for ways to use the glyph lights, ways to experience the phone through the lights and not the screen. I had a hard time finding anything.

You can customize ringtones with the glyph lights, and you can set different lights for different people, or different types of notifications. That’s kind of useful, but I could have a simple sound effect do the same thing. You can use the lights as a fill lamp for the camera, but it isn’t powerful enough to light up your subject unless you’re fairly close. 

If the lights are a disappointment, the interface was a pleasant surprise. The NothingOS 2 is a fairly basic Android implementation. Nothing isn’t adding a ton of features like you’ll find on Samsung Galaxy phones. Instead, Nothing tries to eliminate distractions by eliminating color and text. 

Your apps will be black and white. They won’t be labeled. That means they’ll be harder to find, at least at first. Once you figure out what icons look like, it’s actually a very clean and pleasing look for a home screen. I had no trouble getting used to the Nothing interface, and I liked some of the simple tweaks.

My favorite is the ability to blow up an app icon to four times its normal size. Instead of taking up one square on the home screen grid, it takes up four. For my favorite, most-used apps like Waze maps and my TV’s Roku remote control app, that was an invaluable shortcut. Much nicer, even, than finding a widget to act as a remote or start a mapping session. It turns out I didn’t need a widget, I just needed a bigger button. 

Nothing even does a nice job with the always-on display, and I found Nothing’s off-screen to be more useful than on my Samsung or iPhone. Of course, those phones have many times the features and customization options that Nothing offers, but simplicity is the point here, and I think Nothing creates an effectively simple home screen that makes the phone a pleasure to use.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Nothing Phone 2 review: performance

• Probably faster than it needs to be
• Camera app could be unresponsive
• Faster than a Pixel, slower than OnePlus

With the second generation Nothing Phone 2, Nothing gave the phone a big upgrade in processing power, jumping from a bargain, mid-range chipset to a flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 platform. That’s the same chipset used on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and the Motorola Razr Plus (Razr 40 Ultra). There is a newer Snapdragon, the Gen 2 chipset found in the OnePlus 11, but the differences are marginal. 

The Nothing Phone 2 performed very well and had no trouble throughout my tests, at least when it came to running the fastest apps and newest games. Everything ran smoothly and looked sweet on the Nothing Phone’s fast display.

I had some response issues with the camera, and I’m not sure if that’s a performance problem or a software problem, since Nothing writes its own camera app instead of using the stock Google Android Camera. Sometimes I’d press the button or navigate between modes and the camera would freeze and stall for a second or two. 

If you want a faster phone than this for the same price, the OnePlus is a bit faster, but you’ll only be able to tell in benchmark tests. The Nothing Phone 2 has plenty of power to run games at high graphics levels, and the visual flourishes Nothing adds to the interface look very smooth running on this phone. 

It may help that I am using the highest-tier model of the Nothing Phone 2 for my review. There are 8GB and 12GB models available, and that much RAM can make a difference in an Android phone. I’m sure apps will still run smoothly on both models, but if you switch between apps often or work with large games, you might want to spring for the extra memory.

• Performance score: 5 / 5

Nothing Phone 2 review: battery

• More than a day of battery life
• Great improvement over the original Nothing Phone
• Charging glyph is nice … where'd it go?

The Nothing Phone 2 gets a slightly bigger battery than the original phone, perhaps owing to being a slightly larger phone all around. I had no trouble making it through a full day on a single charge with the Nothing Phone 2, and there are probably many aspects of the phone that help. 

First, having a black and white interface may save some power, but probably not much. Nothing’s concept of having you rely on the glyph system rather than using the phone display would also save power, except that it isn’t very effective. Perhaps when more app makers start using the glyph system, I would turn on the phone less, but right now it is hardly useful, so I can’t give it credit for saving power. 

Not using the camera helps a lot, as the camera drains more power than most other features. I don’t mean to snark, but when I have a phone with an amazing camera, I drain the battery faster.

For charging, I used an Anker charger capable of up to 65W, much more than the 45W charging that Nothing Phone 2 offers. Nothing says this phone can charge to 100% in 55 minutes and I can verify that claim. I got to a full battery in under an hour. 

There is a charging glyph when the phone is plugged in, and it’s sort of emblematic of the whole problem with the glyph system. There are myriad ways Nothing could use the glyphs to show me that my phone is charging, and how much longer it will take. It could light the glyphs slowly, or fill them all individually. I’m not a designer, but anyone could come up with something better than what Nothing offers. 

When you charge the phone, you get a little bar of light at the bottom of the phone near the charger, but only for a moment. You can’t opt to keep that light lit, even though it’s a low-power LED and the phone is plugged in. If you want to see the light again, you need to wiggle the phone. Wiggle it, just a little bit. 

I’d like a persistent light, and something larger than just the smallest bar at the bottom of the glyph. Why not embrace the glyph with everything we’ve got? Like other aspects of the phone, the battery and charging treat the glyph as less than a feature, and more like an annoyance. 

• Battery score: 4 / 5

Should you buy the Nothing Phone 2?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Nothing Phone 2 review: also consider

If the Nothing Phone (2) isn’t checking all the right boxes for your smartphone needs, there are plenty of great options for the same price, or even a bit less. 

How I tested the Nothing Phone 2

I have been using the Nothing Phone 2 as my exclusive smartphone for both personal and work purposes for the last couple of weeks before this review was published. I use it for everything I do with my smartphone, from messaging to gaming to photography to getting work done. 

The Nothing Phone 2 is used in my car as my Android Auto device, and I use it with a variety of accessories, including smartwatches, bluetooth headsets, and an Xbox gaming controller for games. I charge the Nothing Phone 2 with my Anker 733 charger, since Nothing does not include a charger in the box. 

I used a variety of apps with the Nothing Phone 2, including the latest games and all of the latest benchmarking software. While we benchmark every phone we test extensively, we do not rely on benchmarks to form our opinions, only for reference. Benchmarks do not always reflect real world performance. 

I will continue to test the Nothing Phone 2 and update this review as it receives software updates. After the phone went on sale, Nothing offered a major software update, and every feature, especially the camera, was retested to account for any changes and improvements. 

Read more about how we test

First reviewed July 2023