With Phone 3, Nothing says it is ready to take on Apple and Samsung – but is it?

India Today

18 hours ago

Phone 3, Nothing's next phone, will be big. Very few companies manage to create this kind of impression – about an impending product launch – without any concrete evidence to support it. Apple is one of them. Samsung perhaps, is another, even though we know more about the Galaxy Z Fold 7 today than we know about the Phone 3. Some might even say the Phone 3 is still vapourware even though it is launching globally in just a few weeks.advertisementThe Fold 7 doesn't even have a launch date yet, but we know that it will be the thinnest, lightest, and most durable foldable device that Samsung has ever made. And it will have triple cameras on the back with some form of visual intelligence AI baked in. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite is a dead given at this point. The most we know about the Phone 3 is that Nothing might replace its signature glyph LEDs with a dot matrix display capable of lighting up to show some jazzy animations, possibly when you receive a phone call, a text message and other things. We have a rough ballpark figure of the pricing too. The Phone 3 is confirmed to launch at around 800 Pounds which translates to about Rs 93,450 in INR, meaning that it will be the most expensive phone that Nothing has ever made.advertisementLooking at the price tag, you might say, isn't it obvious that it will have the big specs, too, and while that may be true, we can't say it for sure until and unless the full spec-sheet is out (and even then, the phone will need to make good use of those specs, to make an impact). But despite all that exists and what might come on July 1 when Nothing officially launches the Phone 3, what's certain is that it is the company's biggest tech outing since the dawn of its existence. With nearly 5 years of experience, mostly within the confines of London and in India, Nothing is taking its learnings to the Wild West (and Canada). It has been in the US in bits and pieces before, but this time it is going all in.
CEO Carl Pei has never been the one to mince words and, once again, he is putting the money where his mouth is, calling out Apple and Samsung for their alleged lack of enough differentiation – and invariably the lack of innovation – which sets the stage for a new player to come and change the game. The Phone 3, he says, is the right product, suggesting that it has the right set of specs and features to become a breakout hit in the US and other markets.advertisement'We have always said we are building for the long term, and now we're ready to take that next step in the US. Phone 3 is not just another launch. It is a signal of where we are as a company. The smartphone market in the US is dominated by two players, but a lot of people are hungry for something different,' Pei told TechCrunch, adding that 'We have already seen strong conversion rates from users switching to Nothing, and with Phone 3, we are going after that opportunity in a much more focused way. This is the right product, and the right moment, to start scaling in North America.'At OnePlus, Pei's biggest achievement was to make the BBK brand global, particularly in the US where Oppo had little footing. He seized the opportunity and made the most of it. But despite the many differences, OnePlus had Oppo backing it up at every step with hardware. Most OnePlus phones at the time were rebranded Oppo phones. So, while Pei might have had a lot of challenges to deal with, smartphone ID (short for industrial design) was not one of them, or at least not as big, we reckon. With Nothing, everything started from scratch. Smartphone wasn't even its first product, but at the time of writing, it is its most critical make-or-break moment.Nothing has built a great team, particularly on the camera and software side, and it is making carrier deals with AT&T and T-Mobile, steps often considered as the gateway to making it big in the US market. There is a lot of confidence, but there are also too many unknowns, like what the Phone 3 looks like or how Nothing will support it in the long run. Apple and Samsung are both very big companies with strong networks, so their devices are more readily available and then, once people buy them, they can be rest assured these phones will last them for upwards of five years at the very least. Nothing claims that the Phone 3 has software 'that really levels things up' while its hardware choices could be a nice change of pace from what's already out there. Nothing is ready, but the real question is, how many people are ready to drop their Galaxys and iPhones for it? Time will tell.Tune In