Carl Pei’s Nothing first made headlines for their Nothing Ear (1) earbuds of course, but in recent weeks have been in the news following speculation of them making their own smartphone. Well, in a recent event Nothing has indeed confirmed that they’re working on the Nothing Phone (1), and it will also come with their own Nothing OS ecosystem.
First, let’s talk about the Nothing Phone (1), because there’s actually not much revealed about it by Pei. What we do know is that it will arrive some time in the third quarter of this year, and will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon system-on-chip, which should come as no surprise considering that Nothing and Qualcomm had announced a partnership between the two back in October 2021. Furthermore, during the recent MWC 2022 event Pei was seen not just hanging out with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, but showing off what is possibly an early Nothing Phone (1) prototype.
On top of that, we saw Pei show off their new Nothing OS skin of Android that they intend to put on the Phone (1). Based on what we’ve seen so far, it certainly seems to fit the Nothing design philosophy and branding. The idea seems to be for Nothing OS to be an ‘open ecosystem’, in contrast to Apple’s closed ‘walled garden’ ecosystem. According to Nothing, Nothing OS will capture the best of the stock Android experience and has been designed to offer a fast and smooth interface.You’ll be able to get a preview of the Nothing OS soon, as there will be a Nothing Launcher available for people to try out sometime in April.
We also saw a schematic of sorts, likely showing the layout of the Phone (1) when seen from the back, with the diagonal line on the top right perhaps a new type of notification light. Pei promised a total of three major Android OS upgrades too, with a further total of four years of security updates. It’s not as long as Samsung’s four OS upgrades and five security updates, but seeing as this is Nothing’s first smartphone, it’s certainly nice to see them promise updates especially considering that the plan seems to be to rival Apple here.
Other than that, well there’s not much else about the Nothing Phone (1). Nothing did though announce that they’ll be having an upcoming equity-based community investment round with a USD10 million allocation. This comes after the company’s previous community investment round last March that raised USD1.5 million.
If you do invest, you’ll get access to Nothing’s private community which offers exclusive benefits and insights into Nothing. You can pre-register for it now, and the investment round goes live on the 5th of April. For more information about the Nothing Phone (1) and their investment round, you can check out their blog post here.
