Tag Archives: phone (1)

Carl Pei hints at a Nothing Laptop in the near future. Here’s what we think it should look like…

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Asked about a Nothing Laptop during an AMA on Twitter, Carl responded by saying “Considered – yes. We’ve even made some concepts. But as a 2-year-old company, really need to really focus on becoming successful in our current categories.”

The Nothing Book (1) comes from the mind of YouTube channel Concept Central and features a similar transparency-focused design, along with a pleasant surprise in the form of a charging dock for your phone (1) and Ear (1) to the left of the trackpad.

Designer: Concept Central

Transparency has always been at the heart of Nothing’s design ethos, and the Nothing Book (1) is no different. It builds on the visual library left behind by the products before it, i.e., the phone (1) and the Ear (1). The Book (1) sports a minimalist design that combines white elements with transparent ones, creating a device that’s all-telling and detailed, yet minimalist and sleek. Just the way the phone (1) looks a lot like an iPhone, the Book (1) pays a hat-tip to the MacBook’s classic design with a similar visual language, barring that transparent panel around the touchpad.

The bug theme also shines through in this concept. The use of the butterfly is a tribute to the laptop’s folding design.

While the phone (1) was purely an Android device running on Nothing’s minimal skin, It seems like this concept is a Windows laptop that possibly comes with a stripped version of Microsoft’s OS, focusing on the essentials (sort of like the Surface Laptop). You’ve got a 15.6″ device that fits an entire keyboard in (sans the numpad of course). The keyboard also comes outfitted with Nothing’s signature dot-matrix font, even including a row of function keys for good measure.

The minimal notebook concept comes with two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and a headphone jack.

Everything of consequence really lies below the keyboard. The Nothing Book (1) comes with a transparent panel overlaying the lower half of the laptop’s body. This houses the trackpad in the center, and a series of easter eggs around – the most notable one being a wireless charging coil to the left of the trackpad.

The wireless charger to the side of the trackpad provides the perfect place to rest your Ear (1) or phone (1) while working. Place your device in the designated zone and LEDs around the charger light up, like on the Nothing phone (1). The laptop also has another set of lights to the right of the trackpad that light up to indicate things like notifications, battery level, etc.

The Nothing Book (1) is clearly just a fan concept for now… but the main takeaway lies in Pei’s statement which mentions that Nothing has built laptop prototypes already. While our idea of the company’s vision can only base itself on the two (and a half) products it’s launched, I really wonder what’s on the Nothing team’s mind regarding the future of the company… and the potential of a kickass Nothing Book (1).

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Nothing phone (1) Review – Resurrection of the Android Flagship Killer

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PROS:


  • Great value for money

  • Perhaps the cleanest version of Android on a non-Google phone

  • Premium design with a smooth UI and surprisingly good camera

CONS:


  • Phone heats up significantly during use

  • Glass back is incredibly slippery and fingerprint-prone

  • Still not everything that Nothing promised.

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The phone is just remarkable for its price and fits wonderfully into the flagship killer category. The Glyph Interface feels like a compelling feature - but the lights there are entirely utilitarian. They weren't meant to be played with and enjoyed as an individual element... and that feels like somewhat of a let-down.

Pei made a promise to give us a phone that challenges the status quo by being fun and functional together. To a decent extent, the Nothing phone (1) fits that very description that Pei painted before us… but perhaps the most important thing about the Nothing phone (1) is its timing. At a time when the hype for OnePlus has absolutely died down (with ardent fans now turning against the brand), combined with the fact that Google doesn’t seem to care even a bit about getting people excited about their phones (the Pixel 4 and 5 were absolute marketing disasters), this empty period of nothingness seemed like a perfect time for a new contender to emerge. Almost through sheer coincidence, the brand was named Nothing.

Click Here to Visit the Nothing Website

About The Phone

Although we did cover the phone in great detail when it launched back in July, here’s a brief overview of what this phone is and what it hopes to achieve. When founder Carl Pei took to the stage in March of this year to talk about Nothing’s next product, he set a few things straight. Phones were becoming boring, operating systems becoming bloated, walled gardens were being created, and there was an empty space in the market – a space Nothing hoped to fill. The phone’s launch in July definitely felt like it did justice (to a certain degree) to Carl’s little March monologue. The Nothing phone (1) is easily the most interesting-looking phone I’ve seen in a while. It comes with a unique transparent back that comes to life thanks to a Glyph Interface – or a series of lights, that flicker when you get calls or notifications. The phone, very competitively priced, is incredibly premium for its price. It comes with a Snapdragon 778G+ processor, has an iPhone-mimicking exterior, supports wireless charging, and has a clean OS. Its few shortcomings aside (and I’ll get to them in a bit), the phone absolutely nails the brief, the price, and the timing.

The Design

Unboxing this smartphone is an experience, to say the least. The Nothing phone (1) oozes sex appeal with its slim design and aluminum frame. The bezels around the screen are just perfectly uniform (there’s no chin), which makes the phone (1) really feel top-notch. The screen’s marvelous too, thanks to that 120Hz refresh rate that makes using the phone a dream. There’s a deceptive lightness to the phone, which, when coupled with its thin form factor, makes the device feel magical in your hands. However, I do have two significant complaints.

In order to make the phone’s interiors visible, the rear uses a glossy glass panel which is A. incredibly slippery, and B. an absolute fingerprint magnet. Customers who buy the white variant won’t have a problem with the latter, but at least on the black model, the back is incredibly prone to smudges, dust, and prints. This isn’t so much of a problem in the grander scheme of things… at least as much as the fact that this phone is just ridiculously slippery. It will almost certainly slide off surfaces that aren’t perfectly horizontal (don’t even THINK of putting it on your car dashboard), and I couldn’t even seem to keep the phone on my lap without having it just glide right off. It holds fairly well in your hands, but does rather poorly on other surfaces that offer less friction like tabletops, countertops, and more notably, car dashboards. The solution is simple – slap a case on the back. However, given the phone (1)’s unique back, that seems like a shame.

The Glyph Interface

This unique back is quite literally what everyone is most likely to talk about. If you kept an iPhone, a OnePlus, a Pixel, and a Nothing phone (1) face down on a table, 9 times out of 10, people will pick up the Nothing phone (1) to get a better look. The phone’s back manages to look interesting even when static (which is a massive achievement), but things only get better when that Glyph Interface comes to life.

The Glyph Interface was designed to be a communicative feature that could alert you during calls and notifications. The lights flash and dance to your ringtones, giving the phone a flair that other smartphones only dream of. It’s easily the most publicly enjoyable part of the phone and I honestly wish Nothing’s design team did a little more with it. Here’s what I mean.

The lights on the Glyph Interface can be activated in one of three ways – when you get a call/notification, through the camera app that allows you to use the Glyph Interface as a makeshift flash, and finally while charging when the light shows a progress bar. It seems like there’s no other way to tinker or interact with the lights, which really was one major let-down for me. The most fun part of your phone wasn’t designed to be played around with. You can’t activate the lights on the back as a torch (the torch feature only switches the camera flash on), and it seems like Nothing really missed out on a bunch of opportunities. There’s a test feature that lets you sync the lights to music, but with most people listening to music on AirPods with their phone in the pocket, I doubt this would end up being used as much. There should easily be a slew of games based on the Glyph Interface like spinning the dice, rock paper scissor, etc., but that isn’t the case as of now. This setback, however, isn’t necessarily a permanent one. Future updates could easily introduce new features to the phone (1)’s Glyph Interface, although future predictions don’t hold much weight in a present-day review.

The Operating System

Perhaps one of the MOST impressive bits about the phone is its interface. As an ardent Google fan and Android enthusiast, the Nothing OS struck me as the cleanest, most beautiful version of Android I’ve ever seen on a modern phone. Outdoing perhaps even Google itself, the Nothing OS is crystal clean, incredibly responsive, and comes with absolutely NO bloatware. None, whatsoever. The only apps that come with the phone are Google’s app suite, YouTube + YouTube Music, and the basic apps you’d expect from your dialer and message apps to your camera and recorder apps.

Pei spoke at length about the latter during his summer reveal of the phone’s OS. There’s an analog beauty to the recorder app, and the camera app is intuitive and responsive. Speaking of responsive, the phone’s in-screen fingerprint reader is buttery smooth, unlocking the phone before you can even think about what you want to do next.

The OS also ditches the signature 3-button Android interface for a bar that feels heavily inspired by the iPhone. At times I did miss the back button, but the bar is something you’ll easily get used to… and if you’re an iOS convert, it’s something you’ll find very familiar. Notably missing in the OS, however, is Pei’s vision of an expansive ecosystem. Pei fired shots against Apple for their walled garden and claimed that the Nothing OS wouldn’t be as restrictive. Promises were made of an open ecosystem with integrations for all sorts of products, but that feels like something that won’t happen overnight. Here’s hoping.

The Camera

I’ll keep this part short and sweet. The camera is GREAT… for its price. Don’t expect the phone (1) to dethrone an iPhone Pro or a Pixel 6, but apples to apples, you can expect that the phone (1) will put up a really good fight. The phone’s capable of recording 4K video and shooting with a 50-megapixel output in RAW format. The videos aren’t exceptional – the phone’s image stabilization system feels great in the viewfinder, but the videos still feel slightly choppy. The photos, however, are surprisingly good. The ultrawide camera takes great landscape shots (although there’s a slight white balance shift as you switch between cameras), the portrait/pano/expert modes work pretty well, and I was pleasantly surprised by the macro mode (although there’s a fair amount of computational distortion + blur happening around the edges). The front-facing camera does a stellar job too, with the portrait mode being just about as good as it can get. With just two lenses on the back, the phone (1) manages to take on the 3 and 4-lensed flagships.

Shot on the Nothing phone (1)

Shot on the Nothing phone (1)

The Performance + Battery

The one significant hardware setback I had with this phone was its tendency to rapidly heat up. The phone comes with an aluminum frame and a glass back, both of which heat up quite significantly (sometimes even while charging). While the phone’s designed to do some heavy lifting, it does heat up a bit (especially right behind the hole-punch camera on the front) – enough to make you feel a little uncomfortable. Keeping the camera app open for 5-6 minutes (or even running a heavy game) can cause the phone’s top edge to get warm and even hot sometimes. This problem could be limited to just my handset, although it’s certainly the first thing I noticed about the phone as I put it to charge for the first time.

Speaking of charge, a 4500 mAh battery on the inside does a decent job of getting you through the day. Moderate usage will comfortably get you through the day with just one charge, although if you’re relying on many apps, using heavy programs, and just keeping your phone running for hours, you may need to bust out your charger for a bit. That being said, it’s worth reminding you that the Nothing phone (1) doesn’t come with a charger inside the box.

The Price

While it’s important to judge a phone objectively, its price says a lot about its intent and overall quality both intentionally and unintentionally. With the Nothing phone (1), the intent to disrupt the current status quo is extremely evident. When presented to people without context, nobody would ever guess that this phone is in the sub $500 category. It’s an extremely compelling alternative to phones almost double its price, as far as aesthetics, branding, and vision go… however, the fact that the phone is priced at roughly $499 makes me be a little more critical of its capabilities and flaws. That being said, the $499 price tag is probably the best thing about the Nothing phone (1). I can confidently say that it’s probably the best phone you can buy for that price, and while I don’t see it dethroning the flagship iPhone any time soon, you can expect that it’ll cause a major dent in the Android market, stealing customers from OnePlus, Nord, Poco, and even Google. Who knows, even potential iPhone SE buyers could switch over to the Nothing brand.

The Verdict

For a new company just trying to make its mark in the pretty vast sea of smartphones, Nothing does a phenomenal job. I do tend to take shots at the company for how much they hype stuff up, but given how young they are and how far ahead their competitors have gotten, it seems like a winning strategy. After all, they did a much better job marketing their product and generating interest than Google ever did for the Pixel phones.

My verdict hinges heavily on the phone’s impressions and its price. For starters, even though Carl paints a vision of Nothing offering an alternative to Apple’s walled garden, don’t quite expect the phone (1) to be an iPhone replacement. The phone (1) is still a first attempt, and has a long way to go if it needs to overtake Apple’s 15-year headstart in the smartphone market. Carl’s entire vision of an open ecosystem seems like something that’s still a work in progress, so it’s important to take note of what you’re getting NOW rather than what’s being promised a year or two later.

What you’re getting NOW is a pretty slick-looking phone that’s full of surprises and doesn’t break the bank. The phone (1)’s UI is super minimal and buttery smooth (thanks to that 120Hz display) and stands out clearly against the bloated phones from OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc… but its heating issues stood out within the first hour of using the phone. It seems like something maybe an update could fix, but whether that would mean throttling the performance is something I can only speculate.

However, what keeps bringing me back to this phone is its price. It costs 60% of what I paid for my OnePlus 8 Pro two years back but feels just as incredible (if not better). At that price point, you’re more likely to be impressed with a Nothing phone than you are with some other mid-tier Android device. For a first smartphone release from a nascent brand, Nothing definitely deserves to pat itself on the back. I can’t wait to see where the brand goes from here.

Click Here to Visit the Nothing Website

The post Nothing phone (1) Review – Resurrection of the Android Flagship Killer first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Nothing phone (1) launch event was an oddly informal alternative to Apple’s polished keynotes

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This keynote could have been an email…

After leaking the entire design online and giving tech YouTubers a first look, there was little left for Carl Pei to tell us about the phone… and that’s precisely what he did. First, he sat at a local cafe, and then moved to a tiny empty auditorium, seated for a majority of the event unlike any executive from your typical Silicon Valley keynote event. All this, Carl said, was Nothing’s way of challenging the status quo by being more ‘authentic’ (the event, he claimed, was also filmed entirely on the phone (1)). The cameras then moved to a corporate/community event in London, where the focus went from the phone itself to the company partners and design/development team. With as many as 80,000 people watching online, this was an odd way to reveal a product they hyped for so long. One person in the comments said, “Can’t believe we waited this long just to be told what we already knew about the phone”.

Back last month I predicted that the phone (1) design leak would put a lot of pressure on the company to have a grand slam launch. After leaking first the glyph, then the design, then the features, and then the tech specs, there was ‘nothing’ left to say about the phone. Heck, people even roughly knew what this thing was going to be priced at and where it was going to sell. However, I present to you, the Nothing phone (1).

Pei described the phone (1)’s glyph interface in detail, highlighting (quite literally) how it instantly set the smartphone apart from the sea of existing phones out there. The frame comes made of aluminum, making the phone (1) feel significantly lighter than the iPhone pro series, which comes with a stainless steel frame. Pei mentioned that the aluminum used in the frame was entirely recycled, and half the plastics used in the phone (1) were bioplastics too. The phone (1) is also the first known smartphone to also recycle all the tin used in its internal soldering, but whether the phone (1) is easily repairable wasn’t really discussed at all.

The front and back panels are both Gorilla Glass 5, although there was no official mention of how durable the phone is, and what degree of waterproofing it has (it would be a shame for water to leak into the back and condense around the glyph interface. The phone comes outfitted with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G+ processor, and Pei was especially eager to fire shots at other companies for their bloated OS, pointing how lightweight the Nothing OS was (although that’s available as a launcher for regular Android phones too). The OS also is built around interoperability and interconnectedness, as Carl mentioned the company worked with Tesla to allow the phone (1) to remotely operate your EV, letting you remotely blink its headlights or switch the AC on. This does leave us desiring for more, given that Pei’s boasted so much about how Nothing is creating its open ecosystem.

All in all though, the phone (1) is an objectively good phone on paper and remains to be proved by reviewers in the coming weeks. The screen has uniform bezels thanks to the use of a flexible OLED (something that even top-notch Android phones today don’t offer) and comes with a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth buttery transitions and usage. It also supports 10 million colors with HDR10+ rivaling the Dolby Vision in the iPhone. The phone (1) as is clearly evident, comes with two cameras on the back, although Pei mentions they’re both built to be ‘primary cameras’ with 50MP Sony sensors behind each (one of them is a 114° ultra-wide camera, slightly lesser than apple’s own 120° ultrawide shooter… but the most understated yet important feature on the phone (1) remains its price, which starts at £399 GBP (or $475 USD). While this won’t put a dent in the iPhone sales (the phone (1) won’t even sell in USA), it’s definitely going to make other Android companies bleed… mainly OnePlus. I’m sure that’ll make Pei smile just a little bit.

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I was genuinely excited about the Nothing phone (1)… and then they leaked the design online

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Now I feel nothing.

It isn’t common for a company to just leak their own designs before officially launching, but nothing about what Nothing does is common. It’s positioned itself as the underdog, the outliar, and when I woke up today to see that the company’s official Twitter handle just randomly outed their own phone’s design, I was confused. However, after quite a few hours of mulling over it, I’ve come across a few realizations – some obvious, some not so much. The most obvious one? This phone looks nothing special… and I now have EVEN higher expectations for the actual launch, otherwise this seems like yet another smartphone, albeit with a transparent design.

The Design

Nothing officially revealed the rear of the phone (one could say that this is pretty much the entire phone’s design) online after months of teasing and cryptic imagery, and now I feel underwhelmed… but more on that later. The phone looks fairly regular, with a transparent fascia that lets you see the inner components. In fact, slap a case on it and it won’t look any different from the iPhone 12. Those weird patterns on the back, which Pei teased in March, are in fact lights that glow based on what you’re doing with the phone. I assume the camera light glows when the camera is on, the lower exclamation glows when there’s a notification, and the arc around the wireless charging coil glows when your phone’s on low battery (there’s a mockup image below). That being said, there isn’t much more to the design as of this leak. We already know what the front will look like, given that Pei gave us a brief on the Nothing launcher back in March.

The ‘Leak’

With the leak, Nothing confirmed a few thoughts of mine. Firstly, everything this company does is backed by a LOT of hype (something that our patience will run out for eventually), and secondly, there’s a fair chance that the core team at Nothing knew that people will find this underwhelming. Let me explain. The first part, the hype, is fairly obvious. Having a small tech company succeed in today’s day and age is near impossible. Unless you hype up your products and sell them at an incredibly compelling price, there’s little you can do to create that fan community. It’s something OnePlus did before finally getting absorbed by Oppo and pretty much following the ‘either you die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain’ character arc. With Pei’s second act, hype and price formed the marketing backbone yet again. The philosophy was strong – we’re going back to zero, to the chalkboard. We’re reinventing tech. The hype was stronger, hiring Teenage Engineering, the former design head of Dyson, strategic leaks, cryptic announcements, delayed gratification. However, if the story about the boy who called wolf is any indication, that strategy has an incredibly low shelf life when you overhype and underdeliver. Now to the second part. Exactly 3 years ago, 15th June 2019 to be precise, Google randomly leaked their Pixel 4 design on Twitter pretty much exactly the way Nothing leaked their phone. The design was a stark deviation from the Pixel 1, 2, and 3 designs from before, and it was widely speculated that instead of a negative response on the day of the launch, pre-emptively leaking your design online was a great way of ‘softening the blow’. If people know what to expect, they won’t expect something more or something else. The phone (1) is mirroring a lot of those ‘vibes’, because the response has been fairly tepid. Customers can’t see how the phone (1) is as different as Nothing claims it is, with a lot of people rightfully pointing out that it looks exactly like a transparent version of the white iPhone 12.

Personal Thoughts

It’s natural for designs to polarize us and it’s natural for me, as a design observer and human, to get polarized, but here’s what I genuinely believe. The reveal didn’t match the build-up. That’s all. Pei promised something ground-breakingly different, and the Nothing phone (1) looks EXACTLY like an iPhone 12 with a transparent back. Sure, it’s neatly designed, and looks rather nice with all-white inner components, but if Pei was hoping for something as vastly different as the Cybertruck, this clearly isn’t it. It’s still a candybar phone, still has cameras the way you’d expect, wireless charging, etc. Aside from being transparent and having glowing lights on the back, this feels like just another Android phone. In fact, I was bantering with a colleague and he ended up saying something rather revealing. The phone (1) embodies the ‘sex sells’ idea but in tech. Instead of an opaque Android phone, here’s an Android phone with its clothes off, in sexy lingerie.

This now puts pressure on the July event, when Pei will take the stage to fully announce the phone and its features. The Nothing launcher is currently available in beta on the Google Play Store, so if Pei has to compel people to buy the hardware instead of just using the free launcher, the phone will potentially have to move mountains and do much more than being transparent and affordable…

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