Carl Pei Confirms Nothing Phone (1) is an Also-Ran
On the off chance you believed that Nothing and its new smartphone had any chance at all, allow me to dash those hopes: founder Carl Pei confirmed this week that the Nothing Phone (1), which is the horrible name of the firm’s new handset, will ship with a mid-level chipset. So it’s not a “flagship killer,” let alone something even remotely interesting.
Pei told a random tech blog that the Nothing Phone (1) will ship with a mid-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chipset instead of a flagship-class chipset that can help the phone compete against modern iPhones and Samsung flagships. This chipset does, however, support wireless charging and reverse wireless charging, two features that are missing in the normal 778G.
So why the lackluster chipset? Pei says it’s about “performance, power consumption, and cost,” mirroring earlier statements he had made about smartphone specifications not being important. Which is the type of thing you only say when you have a device with less than flagship specifications.
Nothing also revealed recently that it will launch the Phone (1) in Europe and the UK only, and that it has no plans to bring the device to the United States, further diminishing its appeal. About 100,000 people signed up to preorder the Phone (1) when the system went live last week.
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