Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, is working on the pop-up in NYC on July 13.
Tino Hernandez, a recent math graduate student, lined up at 9 a.m. for the first Nothing Phone pop-up in the US, 10 hours before it opened.
The current OnePlus 8T user was not around for the company’s new release, called Phone (2). He was only here to show his support.
“It’s the first US launch for nothing. I wanted to see the product for myself,” says Hernandez. “Seeing a new design, everything new, new language, new community, new support and everything just feels fresh. It feels like the excitement of new technology in the world.”
Nothing was founded by Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, which makes quality phones with top specs at affordable prices. Pei started Nothing in London in 2020 with big ambitions about the future of technology and design, and in 2022 he released the Nothing Phone (1) in Europe and Asia.
On July 13, before the US debut of the Phone (2), Pei sat in a red bubble-shaped pop-up kiosk in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, greeting customers, checking receipts and bagging orders. He spoke to some of them in English and Mandarin, shook hands, took selfies and signed their packages upon request.
Introducing the phone (2) with a new “glyph interface” on the back, Nothing aims to help users minimize screen interactions by accessing important information at a glance. For example, if you order an Uber, you can set the interface to act as a progress meter, showing you the lights on the back of the phone counting down to keep an eye on the driver’s arrival without you having to do look at the screen on the front.
“Sometimes when I unlock my phone I just fall into the social media apps,” Pei says at the pop-up event. “So I think there are a lot of people like me. How can we enable them to open the screen a little bit less?”
The glyph lights were embraced by the customers on site. “Innovations can look like gimmicks when something innovative kicks in,” says Rushna Quddus, a Ph.D. student of chemistry at New York University. “The reason that doesn’t seem like a gimmick to me is because someone took the trouble to ask the question, ‘What about behind the phone? Why are we leaving that useless?'”
The phone, which runs on Android, has a 6.7-inch screen – roughly comparable to the iPhone 14 Pro Max – and up to 512 gigabytes of storage. Aside from the lights on the back, the main difference between a Nothing Phone(2) and other Android models is the Nothing OS 2.0, the software based on Android 13 that allows users to customize everything from app labels and grid design to widget size and color themes.
Henry Tom, a user experience designer who works at a Wall Street bank, decided to sell his iPhone 14 Pro Max after buying a white phone (2) at the pop-up. “A lot of people don’t talk about the vision, but I believe in their vision to make phones exciting,” he says. “That’s something that’s really lacking in this industry right now.”
Pei says that’s exactly the point. “We target young and creative people. If you look at our users, they are very interested in new technology and also interested in design,” he says. Before its worldwide premiere on July 11, he appeared in a vlog-style debut video with YouTuber Casey Neistat.
“If you look at Apple and Samsung, they already have a really good business model,” says Pei. “They make a lot of money. They know who their customers are. So why take a big risk on the product side? I think this is the first time in many years that a small team with big ambitions is able to do a slightly different charting a course beyond where the smartphone industry and consumer technology as a whole can go.”
The phone (2) starts at $599 and has full band support for AT&T and T-Mobile and what nothing calls “limited support” for Verizon. In the US, the phones are only for sale on the Nothing site.