iPhone 14 Pro Max vs Nothing Phone (2): A Daft Comparison?

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That looks like a silly headline, doesn’t it? Why on earth would I compare what is clearly a flagship smartphone with many years of experience under its belt against an upstart with nothing (pun intended and always completely unavoidable) more than flashing lights to its name?

The answer is pretty simple: I absolutely love what Nothing is doing to the smartphone industry.

Gimmicky Glyph interface and Carl Pei’s YouTuber rollercoaster antics to one side, they’ve demonstrated that it’s still possible to enter the smartphone market and capture the attention of a very jaded audience.

Unless a smartphone does something really interesting (and, by that, I mean folding itself in half) it is nothing (DAMMIT) more than your default camera and window into your digital world. It’s very hard to get excited about new devices these days for that reason.

But when a smartphone arrives which is well-priced, lovingly built, and backed by some very clever marketing tactics, the world takes note.

The big question is: can it really play ball with the big boys? I decided to find out by comparing the Nothing Phone (2) against the king of flagships: the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The results were… surprising.

Why compare the Nothing Phone (2) vs the iPhone 14 Pro Max?

As I’ve noted previously, the Nothing Phone (2) is pushing Pei’s company into dangerous territory. It’s £180 more expensive than its predecessor and sets a dangerous precedent for what’s to come next.

I’m not one for making unfair comparisons, but the closer the Nothing Phone gets to flagship territory, the more I want to test it against the titans of this industry. After all, the Nothing Phone (1) punched well above its weight – and that started at a no-brainer £399.

I’m primarily an iPhone user, and my weapon of choice is the iPhone 14 Pro Max. It’s a technical marvel, built like a tank, and feels every bit as premium as you’d expect. It just isn’t particularly exciting.

My daily experience with the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the importance of holding Apple to account at the top of the smartphone tree makes it the perfect candidate for a battle against the Android upstart.

What makes a great flagship smartphone?

There are several elements that define a flagship smartphone.

The first is the design. A flagship should look and feel expensive and this is where the iPhone has always scored very highly. Competition has increased considerably in this area over the last few years but, in my opinion, the iPhone is still a smidgen ahead in the quality stakes. It looks and feels expensive – as it should.

The second is the camera system. It has to be out-of-the-box brilliant. There should be enough optical zoom range to make it ultra-flexible, and not an ounce of wait time for taking and processing photos. The video performance should also be top-notch and useable within professional settings. The iPhone remains a top player in this category.

The third is the performance, although, admittedly, the democratisation of super-fast chip design is fast making this a moot point. There isn’t a single smartphone I’ve tried in the last 12 months that hasn’t felt super smooth and fluid, no matter its price point. Regardless, flagship smartphones need to prove their worth beyond day-to-day speediness and be ready for benchmark pissing contests and serious mobile gamers. Once again, the iPhone has never struggled in this regard.

Lastly, we have the special ‘something extra’ that all flagship smartphones possess. It might be a foldable display, fancy stylus, or crazy camera specification (here’s looking at you, Sony), but it needs to be non-gimmicky enough to appeal to a specific portion of the user base. The iPhone 14 Pro Max has that special something, and no, it isn’t the Dynamic Island – it’s the Apple ecosystem, which is unrivalled.

Let’s see how the Nothing Phone (2) stacks up in each of these areas!

How does the Nothing Phone (2) fare?

Starting with the design, the Nothing Phone (2) really is knocking on the door of the flagships. Made from recycled aluminium, plastic, and steel, it combines a premium feel with a surprising lack of weight.

The Nothing Phone (2) is indeed one of the lightest large-display smartphones I’ve used. It’s marginally heavier than the previous generation but not enough to be troublesome. More importantly, the Nothing Phone (2) is, once again, far kinder on the pocket than the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The curved rear glass cover feels lovely in the hand, and the presence of the Glyph Interface – although gimmicky – does give it an edge.

Moving onto the camera system, and I’d like you to check out this first photo comparison between the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Nothing Phone (2).

As you can see, the Nothing Phone (2) nails the colours on my ‘beachball of death’ cushion. The iPhone… well, it really doesn’t, does it? To put some context around this, to the right of the frame, just out of shot, is a bright LED light that casts a blue wash across the wall. The presence of that light completely throws off the iPhone, but it doesn’t present a problem for the Nothing Phone (2).

Interesting.

As for the rest of my test shots, the iPhone photos are definitely sharper and, at times, more vibrant.

Despite this, the Nothing Phone (2) sometimes delivers better dynamic range, as can be seen in this photo of my studio.

Both of these devices have their own photographic look, and your favourite will depend entirely on your personal preference for photos.

Where it completely falls apart for the Nothing Phone (2) is the absence of useable optical zoom ranges. The wide angle isn’t bad…

But it’s the digital zoom that makes it a far less flexible camera to use compared to the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Put simply, the Nothing Phone (2) is unusable beyond 2x, and even at that focal length it often struggles to deliver pleasing results.

When it comes to selfies, they’re on par, which is important, because we’re all obsessed with taking photos of our own faces.

As for the video, the Nothing Phone (2) loses immediately on paper due to fewer frame rate options. It also only has a 1080p capable selfie camera, which does a decent enough job, but can’t match the iPhone’s enviable 4K front-facer.

The main camera system video is fairly comparable when it comes to image quality, but the Nothing Phone (2) – like so many competitors – doesn’t come close to the iPhone’s smooth and natural image stabilisation. Like most Android devices, it has a weird, unnatural, jerky feel to it which just isn’t very pleasant on the eye.

What about performance, then? Well, if you’re into your benchmarks, you’ll be interested – although unsurprised – to hear that the iPhone 14 Pro Max smashes the Nothing Phone (2) by 1,335 points in single-core, and an even bigger 2,409 points for multi-core. I have no idea what those numbers mean, but it illustrates how much headroom you have on the iPhone if you want to push your smartphone use beyond day-to-day activities.

Lastly, that ‘special something’. At this point, you might be expecting me to point to the Glyph Interface or the undeniable magnetism of Nothing’s brand.

Nope.

The defining feature of the Nothing Phone (2) is Nothing OS 2.0, which takes Android 13 and customises it just enough to make it infinitely more interesting without demolishing everything that’s special about Google’s brilliant mobile operating system. Compare iOS 16 to Nothing OS 2.0 and the former looks about as exciting as a night out with the accounts department. I love what Carl Pei and co. have done with Android.

Conclusion: is the Nothing Phone (2) better than the iPhone 14 Pro Max?

No.

Objectively, it was never going to be. There’s a price difference of £620 between these two devices at the base level, and the most expensive version of the iPhone 14 Pro Max costs a trouser-destroying £1,749 (£1,050 more than the tope-end Nothing Phone (2)).

The iPhone 14 Pro Max has a better camera overall, a more confident and premium build quality, and oodles of power for those who really push the capabilities of their smartphones.

But the Nothing Phone (2) comes damn close to spoiling the iPhone party. It’ll never defeat the iPhone’s ecosystem capabilities (that’s an utterly unfair point of comparison) but if it had a more versatile camera system and the latest Snapdragon chip, the iPhone 14 Pro Max would have a huge problem on its hands.

What’s exciting about this is the fact that those changes aren’t asking much in this day and age. And I think Mr Pei knows that. What comes next, as I’ve noted previously, will define Nothing’s future in the smartphone market.

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