Nothing, the tech company started by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, on Tuesday announced that it has tied up with e-commerce giant Flipkart to sell its first attempt at a smartphone. For now, all we have is a name — Nothing Phone (1) — and no specifications.
A spec sheet did leak online a week ago and the phone will purportedly be a mid-range device powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G SoC, and feature a 6.43-inch Full HD+ 90Hz AMOLED display with HDR10+ support, 4,500 mAh battery, 8GB RAM, 128GB storage and a triple rear camera setup with a 50MP primary sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens and a 2MP macro sensor. The phone will also feature a 32MP selfie camera.
Nothing is confirmed (pun fully intended) and so, we advise you to take this with a pinch of salt. Granted, the phone is coming from Carl Pei, who helped launch the original "Flagship Killer" with the OnePlus One in 2014, but his most recent effort, the truly wireless earbuds Nothing Ear (1) — launched in August 2021 — were decent for the price, but nothing (again, pun) to write home about, as per several reviews.
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The earbuds, which feature a stripped down, transparent design and comfortable fit, were supposed to be "AirPods Killers", but, as The Verge noted in its review, the earbuds "don’t pull off any huge upsets against more premium competition". Gadgets 360 noted that the earbuds offer "decent sound quality and active noise cancellation performance" but that there are better-sounding earphones in the price range (Rs 5,999).
And these reviews came after months of hype and concept leaks, clearly aimed at replicating the massively successful hype machine that made the OnePlus One a massive success.
This is not to completely dismiss the Nothing Ear (1). The earbuds were, after all, the third best-selling product in the premium segment (>Rs 5,000) in India in their debut quarter, as per Counterpoint Research, which is a respectable showing. Also, most reviews of the earbuds average 7.5 on a scale of 10, with an important caveat: this rating is for its performance in its price range, which is decent gives you the bang for the buck. But given its ambitions, I doubt Nothing would have been happy with the "decent for its price verdict".
The problem isn't really the past performance of the company. It is the lack of any tangible information, though the phone is scheduled for release "later this summer".
At a virtual event on March 23, Carl Pei
gave us the name of the smartphone — but we don't have a release date, a starting price, or even a first look. All we have so far is a cryptic logo and the confirmation that a phone is, indeed, in the works. The phone will run on Nothing OS, a skin of Android 12. Given that Nothing is still in its nascency, and it is working on only its second product, through which it will make its entry into the overcrowded smartphone space, it is perhaps, understandable, that there is a wait before we have actual information.
In Tuesday's press release, “We are delighted to bring Nothing’s much awaited phone (1) to Indian consumers and we are confident that it will be another exciting milestone in the smartphone industry," Ajay Veer Yadav, Senior Vice-President, Flipkart said.
Manu Sharma, Vice-President and General Manager, Nothing India, said, "We have demonstrated that India is excited for a new consumer tech brand to emerge from a stagnant industry. We want to continue this successful partnership streak with our highly anticipated smartphone Nothing phone (1) which I am certain will disrupt the smartphone space as we know it.”
So far, so good. But with nothing but a name and little else to go on, do not buy into the Nothing hype yet.
First Published: May 10, 2022 10:21 PM IST
