Android phones span a wide range of prices, features and designs, and one British company making sure they vary all three with each of their increasingly frequent phone releases is Nothing. If you haven’t heard of Nothing, it’s a young company founded in 2020 by former OnePlus executive Carl Pei.
The brand is built on its design aesthetic, which so far has leaned heavily on transparent tech. The recent Nothing Phone 2a impressed Express.co.uk with its £319 price tag, attractive build and minimalist, customisable software.
We’re also big fans of the firm’s £99 Nothing Ear a earbuds, which are as good as rivals that cost twice as much.
Firm at the heart of Nothing’s brand is its fan community. Just like at OnePlus, Pei and co have successfully carved out a niche but loyal Android following, with each new product release built on online hype – but it helps that most of the products are relatively affordable, meaning curious buyers can get in on the act.
Today, Nothing has revealed its latest phone, a special edition of its recent Phone 2a Plus. It has been co-designed by members of its fan community after a competition found various folk to help design all aspects of the device.
“The Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition is Nothing’s first co-created product, where some of its most talented followers worked directly with the Nothing Team,” Nothing said. “From hardware to wallpapers, packaging to marketing, this smartphone has been entirely shaped by the imagination of Nothing’s community.”
The company said it fielded more than 900 entries from 47 countries before whittling down the concepts to find its winners and eventual collaborators.
“Winners Astrid Vanhuyse & Kenta Akasaki, Andrés Mateos, Ian Henry Simmonds and Sonya Palma, collaborated closely with Nothing’s Design Studio, Creative, Brand and Marketing teams in London to further refine their winning concepts. The result of this collaboration between the Nothing team and the community is Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition, a glow-in-the-dark interpretation of the popular Phone (2a) Plus.”
As you can see, the phone has glow-in-the-dark parts visible thanks to its transparent parts, a clever trick that makes it stand out in a sea of black glass slab phones, but the specs are identical to the regular Phone 2a Plus that Nothing announced in July.
That means it has a MediaTek Dimensity 7350 Pro chipset, 6.7-inch OLED screen, dual cameras, three programmable LED lights on the back, and runs Android 14 with Nothing OS over the top.
The catch? Nothing is only making 1,000 of these phones globally (though it’s also selling 1,000 based on the Phone 2a, a slightly different model, in Japan). They will go for £399 from 12 November over on Nothing’s website, but if you want to be certain of getting one you can queue up outside Nothing’s London Soho store, where stock will be sold from 11:00am on 16 November.
