This phone is all about style, but there are some decent specs too.
There’s a lot of hype surrounding the Nothing Phone 1 launch, especially considering its midrange price. But there are valid reasons for the fanfare. The Phone 1 is Carl Pei’s first phone launch since his departure from OnePlus, which he led from a startup beloved by serious Android fans to a global purveyor of world-class phones.
Nothing says it’s sold more than half a million pairs of its Ear 1 earbuds, its first consumer tech product, since its launch last August. And Nothing counts a glittering group of backers including iPod co-inventor Tony Fadell, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and GV, formerly Google Ventures all betting Pei can create a big something out of his curiously named company.
The Phone 1, which is available in both black and white, went up for sale today, July 12. It’s slated for a global release, hitting distributors across the world including the UK, Germany, India and Hong Kong. There’s currently no plan for a US release, a spokesperson for the company said.
While pricing varies across markets, the Phone 1, starts at approximately $475 for the base 8GB RAM, 128GB storage variant and maxes out at about $590 for the 12GB RAM, 256GB storage variant after converting from international prices. With this price range, the Phone 1 is up against the iPhone SE 2022, the Google Pixel 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE, among others. You can also scroll down to the bottom of this page for a side-by-side specs comparison, but make sure to check out our hands-on video of Phone 1 to glean first-hand insights of the device.
The Phone 1 includes a 6.55-inch OLED display, a dual-camera module, a fast-enough processor, a large battery with wireless charging and reverse charging and an in-box charger which is increasingly uncommon even in premium phones. But it’s obvious: The lion’s share of Nothing’s budget went towards design.
In an industry first, Phone 1 features a transparent back panel, which gives you a peek of the device’s components, including the camera, wireless charging coil and USB-C port. Procuring components that look good and function well under a transparent cover required meticulous customisation of components as well as rigorous testing, the company said. In fact, Xiaomi tried to create a phone with a transparent design in the past, but failed using dummy components to mask the real ones.
The back of the Phone 1 is also home to the so-called “glyph” interface, the device’s standout feature. The back of the phone literally lights up, thanks to hundreds of LED lights, which can be customized to tell you who is calling or indicate charging status. Given the design costs, Nothing said it was forced to make some tradeoffs to bring the Phone 1 to fruition at its targeted price. One of those is the chipset, which is the Snapdragon 778G Plus instead of the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processors. The company said it chose the midrange Qualcomm chipset because it’s tried, tested and it “doesn’t overheat.”