Nothing, a tech startup founded by one of the original founders of OnePlus, held an event on Wednesday, March 23 where it unveil its future road map for its products. So far, the company has launched a pair of wireless earbuds that impressed, and now it plans to add an Android phone to that repertoire.
It’s 2022, so if you had guessed the event would be livestreamed, you can take a free cookie from your local cookie jar. It was streamed at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT on March 23, but it’s now available to rewatch.
The company had billed this as a platform where it plans to showcase what it wants to launch or the areas it wants to go — and that’s exactly what it did.
It announced its Nothing Phone 1, Nothing OS, and Nothing launcher — though the latter two can be viewed as more of a package deal with the former.
The Nothing Phone is an Android phone from the company, packaged with a light and clean version of Android that packs three years of Android updates and four years of security updates just like Pixels do. While it’s planned to launch in the summer, Nothing will let Android phone owners download the Nothing OS launcher for a taste of the experience prior to the launch.
The interest in Nothing comes from its origins as a spiritual successor of two Android brands, one by way of CEO Carl Pei, the other by acquisition. It evokes the original never-settle ethos of OnePlus prior to its Oppofication, and the bright-eyed innovation of Andy Rubin’s Essential. Carl Pei today continued to push that image, even setting Nothing up — optimistically — as an Apple rival. Of course, both OnePlus and Essential failed to significantly dent the market. Whether Nothing manages to write a different ending to that story will, of course, depend on how the rest of its year goes.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.