{"id":1549,"date":"2022-03-24T06:19:42","date_gmt":"2022-03-24T06:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/nothings-first-smartphone-is-aimed-at-apple-not-oneplus-the-verge\/"},"modified":"2022-03-24T06:19:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T06:19:42","slug":"nothings-first-smartphone-is-aimed-at-apple-not-oneplus-the-verge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/24\/nothings-first-smartphone-is-aimed-at-apple-not-oneplus-the-verge\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing's first smartphone is aimed at Apple, not OnePlus – The Verge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Filed under:
Carl Pei wants to take on Apple\u2019s walled garden this summer
Nothing will launch its debut smartphone this summer, its CEO and former OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei announced today during a live stream. It\u2019ll be called the Phone 1, run Android, and be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. And yes, it was this phone that Carl Pei was photographed showing Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon<\/a> \u2014 albeit wrapped in a privacy-protecting case.
The Phone 1 will be the company\u2019s second product following the release of its Ear 1 true wireless earbuds<\/a> last year. A short teaser trailer released today suggests that the phone could have a series of light strips built into its back, while a previous report claimed<\/a> it could feature transparent design elements like the company\u2019s earbuds.
You\u2019ve speculated, and now you know.<\/p>\n

Nothing phone (1) is officially coming.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlike anything else.<\/p>\n

Summer 2022.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the latest updates on https:\/\/t.co\/pLWW07l8G7<\/a>. pic.twitter.com\/Lo4UPkk7MT<\/a>
But Nothing isn\u2019t ready to talk specs or price. During an interview with The Verge<\/em> ahead of today\u2019s event, Pei was even coy about what function these light strips could serve in the final device. Could we be looking at a new take on the notification light, which was once a standard issue across numerous Blackberry and Android phones, including some from OnePlus<\/a>?
\u201cMaybe,\u201d Pei teases with a grin.
But when it comes to software, the CEO is more forthcoming. Today, Nothing is releasing a series of images of Nothing OS, the Android skin it plans to ship on the Phone 1. The images don\u2019t reveal much about what the software might be able to do, but Pei is keen to emphasize its look, which very consciously lines up with the rest of Nothing\u2019s branding. The interface is a sea of black, white, and red that leans heavily on the dotted font that Nothing uses for its logo.
Pei\u2019s also very into the sound of the phone, an area he thinks is often overlooked. \u201cOur sound design is really cool,\u201d he says, \u201cso definitely check that out.\u201d
\u201cA lot of organizations have big silos between different teams,\u201d Pei says, explaining how the product team will often work separately from the design team, who\u2019ll be separate from the software and marketing teams. Nothing, he says, wants to offer a \u201csingular vision\u201d across its devices, which seems like it could be a challenge when the startup already has design teams working in the UK, Sweden, and China.
Nothing\u2019s press release says the Phone 1\u2019s Nothing OS will distill Android to \u201cjust the essentials, where every byte has a purpose.\u201d However, don\u2019t expect the phone to evoke the ghost of the Essential Phone<\/a>, even though Nothing acquired the rights to the brand<\/a> early last year. Pei tells me the acquisition was just about acquiring its trademarks back when \u201cNothing\u201d could have been called \u201cEssential.\u201d In the end, though, \u201cwe decided Nothing was probably better,\u201d Pei says (cue the \u201cbetter than Nothing\u201d jokes).
Nothing\u2019s aim, Pei says, is to create products with a singularly focused design language across everything from hardware to software so that there could never be any confusion about them coming from another company. It\u2019s a tall order in a world of increasingly indistinguishable smartphones. Pei cites Dyson\u2019s designs as having the kind of individuality he\u2019d like Nothing to emulate \u2014 it\u2019s no coincidence that Dyson\u2019s former design head, Adam Bates, recently joined Nothing to serve as its design director.
\u201cBecause [Adam Bates] had a very senior role at Dyson, he\u2019s able to bring a lot of his old team with him,\u201d Pei tells me. \u201cSo we probably have one of the best industrial design teams in the world.\u201d Bates is working alongside Teenage Engineering\u2019s Jesper Kouthoofd and Tom Howard, who are focused on the high-level direction of Nothing\u2019s design.
While the look of the Phone 1\u2019s Nothing OS is clearly a priority, what\u2019s more important to the company is what the device represents: a crucial step in Nothing\u2019s attempt to build out an ecosystem of interconnected devices. The strategy isn\u2019t new \u2014 Pei talked about it when launching the company last year<\/a> \u2014 but with the unveiling of the smartphone, the ecosystem now has a central device to anchor itself to.
The aim here is less about competing with other Android phones like those Pei launched when he was part of OnePlus. Instead, his desire is to compete with Apple and the broad ecosystem often referred to as its \u201cwalled garden.<\/a>\u201d Pei specifically cites Apple\u2019s impressive<\/a> Universal Control as the kind of feature he\u2019d like to see Nothing\u2019s products eventually be capable of, referencing the WWDC 2021 keynote in which Apple demonstrated dragging and dropping a photo<\/a> from an iPad onto an iMac using a third, separate, MacBook \u2014 all completely wirelessly and without any prior configuration.
Similar to Apple, whose ecosystem mixes first-party devices like phones, laptops, and true wireless earbuds with third-party products via platforms like HomeKit, Nothing plans to produce some of these devices itself while relying on integrations with partners to bulk out its ecosystem. So, Nothing wants its phone to seamlessly control its Nothing-branded earbuds while also being able to control other products like a Tesla car or Apple\u2019s AirPods.
Competing with an ecosystem from a company worth more than $2 trillion, though, won\u2019t be easy. For starters, Nothing doesn\u2019t own nearly as much of its own technology stack as Apple. A feature like Universal Control is tricky enough for a company that controls all the pieces to pull off, let alone a startup like Nothing that\u2019s building on top of another company\u2019s operating system.
Pei doesn\u2019t have a clear answer for me about how Nothing plans to pull these sorts of ecosystem integrations off, but he thinks the company has something to lure other companies in.
\u201cI think we have a much easier time convincing partners because we help them do a lot of the work that they can\u2019t do themselves,\u201d Pei says. In effect, he sees Nothing as one day acting almost as external consumer tech consultants to companies looking to launch new products, helping out with everything from design to supply chains and engineering. \u201cThis is an end-to-end capability that we\u2019re infusing our partners with.\u201d
The CEO stops short of saying Nothing will produce white-label products for other companies to sell (\u201cI think we\u2019re going to be very adamant about equity ownership,\u201d he says when I ask). But if, say, a legacy sports brand wanted to get into releasing wearables, then Pei wants Nothing to be the company they could turn to for help. It sounds a lot like the approach that Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has pioneered<\/a>, which has seen it blend elements of corporate venture capital investing with an ecosystem approach to growing its formidable company.
Controlling an entire ecosystem can have its downsides, like the consumer lock-in that comes with Apple\u2019s infamous walled garden. One of the nice things about a company that only produces headphones is that it\u2019s motivated to make its accessories work with everything. But that can change if you suddenly start producing both phones and earbuds. \u201c[Nothing earbuds] will work better with the Nothing smartphone because it\u2019s integrated on the system level and not just the app level,\u201d Pei tells me.
Launching a smartphone is one thing, but attempting to build an entire tech ecosystem to compete with the likes of Apple is an even taller order for a company that\u2019s only released one product so far \u2014 especially when that product, the Ear 1 earbuds, had some rough edges at launch. But although Pei has big ambitions for Nothing, in the more immediate future, he says the company is taking things one step at a time. That means the next step is the most important one of all: actually launching the Phone 1.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Filed under:Carl Pei wants to take on Apple\u2019s walled garden this summerNothing will launch its debut smartphone this summer, its CEO and former OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei announced today during a live stream. It\u2019ll be called the Phone 1, run Android, and be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. And yes, it was this phone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}