This new phone from Carl Pei’s Nothing is completely new but strikingly familiar. To the company, it is a dream come true as Carl said in the Keynote. An interesting fact is that the whole phone keynote introduction was recorded on a Nothing Phone (1). The keynote was 30 minutes and Pei constantly mentioned how this won’t be a 2-hour keynote jabbing at Apple again (why Apple has reasons to have a 2-hour keynote).
Now let’s talk about design and features, the design as I said is something completely new but strikingly familiar. This new phone looks like an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 with the back taken off. I mean I understand you want to be the Apple Killer, but effectively competing with Apple means you at least have to do something on your own. For example, I can kind of see the Ear (1) and Phone (1)’s design consistency but at least the Ear (1) didn’t bluntly copy the AirPods Pro design. While here I’m not sure if some people would get confused and end up thinking that the Phone (1) is an iPhone and maybe that’s what Carl Pei meant when they announced they were going to make a phone in terms of “a revolutionary design”. The phone has 2 cameras, and the main sensor is a 50MP camera. Carl says the company didn’t want to have “3 or 4 cameras with only 2 that work to make it seem premium, we just give you two cameras no bs and no photoshop”. From the demo images we saw in the keynote they look really good but that is testing influencers and techies have to do on their own. Another iconic feature of this new phone is the transparent back and the lights, this is what makes the phone match up with the headphone counterpart from the company which already has proven successful for them. The phone comes with stock Android 13 with its NothingOS laid on top of it. I do like how the ultrawide camera is 114 degrees.
Overall, this is a really good concept to start off from Nothing and it will be nice to see how it goes when the next generation of Nothing Phone gets released. The phone will come with a mid-tier chip the Snapdragon 778G + which isn’t the most powerful chipset because they didn’t want the phone to be really buggy and I appreciate how Pei underperformed with the chipset choice. The Phone (1) is a new start and will help the smartphone peek here soon before 2023. The phone comes in Black and White and starts at 399 pounds which translates to $475 here in the USA. It’ll be available on July 18th overseas only as for now no announcement for it in the USA has come.
Are you excited about Phone (1)? Let us know in the comments below.