Technologies

Nothing Phone 2 Review: A Flashy Phone That Needs to Be Cheaper

The Nothing Phone 2’s lights stand out, but it’s not without its problems.

The first Nothing Phone impressed us with its solid all-round performance, its low price and of course its flashing lights. But it never officially made it to the US, aside from an unusual beta program. This second-generation phone is here to change that.

When it goes on sale in the United States and the wider world from July 16, the Nothing Phone 2 will have a range of upgrades, from the processor to the design. But at $599 and £579 (with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage) it’s $100 more than the first generation, and the competition at this price point has never been more fierce. Especially as my test model with 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage actually costs $699.

Google’s Pixel 7A in particular has a slightly better dual camera, and its pure Android 13 software is slick to use. The Pixel 7A’s processor isn’t as powerful as the Nothing Phone 2’s, but the Google phone’s much more affordable $449 price tag more than makes up for that. Then there’s the Pixel 7 Pro — Google’s flagship — which has one of the best cameras it’s possible to find on a phone and is currently on sale (with 128GB of storage) for only $649 at Best Buy. If photography is important to you, I’d recommend spending the small amount extra.

There’s also the OnePlus 10T, which boasts the same powerful Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor as the Nothing Phone 2, has a similar camera setup, and can currently be picked up directly from OnePlus for only $400. Even the OnePlus 10 Pro with its superb camera system is only $480.

The Nothing Phone 2’s flashing LED lights are the main thing that separates it from the competition, and while they’re certainly an interesting quirk, they’re arguably something of a gimmick and not a feature I can see myself genuinely using over time. The phone’s large screen, powerful processor and decent battery life are better reasons to consider buying this device, but at $599, it’s difficult to justify the Nothing Phone 2 over the increasingly strong competition.

A familiar, flashy design

Visually, there hasn’t been a big departure from the first generation. The back is still transparent, letting you see a little of what’s inside the phone, including the exposed screw heads and various connecting segments. The glass is gently curved at the edges now to give it a slightly more premium feel when you hold it.

But it’s the flashing lights — or glyph, as Nothing calls it — that’s the big family resemblance here. Those LEDs light up the back of the phone and can alert you to incoming notifications. Or you can use them for alarms, to show battery charge status, or simply as basic fill light when you’re recording video.

Nothing Phone 2 is Flashier than Ever

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The Phone 2 provides a bit more customization over the glyph this time around, letting you create custom light patterns for certain contacts or apps. There’s also a glyph timer that’ll gradually tick down as it reaches zero, and it can also give a convenient visual cue about other time-related things, such as when your Uber is going to arrive, so you can put it down and focus on sorting out your hair while keeping an eye on its progress. Nothing says it’ll be working with other app developers to integrate this functionality.

The glyph lights certainly made the original phone stand out against the competition, and though they’re arguably something of a gimmick, it’s nice to see a bit of fun and flair in phones. Especially in midrange phones like this, where interesting designs tend to take more of a back seat to keep prices down. The glyph lights have turned heads when I’ve used the Nothing Phone in front of my friends, but interest quickly fades once the initial curiosity is satisfied. Can I genuinely see myself making use of the lights over time? Honestly, no.

But the glyph lights aren’t the only physical things to care about. The aluminum frame is 100% recycled. There’s a fingerprint scanner hidden beneath the display, which works well most of the time. And the phone is IP54 rated to help keep it safe when you have to take calls in the rain. The 6.7-inch display is big and bright enough to do justice to vibrant games or to YouTube videos you’re watching while on the move, and its adaptive refresh rate lets it drop down to only 1Hz to help preserve battery life or ramp up to 120Hz for smoother gaming.

Older chip with big potential

Powering the Nothing Phone 2 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor backed up by either 8GB or 12GB of RAM (as reviewed). That’s a slightly older generation processor, but it’s still a potent chip that can fully handle most things you’d ever want to throw at it, from video streaming to photo editing to gaming. It chalked up some great scores on our benchmark tests, and it handled demanding games like PUBG and Genshin Impact perfectly well at max settings.

Nothing Phone 2 performance comparison

Nothing Phone 2 1,739 4,544 2,778Pixel 7A 1,439 3,560 1,855OnePlus 10T 1,405 3,812 2,773

Geekbench 6 (single core)
Geekbench 6 (multi-core)
3D Mark WildeLife Extreme

Note: Longer bars equal better performance

Nothing says it used an older chip because it wanted something tried and tested that would offer a more stable platform at a more reasonable price, and I think that’s probably a fair trade-off. Motorola’s foldable Razr Plus is doing the same thing. It might not be the most recent chip Qualcomm makes (that would be the 8 Gen 2), but it’s still something of a powerhouse that’ll cope with almost anything you’d ever want to do with it.

The Phone 2 runs Android 13 at its core, but Nothing has done a lot to customize the interface. It’s a very monochrome experience, with a heavy reliance on dot-matrix style texts and icons. There are a variety of widgets that use these designs, and even the app icons are black and white to keep with that minimal monochrome aesthetic. That could make it quite difficult to find the apps you want if you rely on those color cues, but you can turn this off in the settings if you want.

A feature that I can see being quite handy is creating folders of apps on your homescreen and hiding them behind an icon — I’m imagining filling this folder with my work-specific apps like Outlook, Zoom and Slack and then covering them up with the briefcase symbol so I don’t have to look at them on my weekend. Lovely stuff.

I don’t often like UIs that heavily customize the look of Android, but there’s something quite stylish about the design that Nothing uses on its phones. If you’re into that kind of stark minimalism, then you’ll no doubt enjoy it.

Nothing promises that the Phone 2 will receive three years of OS updates and an additional fourth year of security updates. That’s a little below the five years that Samsung offers on its phones, but it could certainly be worse. Still, I’d hope to see all manufacturers extending their support period up to and beyond five years to keep phones safe to use for longer and therefore keep more of them out of landfills.

Same cameras, better processing

The back of the phone is home to a 50-megapixel main camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. Hardware-wise, that’s pretty much the same setup we saw on the Nothing Phone 1. But the improved Snapdragon processor allows for a lot better software processing, with Nothing promising improved colors, exposure and better HDR techniques to help you take nicer-looking shots.

I’ve spent some time testing the camera, and I’m pleased to see vibrant, sharp images that look better than the ones I saw from the first generation phone. Still, it isn’t perfect, with some bright skies still being blown out in the highlights and a heavy-handed sharpening that results in odd image anomalies. Against the cheaper Pixel 7A, I generally prefer the shots from the Pixel.

The Nothing Phone 2’s colors are OK in this example, but there are noticeable patches in the white clouds where it has overexposed the image, resulting in blown-out details. And that’s despite the buildings themselves looking darker. The Pixel 7A’s HDR skills have resulted in a much nicer-looking image overall here.

Switching to the ultrawide lenses on both phones, the story is much the same, with the Nothing Phone 2 managing to again overexpose sections of the sky while underexposing the buildings next to the river. The Pixel 7A’s shot is much more balanced.

Neither phone has a dedicated telephoto zoom lens, but both offer 2x digital zoom modes, using cropping and image sharpening to get closer to your subject. I generally prefer the overall look of the image from the Nothing Phone 2, but though the fine details are sharper, the software sharpening has caused some issues.

Zooming in to 200% on the 2x zoom images, it’s clear that the Nothing Phone 2’s shot looks generally sharper. However, look where I’ve circled in red — on the Pixel 7A the vertical slats are clearly rendered, whereas the Nothing Phone 2’s heavy-handed processing has turned this into a weird spiral mess. So while it’s artificially added more detail in some areas, it’s seriously reduced it in others. At full screen you may never notice this, but it’s worth keeping in mind, especially if you often digitally crop into images later.

Other images from the Nothing Phone 2 are generally bright and vibrant, albeit with that overexposure problem often noticeable.

Ignoring the default mirroring on the Nothing Phone 2, both phones have taken generally well-exposed, sharp shots here. I prefer the white balance and richer yellow of my jacket in the Pixel’s shot, but it’s a close call.

Overall, though, I think the Pixel 7A takes the better photos, which is impressive considering it’s quite a bit cheaper than the Nothing Phone. If photography is important to you, then you should consider looking toward Google — either the 7A or splashing a bit more on the 7 Pro.

Decent battery life

Powering everything is a 4,700-mAh battery that with reasonable use should get you through a full day. It put in a decent effort on our rundown tests, dropping to 91% after two hours of YouTube streaming on full brightness. For reference, the Pixel 7A dropped to 90% after two hours, while Samsung’s Galaxy A54 dropped to 87%.

As with all phones, your actual results will come down to how much you use your device. Hammer it with video streaming and demanding gaming all morning and you’ll need to give it a boost in the afternoon. Most of you will probably just get away with giving it a full charge when you go to sleep each night.

It supports 45-watt fast charging, which Nothing says will take it from empty to full in 55 minutes. That’s decent enough, though it’s a ways behind the 80- or 100-watt charging we’ve seen on other phones outside the US. At this price, though, I can’t argue too much. It has 15-watt wireless charging too, as well as reverse wireless charging if you want to use your phone’s battery to power up your headphones, or another phone entirely.

Is the Nothing Phone 2 a good phone to buy?

The Nothing Phone 2’s flashy LEDs certainly make a statement, and both its processor performance and battery life are strong. But the extra $100 Nothing wants over its predecessor has changed the game. It’s gone from being an affordable budget option to quite a pricey midranger, while the competition has been getting stronger.

The Pixel 7A is arguably its biggest rival, and personally, it’s the phone I’d go for over the Nothing Phone 2. Its processor isn’t as powerful, but it’ll still handle almost all your daily needs, and its camera is better. Plus it’s quite a lot cheaper. I’d also consider the OnePlus 10T over the Nothing Phone — it didn’t impress me at its full price at launch, but its current $400 price makes it a worthy option.

If you love the idea of those flashing lights making your phone stand out from the crowd, then the Nothing Phone 2 is certainly worth considering. It’s a good phone, it’s just about $100 too expensive right now. If you can pick it up with a bit of a discount after the launch excitement has dwindled a little, then that’d be a good use of your money. But at full price, you’ll really need to love those lights to justify the spend.

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team was actually used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions, from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using a device daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.

We take into account additional features like support for 5G, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and face sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds and foldable displays, among others that can be useful. And we balance all of this against the price, to give you the verdict on whether that phone, whatever its price is, actually represents good value.

Nothing Phone 2 specs comparison chart

	Nothing Phone 2	Pixel 7A	Galaxy A54 5G
Display size, resolution, refresh rate	6.7-inch OLED; 2,412×1,080 pixels; 1-120Hz	6.1-inch OLED; 2,400×1,080 pixels; 60/90Hz	6.4-inch Super AMOLED; 2,340×1,080 pixels; 120Hz
Pixel density	394 ppi	361 ppi	403 ppi
Dimensions (inches)	6.38 x 3.00 x 0.33 in	6.00 x 2.87 x 0.35 in	6.23 x 3.02 x 0.32 in
Dimensions (millimeters)	162.1 x 76.4 x 8.6 mm	152.4 x 72.9 x 9.0 mm	158.2 x 76.7 x 8.2 mm
Weight (grams, ounces)	201g (7.09 oz)	193g (6.81 oz)	202g (7.13 oz)
Mobile software	Android 13	Android 13	Android 13
Camera	50-megapixel main. 50-megapixel ultrawide	64-megapixel main, 4K at 6fps. 13-megapixel ultrawide, 4K at 30fps	50-megapixel wide, 12-megapixel ultrawide, 5-megapixel macro
Front-facing camera	32-megapixel	13-megapixel, 4K@30fps	32-megapixel
Video capture	4K at 60fps	4K	4K
Processor	Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1	Tensor G2	Exynos 1380
RAM, storage	8GB + 128GB. 12GB + 256GB	8GB + 128GB	6GB + 128GB. 8GB + 256GB
Expandable storage	No	No	Micro SDXC
Battery, charger	4,700 mAh; 45W wired charging	4,385 mAh; 18W fast charging, 7.5W wireless charging	5,000 mAh; 25W wired charging
Fingerprint sensor	In-display	Side	In-display
Connector	USB-C	USB-C	USB-C
Headphone jack	None	None	None
Special features	5G-enabled, IP54 water resistance, flashing rear lights	5G (5G sub6 / mmWave ), IP67 rating	5G (mmw/Sub6), IP67 rating
Price off-contract (USD)	$599	$499 / $549 (mmW)	$449 (6GB/128GB) at launch
Price (GBP)	£579	£449	£449 (6GB/128GB) at launch
Price (AUD)	AU$1,120 converted	AU$749	AU$649 (6GB/128GB) at launch

Technologies

Zelle App Is Gone. Use These Alternatives to Send Money Digitally

You still have lots of free ways to send money to friends and family electronically.

If Zelle has been your go-to app for sending money digitally, it’s time to find a new method. The digital payment app shut down on April 1.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use Zelle altogether, however. Zelle has only discontinued its standalone app. You can still send money using Zelle if your bank belongs to the Zelle network. You’ll just need to do it through your bank’s app or website. You also have other services to choose from. Here’s what you need to know about this change and your options moving forward.

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Why the Zelle app is shutting down

When Zelle launched in 2017, only about 60 US financial institutions offered the service by the end of that year. Today, that number exceeds 2,200. As a result, less than 2% of Zelle transactions occur through the standalone app. Zelle has been phasing out the ability to make transactions on its mobile app since October 2024.

«Today, the vast majority of people using Zelle to send money use it through their financial institution’s mobile app or online banking experience, and we believe this is the best place for Zelle transactions to occur,» Zelle said in an October 2024 press release.

In December, Zelle was in the spotlight when the Consumer Financial Protected Bureau sued the company and three of the largest US banks for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the peer-to-peer payment network. The lawsuit has since been dropped.

Other ways to send money digitally

You can still use Zelle through your bank’s app or website if it belongs to the Zelle network. You can also switch to another digital payment app, such as:

Apple Wallet
Cash App
PayPal
Venmo

Take some basic precautions when using Zelle or any other digital payment service. These apps are a frequent target for scammers, and Chase Bank has started blocking some Zelle payments it believes could be fraudulent. Only send money to people you know and trust, and watch for red flags like an urgent message claiming to be from your bank or an online ad for concert tickets that seem impossibly cheap.

Technologies

Marvel Rivals Season 2 Starts Next Week, Devs Drop Big News

Emma Frost and Ultron are joining the Rivals roster in season 2, and developers are upping the pace to one new hero per month starting with season 3.

After surviving the endless night in New York City with the Fantastic Four, Marvel Rivals players are getting invited to the shores of Krakoa for the start of season 2 on April 11. The game dropped the first trailer for the new season, giving us our first official look at the new heroes, and a developer vision video dropped major news about the future of hero releases.

The trailer features the former foe and sometimes-leader of the X-Men, Emma Frost, inviting people from across Rivals’ various timelines to the mutant nation of Krakoa, where everyone gets dressed up for a fancy gala — even Wolverine puts on a white tux. The event, however, is unceremoniously interrupted when Ultron shows up preaching extermination.

We also got a look at some of the cosmetics in season 2, though it’s unclear which are from the shop and which might be in the battle pass. In addition to the dressed-up Wolverine, we also got looks at Magik and Psylocke in the traditional X-Men blue and yellow. Nonmutant guests are also getting in on the fun, with fancy attire for heroes like Cap, Widow and Luna Snow.

New Heroes and balance changes in Marvel Rivals Season 2

Emma Frost joins the roster as a Vanguard. We don’t have detailed information about her abilities yet but expect that information to drop ahead of next week’s season launch. Ultron is coming in the season 2.5 update, which should be in late May.

Some team-ups are changing in season 2, including three new team-up abilities that were previewed in the newest developer vision video.

Emma Frost allows Magneto and Psylocke to create illusions of themselves.
Doctor Strange teams up with Scarlet Witch allowing her to use small portals to seemingly increase her damage output via a rapid-shooting alternate fire.
Cap finally teams up with Bucky, allowing the Winter Soldier to leap to allies.

A few existing team-ups are getting adjustments, with Psylocke, Winter Soldier and Doctor Strange being removed from older team-ups in favor of new ones, and Namor moving from working with Luna’s anchor to Hulk’s to empower his ultimate with gamma energy. Two team-ups are being removed entirely: Magneto can no longer team up with Scarlet Witch, and Thor is no longer anchoring Cap and Storm.

The developers vaguely teased other balance changes, including buffs to Peni, Mister Fantastic and Moon Knight, with Strange trading offensive pressure for more survivability and Rocket getting more utility while Loki and Adam Warlock receive nerfs to their Regeneration Domain and Soul Bond abilities.

Future seasons will be shorter, which means more new heroes

One of the most surprising moments in the developer video was the announcement that, beginning with season 3, seasons will be two months long instead of roughly three. There has been a lot of discussion online about whether Rivals’ pace of new heroes (about eight per year based on three-month seasons) was sustainable. Well, apparently the Rivals devs took that personally and are cranking up that pace to a new hero every month, meaning 12 new heroes per year.

This feels borderline ludicrous compared with other hero shooters that average about three new heroes per year, or even MOBAs like League of Legends, which has averaged about four new champions per year over the past five years. Rivals benefits from having an overflowing stable of Marvel characters to pull from rather than inventing their own hero concepts, and compared with Overwatch, the developers seem less worried about mechanical overlap in their heroes, as seen with many support ultimates. Still, a new hero every month feels unheard of for a hero shooter.

New Krakoa map and competitive changes

A new Krakoa-themed domination map is being added in season 2, and Yggsgard: Royal Palace (domination) and Tokyo 2099: Shin-Shibuya (convergence) will rotate out of the map pool for ranked modes, though they’ll still be available in quick play and custom games.

The threshold for competitive picks and bans, which currently only happen in diamond-ranked lobbies, will be lowered to gold 3. Players in Eternity or One Above All ranks will only be able to duo queue, instead of queuing with larger groups — a measure that’s likely intended to keep high-level teams from stomping lobbies.

Speaking of ranks, season 2 will drop everyone by 9 divisions, which is equal to 3 ranks. That means players in Eternity will drop to diamond, and any players at platinum 3 or below will start their climb from bronze 3 again. (AGAIN… AGAIN.)

Rivals developers also announced that individual player performance will be weighted higher when determining competitive progress after a match, meaning if your stats outperform your team’s, you’ll earn more for winning and drop less for losing. This change can help elevate smurfs and other high-skill players in lower-ranked lobbies by getting them into their appropriate ranks faster. However, it can also lead to players stat-farming, instead of playing in a way that is most effective for winning games. Overall, given that Rivals doesn’t use any sort of competitive placement matches, this should be a net positive for the game.

Other announcements

Rivals is adding new skin recolors to certain hero skins and (finally) giving players the option to gift costumes to their friends so they can surprise someone for their birthday, which you definitely did not forget about.

Missions are changing a bit, with the addition of weekly missions and a redistribution of where battle-pass-progressing chrono tokens are earned. The devs framed this as creating a «smoother expectation» of how to earn chrono tokens, but the surface-level description sounds like they’re just making it harder to earn battle pass progress over the season by tucking away more progress under missions with shorter time limits.

The developer vision update also gave us our first look at the competitive distribution, showing how many Rivals players are in each tier as of season 1.5.

The Hellfire Gala trailer says season 2 will start on April 11. While it doesn’t give a specific start time, expect the between-seasons maintenance to finish sometime in the middle of the night in the US.

For more on Marvel Rivals, check out which heroes and roles you should play and how to get free skins.

Technologies

Nintendo Switch 2 vs. Switch 1: Every Detail Compared

The Nintendo Switch 2’s official specs aren’t too different, but the new console has a lot of upgrades on the original Switch.

The Nintendo Switch 2 may look like its predecessor, but there’s been a lot of changes to its features and under the hood. The new console has «10x the graphics performance» compared to the original Switch, says Nvidia, which built the custom processor powering the Switch 2.

The Switch 2, with a release date on June 5, is priced at $450 alone or $500 in a bundle with Mario Kart World, the headliner of the console’s launch games. Here’s all the info on how to preorder the Switch 2.

Note that we’re mostly comparing the Switch 2 to the original Switch 1 released in March 2017, because looping in the Switch Lite and Switch OLED gets complicated.

Design

Broadly, the Switch 2 is a larger version of its predecessor, with everything looking slightly inflated: bigger footprint, bigger screen, bigger Joy-Cons.

Original Switch: The original Switch, with Joy-Cons slotted into the side rails, is a little over 9.4 inches wide, 4 inches tall, a little over half an inch thick and weighs about 10.5 ounces (297 grams). The Joy-Cons slide into place from the top of the device’s sides, while a thin wedge of plastic pops out of the back of the console to serve as a kickstand.

The Switch also came with a dock, which the console could slot into to for recharging and outputting to a TV or large display via HDMI port.

Switch 2: The new Switch 2 is bigger in every way, but it has the same overall shape and layout as the original. The new Joy-Cons will indeed be held in place on the console magnetically, and connect to the console via pins. The new console also sports a wide U-shaped kickstand that spans almost its entire rear width, which can be moved around to prop up the Switch 2 at a variety of angles. Nintendo says the console has more powerful speakers, which we’re looking forward to testing.

The Switch 2’s dock is largely similar in function though it has rounded edges and an internal fan to cool down the console during long game sessions. More importantly, it can output games in 4K to TVs, but only for select games.

Joy-Cons

The Joy-Cons were a marvel when they arrived on the first Switch, and while they’re functionally similar in its successor, there have been upgrades in the Switch 2’s controllers.

Original Switch: The Switch Joy-Cons are simple but powerful controllers that slid on and off the console via plastic rails, connecting and recharging via pins on the side. Detach and they become their own micro-controllers, with little shoulder buttons to boot.

Switch 2: The new console’s Joy-Cons are larger to fit the Switch 2, and lock into the side of the console via powerful magnets — there are small inward-facing buttons to the side of ZR and ZL to detach the controllers from the console. The larger-size Joy-Cons have longer L and R outside shoulder buttons, as well as much wider SL and SR internal shoulder buttons, which are accessible when detached from the console.

And yes, you can use the Switch 2 Joy-Cons as mice by placing their inner edges flat on a surface. During the Nintendo Direct, we saw it being used to control active action games like the wheelchair basketball-simulating DragXDrive and strategy games like Civilization VII.

Display size

Original Switch: The original Switch has a 6.2-inch LCD screen with 1,280×720-pixel resolution, which was reasonably impressive at launch in 2017 but has been outclassed by newer handhelds with sharper displays. The Switch OLED upgraded this with a larger 7-inch display showing deeper blacks and colors, but no upgrade in resolution. The Switch Lite has a 5.5-inch LCD screen.

Switch 2: Unsurprisingly, the Switch 2’s larger size means a larger display. The new console has a 7.9-inch 1080p LCD screen that can get up to 120Hz refresh rate in handheld mode, or up to 4K when docked and outputting to a TV.

Why no OLED display? Possibly to save on costs… or possibly to give Nintendo room to release a Switch 2 OLED version down the line.

CPU/GPU

Original Switch: The original Switch runs on an Nvidia custom Tegra X1 processor split into four ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores, and according to Hackaday, there are four extra A53 cores that aren’t used.

Switch 2: Once again, Nintendo hasn’t released any official info on the Switch 2’s specs, even after the Nintendo Direct reveal stream — and they most the company reveals is that it has a «custom processor made by Nvidia» on the Switch 2’s official specs page. Nvidia confirmed it also has a custom GPU, claiming that the new console has «10x the graphics performance» of the Switch 1, and the custom processor’s AI-powered features include Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), face tracking and background removal for video chat and real-time ray tracing.

We do still have more supposed details from previous leaks. Months ago on X (formerly Twitter), leaker Zuby_Tech posted that the Switch 2’s CPU will be an eight-core Arm Cortex A78C. They also suggested that the GPU will be an Nvidia T239 Ampere, aligning with years of similar rumors reported on by Eurogamer and others about the custom chip, which derives from Nvidia’s Tegra line of chips for smartphones and mobile devices.

RAM and storage

Original Switch. The Switch has 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, expandable up to 2TB via microSD cards in the slot beneath the kickstand.

Switch 2: Even after the reveal stream, Nintendo didn’t release official specs for RAM. Leaker Zuby_Tech posted on X back in September suggesting the Switch 2 will have 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. That leak also suggested the new console will have two internal fans, up from the single one in the original Switch.

Nintendo did confirm that the new console will have 256GB of onboard storage, which can be expanded with special microSD Express cards — sorry, your old Switch-compatible microSD cards won’t work on the Switch 2.

Battery life

Original Switch: The original Switch packs a 4,310-mAh battery, which gives between 4.5 and 9 hours of battery life depending on screen brightness and other factors.

Switch 2: Though Nintendo didn’t release details on the Switch 2’s capacity in the reveal stream, the company does list specs on its website, showing it packs a 5,220mAh battery. While that’s notably larger than the one in its predecessor, Nintendo estimates this will only get players between an estimated 2 and 6.5 hours, depending on games played.

Ports

Original Switch: The first Switch sports a single USB-C port out the bottom, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top and Wi-Fi 5 plus Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity. On the top is a slot at the top for Switch game cartridges as well as the microSD slot beneath the kickstand on the rear of the console.

Switch 2: The Switch 2 retains the original’s USB-C port on the bottom and 3.5mm jack on the top while adding another USB-C port topside, and now we know what it’s for: to connect with accessories like the Nintendo Switch Camera, a webcam-like camera on a stand to let you do Nintendo’s version of FaceTiming while you play games with your friends.

Nintendo hasn’t clarified the console’s connectivity options, and rumors are scarce on the subject.

As for cartridges, Switch 2 will play some original Switch games in physical versions. The cartridge slot is to the right of the headphone jack in the above image, which is where the slot is on the original Switch. You can tell game cartridges from the two console generations apart by color: ones for the new Switch 2 are red, while older Switch 1 games are black.