Nothing Phone (1)
nothing.tech
nothing.tech
I don't want to use a phone that feels like an imitation of someone else's design; I want to use a phone that has its own unique vibe.
(On the website: It's so refreshing to use a website that just scrolls naturally. Compare to Apple's product pages which all hijack the scroll in really terrible ways these days.)
It's just a minimalistic rounded rectangle. You can hardly call it design.
– How rounded is the rectangle
- The thickness of the bezel
- How rounded is the phone depth-wide
- The shape of the notch
- The location and appearance of the speakers
- The location and appearance of the cameras
– The location and shape and choice of buttons on the side (volume, lock, silence)
- Any sort of visual framing of the edge of the phone
In all of these respects the Nothing Phone basically just cribs off of the iPhone design language.
Compare e.g. to the Samsung Galaxy S22. It still has basic the "rounded rectangle" form factor, but the other elements are unique, giving it its own visual identity.
Huh, interesting! Duly noted.
This provides an example of my point: even though the Samsung Galaxy, the iPhone, and the KE850 are all using the same basic slab design pioneered (apparently!) by LG, they all have distinct visual identities.
In contrast the Nothing Phone is mostly just cribbing off of the iPhone.
They need to take what they did w/ the LED area and apply the same design language to the rest of the phone.
Those LEDs at the sides of the 3220 were not only beautiful but really useful. As I use to carry the phone in my pants pockets, when I was at a crowded or noisy place at night couldn't hear it when it rang - but nevertheless could see it was ringing because the light went through the pocket! So you could even personalize the ringones for each contact and that stuff and you could tell who was calling you without hearing the ringtone, just seeing the phone from afar.
Albeit you could personalize that light pattern via MIDI - if I recall correctly, each LED was controlled via a special MIDI instrument so you needed to lay those along the other instruments in a MIDI composing software and 'compose' your pattern, which wasn't going to be hearable but visible. The process was rathing tricky for me 'cause sometimes it didn't work for whatever reason, but I could manage to get a couple of tunes working with my own LED patterns, one which was Metallica's "Hit the lights" (no pun intended).
That, and the fact you could design your very own covers for the transparent hard plastic at the back of the phone, made it in retrospect the pinnacle of phone personalization. Or at least as what I've known; things went a little downhill from there and, as mentioned at first, I thought this thing was going to be the difference and be something similar as that ol' good 3220; was even imagining it could come with its own LED pattern composing app or some stuff like that. But really I can't see anything useful about the monochrome LEDs at the back which, as some of you mentioned, people will cover with a non-transparent cover anyway.
For anyone else who won't even consider a phone without a jack... I'm much more excited for the upcoming Asus Zenphone 9, which is roughly Pixel 5 sized and slightly smaller than the standard iPhone size, and features a headphone jack! It's the smallest (and headphone jackiest) flagship in quite some time, slightly smaller than its predecessor.
I came to two possible conclusions - 1) it's about engagement, and for some reason companies want you opening your phone often, or 2) so many apps notify for everything anymore, the LED would just constantly blink. At least 2 could be solved by only allowing certain apps or classes of notification (like say, phone or text) notify the LED.
I used to consider it a required feature when buying a phone as well and would carefully configure the colours of each app and their priority.
But these days I am happy with the default Android always-on display and a row of icons for the notifications. I can imagine that some people miss the colour but the detail offered by the icons makes it much easier to know what notifications you have.
Turns out the website does not work without JavaScript
Too artsy & eye catching for regular folks, with the backlight notification & sheer see through back. Too tacky for regular designers (I guess Jony Ive would go insane if this were the new iPhone). Middle age nerds maybe, but office going folks will think twice. My teenage nephew thinks it belongs in Tron; he's cool with Samsung S series. Price point is neither premium or entry scale (@ 69000 yens in Japan store).
It's a bunch of contradictory confused choices
You could be right about the niche group. I would also love to know more about it. However, niche groups don't drive profitable businesses is also something you might agree.
I had Nexus phones prior to switching to the iPhone 5 when it finally had LTE and turn by turn nav. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was a piece of shit (imo) and damaged the brand for me. Nokia hardware was always cool, but Microsoft buying them ended that at the time. The Google Pixel phones you'd think would be the natural choice, but they've always had mid-range mediocre hardware, questionable design elements, and limited update support.
The branding seems similarly unsuited for daily use:
> Cool phone! What is it?
> Nothing phone.
> What? No what's your phone.
This seems more like an art piece than consumer tech. Even the slogan "Buy Nothing ..." seems more like a jab at consumerism than an actual consumer tech company slogan.
MKBHD shows off the back and LEDs and it looks like there's glass covering the back.
Aww, this isn't the iPhone Mini-sized Android phone we want:
Other than that it seems like a well balanced midrange device (depending on whether or not the cameras end up being good).
The real problem is at the current price point it's competing with some pretty good phones such as Galaxy S21 FE and Pixel 6, and then you can get a OnePlus Nord 2, which is still pretty good, for nearly half the price.
I don't know who this is for.
What?
> Meet the Glyph Interface. A new way to communicate. Unique light patterns indicate who’s calling. Signals app notifications, charging status and more. Everyday interactions, made joyful.
So... a fancy notification led?
I guess it could work differently on different Android "flavours".
If you have an iphone, you can use the camera flash for this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210065
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0376/5420/0459/files/4-1_1...
To me the nothing airpods looked sexy those LEDs on the back this look like a gimmick
£499 for white 12+256GB
(there are other combinations but that appears to be Mon and max)
Case £25
Charger £35
Screen protector £19
Headphones £99 (!)
Ugly JPG pictures and a reminder that all of my life savings have been evaporated! What a phone!
Would love to go back to Android, but not for this and not at the expense of being disconnected from iPhone-specific connections to my family. I liked Android better, but - for the moment - I like my wife and kids more.
...so basically the "green text problem" is about as common as "imperial units." I don't know why we're so backward sometimes.
If the answer is messages, I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have Whatsapp or some other messenger installed. If they don’t, may I ask which country you’re from?
Or is it facetime? Most other messengers have similar features. Or maybe I don’t really know what facetime is capable of beyond video chat.