A top-level executive of Lava International has taken a sly dig at Nothing’s Phone 2a on social media saying there’s “nothing interesting” about its most affordable smartphone to date.
President and business head of the homegrown mobile brand, Sunil Raina, cherry-picked two very specific hardware pointers, the phone’s storage and RAM type and gave his quick Nothing Phone 2a review on X (the platform previously known as Twitter), based on those parameters alone (presumably). The Phone 2a comes with UFS2.2 storage and LPDDR4x RAM which given its price, isn’t terrible at all, but Raina clearly feels otherwise.
“Maza nahi aaya bhai. Nothing interesting,” he wrote.
Raina, who recently also served as interim managing director of Lava following the arrest of co-founder and MD Om Rai in a money laundering case, was of course hyping his own product, the Lava Blaze Curve, which was launched in India a day before with faster UFS3.1 storage and LPDDR5 RAM, at a lower price.
The choice of specs was guided and intentional. The Nothing Phone 2a has its moments under the sun. It has its demons, too. Much like any other smartphone. (But on the whole, it’s stupendous value.) The Lava Blaze Curve is in the same boat, its Achilles’ heel being software. The phone is running Android 13 at launch even as Nothing is giving buyers Android 14. The Phone 2a is also eligible for longer support with up to three years major OS and four years of software updates guaranteed while Lava will commit to only two and three.
But then brands dissing competition isn’t new. If anything, it adds flavour to an otherwise boring smartphone market. Lava’s latest is also a reminder how specs still play a big role in influencing Indian buyers, who’ve normally had better access to them as opposed to US counterparts. Would it translate into sales for Lava, only time will tell.
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