The Nothing Phone (1) finally made its way to the US recently as part of a $299 limited beta program, but Carl Pei, Nothing CEO and co-founder, confirms in an interview with Inverse(Opens in a new window) that the Nothing Phone (2) will launch in the US later this year.
“We decided to make the US our number one priority in terms of markets,” Pei said.
As for why it took so long to hit the US, Pei confirmed that as a young company—its first product, the Ear(1) launched in July 2021—”our hands were tied building the team as we were building the products. Now as we’re on a more solid footing, we can take a step forward.”
Pei reiterated that one big impediment to launching a phone in the US is our carrier-based system. “When you make a smartphone for the US you need to work with the carriers on certification and adapting some of their features into your OS,” he said. “We didn’t have the resources for that before and now we do.”
It doesn’t sound like the Phone (2) will rival Samsung or Apple in terms of specs, even though the company considers it a flagship internally. In our review, we found the Phone (1) sports a “simple, elegant software and a completely unique illuminated back, but it’s not a performance leader.”
Still, Pei insists the Phone (1) is a flagship “in terms of the amount of care we put into the product.” The Phone (2) will be a “premium” handset, “which signifies that it’s a more premium step up, but it’s still a flagship just like the Phone (1),” he said.
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While that sounds vague, it does imply that the power level of the Phone (2) will be in a similar range to that of the Phone (1).
While not much else was revealed about the phone, we can assume it’ll follow the transparent designs of previous Nothing hardware, though we’ll have to wait until the company has more to show before we can know for sure. At least we know it’s coming in late 2023, so we won’t have to wait too long to get our hands on the device and see if it’s a worthy competitor to the wealth of incredible smartphones on the market.
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