Carl Pei’s Nothing launches the Phone 1, with sub-US$500 smartphone competing with premium brands Apple and Samsung

The London-based company has launched the smartphone it teased for months, which Nothing said undercuts premium handsets with similar features
The US$475 price is less than half that of top-tier devices from Apple and Samsung, but it runs a lower powered Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+

Smartphones

ReutersandMatt Haldane

Published: 3:39pm, 13 Jul 2022

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Swedish tech entrepreneur Carl Pei launched the first smartphone from his new company Nothing on Tuesday, hoping to crack a fiercely competitive market with new features and an eye-catching design.

Pei co-founded smartphone maker OnePlus in 2013 and made it a rival to Apple and Samsung by offering premium features at half the price, and becoming the top seller in several countries including India.

After leaving Shenzhen-based OnePlus in 2020, he founded Nothing last year with backing from the likes of Tony Fadell, designer of Apple’s iPod, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

London-based Nothing says its smartphone, the company’s second product after last year’s Ear 1 wireless earbuds, offers 18 hours of use with every charge, and two days on standby, and that it can reach 50 per cent power in just 30 minutes of charging. It also said the phone has an array of remote features including being able to unlock the doors of a Tesla car.

The phone’s price starts at £399 (US$475) for 8 gigabytes of RAM and 128GB of storage. An extra £50 brings the storage up to 256GB, while the model with the same amount of storage and 12GB of RAM sells for £499. The company said it is cheaper than premium phones with similar features, but the lower price is partially the result of more mid-range hardware, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chipset.

Before the launch, Nothing publicised its “Glyph Interface” on the back of the phone as a main selling point. The interface consists of a series of LED lights in the shape of a made-up symbol, with the lights flashing in different patterns to alert users to notifications, phone calls and more. The bottom light also serves as a battery charging gauge. The unique design was to ensure that “even if [people] don’t see that Nothing logo, they know it’s a Nothing product”, Pei said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

Other phone specifications include a screen with a 120-hertz refresh rate, two 50-megapixel cameras, one of which has an ultrawide lens, and a 4,500mAh battery with 33-watt charging. It also includes wireless charging at 15 watts.

There have been more than 200,000 pre-orders for the Phone 1, Nothing said, with the general release scheduled for July 21.

Nothing founder Carl Pei at his office in London, where he moved after leaving Shenzhen-based OnePlus two years ago. Photo: Nothing

The phone is launching in 40 markets, including Hong Kong, where it sells for HK$3,699 (US$471) is being offered by local telecoms operator CSL. However, it will not be available in the US at launch, where Pei said he is waiting for the right opportunity with local carriers. Nothing has also said that it has no plans to launch the phone in mainland China, where many of its employees are based in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen.

OnePlus used an invite-only strategy for selling smartphones that created high demand by keeping customers in a constant state of anticipation. Following a similar strategy, Nothing held an auction in June on StockX, a platform for buying and selling sneakers and other collectibles, for an initial 100 of the new phones.

Nothing is also looking to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to keep consumers engaged. The release of NFTs is “almost like a sneaker drop in terms of the same type of consumers being excited about it,” Pei told the Post. The company announced its first NFT project, Nothing Community Dots, this month, with tokens being made available to community investors and Phone 1 pre-order customers. NFT owners will get special perks like early access to new products and events, the company said.

IDC’s research director Navkendar Singh said the Nothing Phone 1 will compete against phones from Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, but competition will be intense.

06:56

The rise of Chinese smartphones

Gartner has revised down its forecast for global mobile phone sales this year to a decline of 7.1 per cent from growth of 2.2 per cent.

“The smartphone market is frighteningly competitive and is dominated by Apple and Samsung, who have incredible resources,” said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight.

“Add in the current macroeconomic situation and cost of living pressure and it means being successful will be a huge challenge.”

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