Nothing’s Phone 2 Is One-Upping the iPhone in One Key Spec
The Android upstart is launching soon and with an essential quality-of-life improvement.
Nothing is going to try and give its next smartphone, the Phone 2, better battery life than the iPhone 14 Pro. According to an interview with Nothing CEO Carl Pei in Forbes, the Phone 2 will have a notably larger battery than the current generation of iPhones and should launch in July.
The Phone 1 was an interesting first attempt at a smartphone that made for a nice middle-of-the-road Android device. Nothing wants to go bigger on its second attempt, expanding into the U.S. and offering a device that’s more “premium” than its previous one. From what we know, the Phone 2 doesn’t sound drastically different from its predecessor, but better battery life is a good start.
Big Battery
Forbes writes that Phone 2 will have a 4,700mAh battery capacity. That’s bigger than the 4,500mAh battery in the Phone 2 and “a lot bigger than the latest iPhone 14 Pro (3,200 mAh) and even the iPhone 14 Pro Max (4,323 mAh),” as Forbes notes.
I know the number getting bigger isn’t the full story. How the Phone 2’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 uses that battery will really determine if you can make it through more than a day of use. But of all the numbers to get bigger, battery capacity is certainly a good one. It’s one of the main ways Google makes its Pixel phones stand out, and if Nothing can carve out something that’s equivalent to phones that are significantly larger than it, that could be a winning strategy.
The Story So Far
With a launch in July, the Phone 2 is now closer than ever. Details of Nothing’s next smartphone have been trickling out since the start of 2023, like its Qualcomm chipset and the team of former OnePlus executives trying to make it a global success.
To be clear, the Phone 2 doesn’t seem like a dramatic departure from what Nothing offered in the past. Its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip is more powerful than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ in the Phone 1, but not equivalent to what you’d find in a flagship phone like the Galaxy S23 Ultra. The tiniest element of design it’s teased — what looks like a white, textured phone back with a blinking red light — feels like it could have been on the first phone.
What’s missing from the equation, and what Nothing will really have the opportunity to explain in July, is the evolving look of a “Nothing phone,” especially when it comes to its “Nothing OS” skin of Android and the cameras on the Phone 1. There are real opportunities to fully connect the dots and offer a cohesive experience in a way the first phone didn’t. Maybe the company is getting the more boring specs out of the way now so they can actually do it.
