The new Nothing Phone 2 could be the hottest smartphone of the year, but does it have what it takes to compete with Google's Pixel 7? We found out.
The upstart company Nothing created quite a stir when it came on the scene a little over two years ago, with OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei promising to shake up the mobile phone industry in the same way his former company did in its fledgling days. While Nothing started small with the Ear 1 earbuds, it quickly followed that up with the Nothing Phone 1 — a new Android handset that was like nothing we’d seen before .
There’s impressive attention to detail here, and the Nothing Phone 2 makes a statement in a way that we rarely see among modern smartphones. At 8.6mm thick with a 6.7-inch screen, it weighs in at a hefty 201 grams, yet it manages to feel solid without being hefty. Although the Nothing Phone 2 looks fantastic around the back, when you flip it around to the front screen, it’s more on par with other smartphones in its class. It edges out the Google Pixel 7 by offering a dynamic refresh rate that can run from 1Hz all the way up to 120Hz. The Pixel 7 only goes to 90Hz, a respectable refresh rate, but something that’s kind of table stakes for upper-midrange smartphones now.
If anything, the Pixel 7 is an example of the opposite extreme, as it uses Google’s own Tensor G2 chip that’s arguably more about neural engine processing than performance. In pure specs, it lags behind the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, but as a custom chip, it’s allowed Google to bake in some impressive optimizations to deliver a smooth user experience equal to just about any phone on the market in terms of everyday performance.
Despite its smaller cell, the Pixel 7 delivers similar battery life for everyday use, thanks to the power efficiency of Google’s Tensor G2 chip. You’ll easily get through a full day on a single charge unless you use it for gaming, which is where the Pixel 7 lags most seriously. As we discovered in our review, with high-performance games like Asphalt 9, you can lose up to 10% of your battery after only 15 minutes of play.
Sadly, the Nothing Phone 2 doesn’t even try in this area. Under lower lighting conditions, image quality falls off a cliff, losing detail and collecting more noise. This makes the difference between the Nothing Phone 2 and Google Pixel 7 quite literally a night-and-day comparison. However, Google’s Pixel 7 offers about as pure of an Android user experience as you can get, plus tighter integration into the overall Google experience. The Pixel 7 still has several unique software features, particularly in areas like photo editing and AI tools, but these don’t impact the clean user interface design.
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