Next Flagship Killer: The Nothing Phone (1)
With a smartphone market dominated by many manufacturers such as Apple, Google, Samsung, One Plus, and many others. For any new company to come in and disrupt the market they will need attractive selling points to appeal to consumers. The Nothing Phone looks to bring something new to the smartphone market at a reasonable price.
One Plus DNA
Carl Pei the founder of the Nothing company brings a lot of expertise to the Nothing company. Carl Pei was a cofounder of One Plus, which was termed as the original flagship killer in its heyday. Carl Pei sees himself setting up a new company with the original One Plus DNA allowing Carl Pei to take Nothing where One Plus have diverted away from in recent years. Nothing can provide a real smartphone that can provide a good spec smartphone at a reasonable price. Nothing is using the invitation scheme that One Plus implemented at the early beginnings of the company.
Glyph LEDs
A first glance you notice the see-through back containing LED lights, which the company call LED glyphs. These glyph lights can be programmed to notify you of messages and phone calls and can be used as fill lights when taking videos or photos. You can assign different glyphs for different apps. Using the LED glyph as a fill light is a unique feature in the Nothing phone to capture well-lit photos and videos. The glyph LEDs might be a little bit useful and probably a gimmick that will only be used in the first few months of owning the phone.
Design and Specs
The round corners and flat aluminium sides look similar to the iPhone 5 or iPhone 13 designs. The location of its 50MP and 50MP ultra-wide cameras is similar to the iPhone 12. The Nothing phone comes with a 6.55-inch flexible OLED display at a 60 to 120Hz refresh rate with an in-built fingerprint scanner. The phone comes in three configurations:
8GB RAM with 128GB storage
8GB RAM with 256GB storage
12GB RAM with 256GB storage
The Nothing Phone (1) is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G; found in most mid-range smartphones. Powered by a 4,500mAh battery that has 15W Qi wireless charging, 5W reverse charging and Quick Charge 4.0 which can take it from zero to full in two hours. The smartphone runs its own Nothing OS skin on top of Android 12. The Nothing OS does not contain many pre-installed apps and the OS is as close to a base Android 12 OS.
Summary
The Nothing Phone provides a breath of fresh air in the smartphone market. With many smartphones now looking similar to each other, the Nothing Phone provides a refreshing look in the smartphone market. The Nothing Phone could be the company to provide high-spec smartphones at a price of mid-range smartphones that One Plus use to be. The Nothing Phone is available in the UK for £399. It will be interesting to see where the Nothing company takes their design philosophy in the next iteration.