The four-year-old electronics upstart launched a new flagship phone, Phone (1), and a premium pair of noise-cancelling headphones, Headphone (1)
“Tech today feels more like a trap than a tool,” he says, showing media headlines about the ill effects of doomscrolling and soulless digital gadgets.
The stage background changes to a picture of an iPod, Nintendo Gameboy and a Playstation 2.
“We remember what tech used to feel like,” he says, pointing to the iPod.
“Fun, optimistic and full of possibility. What if we could feel that way again?”
His company’s answer is a new flagship smartphone and a new pair of headphones which, he claims, are instantly recognisable “from 10 metres away”.
He’s right about the headphones, although time will tell whether that’s a good thing.
The company’s new flagship noise-cancelling Headphone (1), which retails at €299, abandons the sleek look of most premium-priced over-ear headphones, choosing an aesthetic that’s a little busier, modular-looking and button-heavy.
Headphone (1) by Nothing. Photo: Adrian Weckler
At first glance, the headphones appear as children’s headphones, with large buttons on each side to allow for more basic controls. Closer inspection shows a more sophisticated construction, including soft earcups. Wearing them feels a little like other premium headphones from companies such as Sony or Bose.
By the time I’ve gotten to them, though, the glassy sides are somewhat smudged by fingerprints. The sound quality from Headphone (1) seems clear, although there isn’t enough time to really judge properly.
The specifications of Headphone (1) are decent. It has 40mm dynamic drivers and spatial audio that supports head-tracking. It also has four HD mics that, it is claimed, also use AI enhancement for clear phone calls.
AI is also used to help its active noise cancellation, while it supports Bluetooth 5.3, as well as LDAC and Hi-Res Audio formats.
IP52 dust and water resistance gives it some durability, while it claims to have 35 hours of listening time with noise cancellation on.
As Pei, who founded the OnePlus phone brand before creating Nothing’s line of phones, earbuds and headphones, hopes, the Headphone (1) will probably be distinctive from some distance way, just as Apple’s AirPods Max and maybe some Beats headphones are today. But will people buy them for €299, the same price as many Bose, Sony or Sennheiser rivals?
Phone (1) by Nothing. Photo: Adrian Weckler
A similar question will apply to the Phone (3), described by Pei as Nothing’s “first true flagship” phone.
What he means is that this is the first Nothing phone to very nearly throw the kitchen sink, in components and features terms, at a handset.
So the Phone (3) – which costs €799 for 256GB and €899 for 512GB – has a 6.7-inch, 1.5k Amoled display that can reach 4,500 nits in brightness, which is way higher than its previous models and matches anything on the market today.
It also has a massive 5,150mAh battery under the hood but is still slimmer than previous models, thanks to a new battery technology, silicon carbon, that looks set to extend most new smartphones’ power reserves over the next few years.
And it has a new, more powerful triple-camera set-up, with bigger, brighter lenses and a 3x optical zoom lens that can digitally zoom to 60x.
The only area where it has compromised is in its chip: the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor isn’t as powerful as the Snapdragon 8 Elite – it’s positioned more as a ‘flagship killer’ chip. It’s certainly good enough for anything that the vast majority of people will need from a phone, but it’s a level below that absolute flagship standard.
The Phone (3)’s reception, so far, has generally been positive.
“The general consensus was that it was going to be almost impossible for this company to succeed in this kind of David and Goliath moment against massive phone companies like Apple and Samsung, who have made a habit out of putting smaller upstarts like this out of business,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insights, in conversation with the Irish Independent.
”So to see Carl Pei on stage today announcing shipments of millions of phones and a billion dollars of revenue is quite something. One of the challenges that Carl Pei faced was that the supply chain was nervous about committing new technology to him. I think that the inclusion of silicon carbon battery technology indicates that Nothing has reached a critical mass, that it is able to go into the supply chain and say that it wants access to the latest and greatest technology in a timely manner.”
Both Headphone (1) and Phone (3) will go on sale later this month.
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