Nothing is a brand that relies heavily on the word of mouth hype train. It worked very well for the company’s Phone(1), a mid-range Android device that wasn’t officially available in the US but had cool exterior LEDs. Nothing’s CEO, Carl Pei, has now had his say and has given a small glimpse of when we can expect the company’s successor, the Phone (2), although he doesn’t want to reveal much else.
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In an interview with Forbes last week, Pei said the phone should launch globally sometime in July, including in the US. It’s only a few months away, a real tongue-in-cheek for the tech world, especially when the company hasn’t made a big official announcement lately. He was so reluctant to share more details that he didn’t specifically say whether the company would be bringing back the flashy glyph LEDs from the previous phone.
The only thing that came to mind was that the phone’s battery should be significantly larger than the phone’s (1). The new device is said to have a capacity of 4,700 mAh, compared to 4,500 mAh in the last version. The battery is quite large compared to other mid-range devices, but doesn’t give us an idea of how quickly it could be charged. The phone(1) was decent enough in terms of both battery life and charging speed, but the battery life was shorter than other phone manufacturers’ flagship devices. At 4,700mAh, it’s above about the $500 Pixel 7A but under about the 5,000mAh of the high-end Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. However, if the Phone(2) maintains its sub-$500 price point over the previous phone, it will of course be a sizeable step up.
The question remains whether the phone (2) wants to compete in the mid-range or in the high-end category. In March, a Qualcomm exec said the Phone(2) would feature a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, which is a big step up from the Phone(1) as it powers many of 2022’s more expensive devices . At the same time, it’s not like Nothing takes the lead with this latest release. Pei confirmed that the phone would use the Snapdragon 8+, further meaning that they could push the chip to its limits as they allegedly did with the phone’s Snapdragon 778G+ (1).
The CEO did not give any further specific details about the forthcoming publication. Pei, who once ran OnePlus, obviously knows the market, and his guerrilla marketing has proven effective enough to create a bubble around his company’s devices. But other than that, the Nothing head hasn’t offered anything substantial beyond these easily digestible snippets. He told Forbes that while the US is a “very Apple-dominated market,” there is “no real option for people looking for an alternative.” While Apple is indeed a dominant force in the US — and largely around the world — Android users still make up almost 45% of the entire North American market.
So if Pei wants to be cautious about whether there will be glyph LEDs on the phone (2), at this point you can just assume that they will. The company has already launched some reasonably good quality budget earbuds with the Nothing Ear (2). If Nothing could just settle for launching high-quality mid-range phones to compete with devices like the 7A and avoid all the other insane hype, consumers would probably be better off knowing exactly what they were getting receive.
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