What you need to know
- Nothing's upcoming Phone (2a) will be powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 7200 Pro.
- Nothing says it worked with MediaTek to 'co-engineer' the chipset, delivering better efficiency with the modem.
- The brand also mentioned that it has tighter software/hardware integration.
Nothing is all set to launch the Phone (2a), and that means slowly teasing details about the device as we lead up to launch. The brand announced that the Phone (2a) will be powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 7200 Pro, and that makes things a little interesting. The Phone (1) and Phone (2) featured Qualcomm silicon, and considering the close partnership Nothing had with Qualcomm up to this point, it's telling that the brand went with MediaTek for the Phone (2a).
With Carl Pei categorically stating on X that the phone wouldn't feature the Dimensity 7200 — denying the litany of leaks up to that point — there was a belief that the (2a) could use an all-new design by Qualcomm. But that's not the case, and the Dimensity 7200 Pro is as-near-as-makes-no-difference the same platform as the standard version.
There isn't a lot of information available about the Dimensity 7200 Pro, but Nothing revealed that it has an octa-core design with a frequency of 2.8GHz — same as the standard Dimensity 7200. That means the chipset is likely to deliver the same configuration of cores, so we're looking at two Cortex A715 cores at 2.8GHz and six Cortex A510 cores at 2.0GHz along with a Mali-G610 GPU that includes four shader cores.
So how is this any different to the Dimensity 7200? In the video linked above, Nothing's product team talks about the changes to the Dimensity 7200 Pro, stating that the brand "co-engineered" the platform with MediaTek. It's touted to have modems and display ICs that are more energy-efficient — by as much as 10% — than the regular Dimensity 7200, and that the chipset has tighter integration between hardware and software.
There's also a Smart Clean feature that basically a defragger (haven't used that term in a few years), and it basically ensures that the UFS storage module works optimally after a few months of use. Given the segment the phone is targeted at, the (2a) is likely to use a UFS 3.1 storage module.
What's interesting is that Nothing considered two Qualcomm chipsets — the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and 782G — but went with the Dimensity 7200 as it had better performance. That's definitely the case, with both the Qualcomm platforms using the outdated Arm v8 cores instead of the new A715 and A510.
While Pei's statement is technically true in that the Phone (2a) is not using the Dimensity 7200, the 7200 Pro is nothing more than a rebrand, and it shouldn't be any different in real-world use — but I'm willing to be proven wrong. Anyway, the Phone (2a) is slated to launch very soon, and we'll undoubtedly hear more about the device shortly.
