OPINION : Hey guy cable , in case you did n’t know , the Nothing Phone ( 1 ) has cobwebby casing and a clean - up back that ’ll signify notifications . It ’s practically all that ’s interesting about it , on first glimpse .
And that svelte tweak of the distinctive mobile headphone designing speech has the company ’s founding father , former OnePlus chief Carl Pei perched on a mighty steed , ready to call out the eternal sleep of the crowd for being boring .
In a man of smartphone manufacturers moil out the tech eq of denim Levi ’s 501s , Nothing is fundamentally coming in with a dazzle yoke and saying “ look at me and how new and innovative I am ? ”
Of of course , that ’s not exactly what he say . In fact , what he enjoin is a quite sensible and precise assessment of the current status quo . However , the Nothing Phone ( 1 ) does small to plow the design stagnancy beyond an LED low-cal regalia and a well-defined shell exposing the charging coil and internals .
“ You have a few big companies and the room they work is more structured and systematic , ” pronounce Pei in an interview withEngadget .
“ They have technology roadmaps from partners like Qualcomm , Sony or Samsung Display , so they get it on what ’s occur . They do a lot of consumer inquiry , they get their feedback and they bet at their competitors and the overall marketplace landscape .
“ So they have this information , they analyze it , and then they create a very rational production that is run to do well on newspaper publisher because they used all this great data . But the trouble is everybody ’s using the same data and everybody ’s using the same analytic thinking . So if the remark is the same and the method is the same , the output is more or less the same as well . ”
True innovation or flashing lights?
All this would be very well and good if the Nothing Phone ( 1 ) work some true purpose innovation , beyond the what ’s probably go to be hide behind a case anyway , if you want to look after the matter .
For starter , I ’m not in the same camp as Marques Brownlee , who in a picture hand on , said he miss having anLED light telling mean a notification . With all due regard to Marques , who does a fantastic job , I receive those utterly disquiet first time around . I believe that ’s why manufacturers got rid of them .
Yes , you’re able to see some of the internals , but those internals are still very much the same . The screen , with its biff hole camera , is the same . The processor is largely the same , but not the best around . I ’m certain there ’ll be some decidedly average cameras too , just like the old OnePlus phones that were sought after but never quite hit the “ flagship killing ” tallness , until the company started burden flagship prices . Not even the overture to selling and selling this phone is new , it ’s come up almost directly from the OnePlus playbook Pei helped to pen .
There is innovation in the smartphone ironware world . Samsung is prove that with theGalaxy Z FoldandGalaxy Z Flipseries of handsets , which have won me over to there melodic theme of foldable phones , backed by Google ’s work with large displays in Android . This cause looks like someone dropped aniPhone 12running Android in to a bucketful of bleach .
Actually , sorry , what am I thinking . It ’s a design where “ raw engineering science meets human warmth , ” according to the guff from Pei who wants to “ bring multitude people back in time to when they felt more optimistic about gadgets . ” I ’m guessing that ’s a work in progress then ?
depend , I ’m kind of blase with the current state of the smartphone domain too , but if you ’re expire to call it out then you have to back it up with more than just bells and whistles and rightfully meaningless language about “ human elements . ” There ’s nothing rightfully unique here . Nothing has just piggybacked on what others have attain , changed the wrapper and called it progress .
If Nothing can supply a true option to the blueprint stagnancy we ’ve seen from the humanity ’s most all important ( pun intend , Nothing ’s work is establish partly on theshort - lived all-important company ’s IP ) gadget , then everyone would welcome that . Myself included .
Just do n’t attend me beans on toast on a slimly different plate and tell me you ’re a culinary revolutionary .
