Is Nothing losing what made it Nothing? Carl Pei gave his own answer

Carl Pei spent Friday afternoon on Reddit taking whatever the community threw at him, and the Nothing CEO was more candid than these sessions usually go. He conceded the Nothing Phone (3) design may have changed too fast, confirmed prices are still climbing and handed Phone (2) owners an answer they did not want. Rare honesty for any Android phone maker.

Carl Pei took the Nothing Phone (3) questions he usually avoids

The session ran on r/NothingTech, Nothing's own subreddit, and Pei posted a photo of himself holding a handwritten sign with the date and time to prove it was really him. It pulled 745 upvotes and 967 comments before the thread was locked to new replies.



Most of the sharper questions circled the same thing. One user asked why the Glyph shrank from covering the whole back of the phone down to a corner, and pointed out that almost every Nothing model now looks alike. Pei did not defend the change.



That reply picked up 172 upvotes, more than any other answer in the thread and more than the question that prompted it. He said something similar to a former Phone (1) owner who had given up and switched to Samsung, telling them he recently asked the team to get back to the spirit that defined the company in that era.

Why Nothing OS 5.0 turned into the sore spot

It should be noted that design was not the only place Pei gave ground. He agreed the semi-forced app installs that arrived with Nothing OS 4.0 should be dialed back, said the green tint and black crush problem on the Phone (3) reached the last board meeting and should be addressed soon, then confirmed Essential Search was deprioritized because Google can do that job better with Gemini. That is three concessions in one afternoon from a company that normally says very little.

The answer still circulating two days later, though, has nothing to do with design. Someone asked why the Nothing Phone (2) is being left out of Nothing OS 5.0, and Pei explained that its kernel is too old and Android 17 will not be supported by the chipset vendor. He added that the phone shipped with a commitment of three major updates and received them, with security patches running to 2027, so he considers what Nothing delivered fair.



That reasoning did not settle it. The comment Pei was replying to argued the Phone (2) is still Nothing's second flagship and its processor is still capable, and it sits at 86 upvotes against his 121, so the room reads split rather than convinced. A single post is anecdotal, of course, but this one had passed 5,000 views by Sunday morning, and Nothing's own rollout page does confirm the Phone (1), Phone (2) and CMF Phone 1 have all reached the end of major software support.

For anyone weighing a Nothing phone against the alternatives, our reviews have been saying much the same thing for a while now. Our Phone (4a) Pro review called the aluminum unibody the most refined thing Nothing has built, while still flagging the 8 MP ultra-wide as a weak spot at $499.

The rest of the market is dealing with the same memory costs Pei described, and Samsung has been pushing prices up across its Galaxy S line for exactly that reason. Nothing's design was always the reason to pick one over other brands, which is the part Pei now sounds unsure about.

More on Carl Pei and Nothing OS 5.0:

• Which Nothing phones are getting Nothing OS 5.0
• Everything Carl Pei has said about Nothing
• Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

Which Nothing owners this affects

The practical version is short. Phone (1), Phone (2) and CMF Phone 1 owners are done with major updates, so Nothing OS 5.0 is not coming and those 2027 security patches are the end of the line. Phone (3) owners sitting on the green tint issue now have a board-level acknowledgment and still no date, which beats silence but not by much.

Everyone else is in the rollout, and the general release runs in waves:

• Phone (3) in mid-October
• Phone (4a), Phone (4a) Pro, Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro in early November
• Phone (2a) and Phone (2a) Plus in mid-November

My Phone (4a) Pro sits right in the middle of this

I read the whole thread while my Phone (4a) Pro sat on my desk, which puts me squarely in the group this affects. The Open Beta for my phone will be opening now in early September, so Nothing OS 5.0 is close enough that I will be paying attention to what does and does not make the general release in November.

What kept catching my eye, though, was how often Pei answered by saying he had been wondering the same thing lately. That is a strange thing to hear from the person who signed off on those designs, and I am choosing to read it as a good sign. I would personally love to see the full Glyph back return on the next flagship, even if it costs Nothing a little of the grown-up look it has been chasing.

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