This Is How The Nothing Phone (1) Will Stand Out
Carl Pei’s brand Nothing is set to launch its first phone on the market. Like before, the ex-OnePlus director is pumping hype for its upcoming product. He launched the Nothing earbuds, which were quirky, transparent-looking earphones that got a mixed response. Last week, photos of Nothing Phone 1 emerged, and after that came a video.
Both didn’t reveal much, but now a full-fledged video of the Nothing Phone 1 is available on YouTube. MKBHD received his test and review unit for the phone and showcased its limited features. However, the video clarifies a few things about the notification LEDs on the back.
Nothing Phone 1: What do the LEDs on the back do?
MKBHD began to describe the usefulness of the notification LEDs. Notification LEDs have vanished from many smartphones over the last couple of years. Some premium phones offer a workaround by lighting up the edge of the display to alert the user. However, a dedicated notification LED is still missing from the picture.
The Nothing Phone 1 has a quirky pattern of LEDs on the back side, illuminating to alert the user. Carl Pei and the designers surely went overboard with the notification LED concept, but the result isn’t that bad. The center circular-pattern LED lights up when you use reverse wireless charging. Moreover, the phone has a long light strip perpendicular to the charging port, which acts as a battery level indicator while charging.
Nothing Phone 1 will also let you customize the glowing pattern with 10 custom ringtones. Each comes with a distinct LED glowing pattern setting. However, the phone doesn’t offer anything the software for granular tweaking of the lights on the back. While comparing the two phones, MKBHD did give a glance at the phone’s front. It has a hole punch that is aligned to the top left side, which isn’t something rare.
But it is not the fault of Nothing. There is a very limited scope of what you can do with the front camera, and not every phone can be ZTE and hide the camera. This year’s iPhone 14 will sport a new notch style which is indeed something unique.