Nothing Phone 1 is company's first phone, landing with Android-based Nothing OS

Today, former OnePlus exec Carl Pei made the big announcement we’ve all been expecting: Nothing will launch an Android-based smartphone this year. What’s more, the phone will come with a custom Android skin that, on paper, sounds a lot like the early days of OnePlus’ Oxygen OS.

The smartphone is officially called the Nothing Phone 1. This continues the company’s apparent branding strategy as its first product is a set of earbuds known as Ear 1. Nothing confirmed Phone 1 will be its next hardware launch, so we won’t see any other hardware for a while.

See also: Nothing is borrowing all the right moves from the early OnePlus playbook

Phone 1 will have an undisclosed Snapdragon processor under the hood. Being that this is the company’s first product, it’s impossible to say which processor that could be. Nothing said it would divulge more information on the phone and its included hardware “in the coming months.”

The company did not disclose a definite launch date for the phone, other than a vague estimate of Summer 2022. That means sometime between now and the end of September, but we’ll likely learn more specific information soon.

Nothing Phone 1: ‘Iconic design’

One of the standout design features of Nothing’s only current product — Nothing Ear 1 — is its transparent casing both on the earbuds and the charging case. When we interviewed Carl Pei in the early days of Nothing, he mentioned that this would be something that would carry over to other products.

With that in mind, it’s very likely part or even all of the Nothing Phone 1 would feature transparent casing. If that comes to be, it would certainly set the smartphone apart from others on the market. It would also make the pairing of a Nothing phone and set of its earbuds a bit of a fashion statement.

However, this is all conjecture at the moment. Apart from using the term “iconic design” to describe the Nothing Phone 1, the company didn’t divulge any specifics. It did divulge the strange symbol above, which could be a hint as to what we might see.

Nothing OS

When we finally see the Nothing Phone 1 land, it will have an Android skin known as Nothing OS. Surprisingly, the company had a lot more to say about this than it did the actual phone. First, it confirmed the Nothing Phone 1 will get three years of OS updates and four years of security updates, which nearly matches Google’s current commitments. Here are the company’s own words on Nothing OS:

Staying true to Nothing’s founding mission, Nothing OS is built on an open and seamless ecosystem that will effortlessly connect and integrate Nothing products and products from other world-leading brands. Nothing OS captures the best features of pure Android, distilling the operating system to just the essentials, where every byte has a purpose. It is designed to deliver a fast, smooth, and personal experience. A coherent interface, the hardware seamlessly integrates with software through bespoke fonts, colours, graphical elements, and sounds.

New school OnePlus fans will likely be quite excited about this. The description of Nothing OS being “pure Android” with some subtle tweaks sounds a lot like the early days of Oxygen OS. Nothing even uses the terms “fast and smooth” to describe it, which is a direct callback to terminology OnePlus still uses to this day to describe Oxygen OS.

We’ll also get a chance to taste Nothing OS before the full launch of the Nothing Phone 1. The company will make the Nothing OS launcher available at some point in April. We’ll share all the details on that once we have them.

In the meantime, what do you think about the Nothing Phone 1? Answer the poll above and sound off in the comments with anything you’d like to add!