All about Nothing Controversy

Nothing launched its first smartphone Nothing Phone (1) couple of days back and it’s been a straight hit. Unlike Sony’s flagship, everyone knew about the Nothing Phone (1). It was the most hyped phone of 2022 and it was real.

Nothing Phone (1) comes with 6.55” FHD+ 10-bit Flexible AMOLED panel which helped nothing to achieve uniform bezels all around the display. It runs on Snapdragon 778+ processor which is older chipset but more balanced and budget oriented. Instead of Multiple useless camera Nothing decided to make its first smartphone a dual camera phone. The main camera is 50MP IMX766 and secondary ultra-wide is 50MP Samsung jn1 sensor. It has UFS 3.1 storage and LPDDR5 RAM. Phone (1) supports NFC and has Bluetooth 5.2 with Wi-Fi 6. Phone (1) has 33W wired fast charging and 15W wireless charging with support of 5W reverse wireless charging. You do not get the charging adaptor in the box and have to buy it separately for 1499/- on Flipkart and offline retailors. Nothing is also selling transparent silly-con case for Nothing Phone (1) for the same price and Screen guard for 999/-

Image credit: 9to5Google

Nothing Phone (1) is available in White and Black variant but sadly there is no option for base variant in white color on Flipkart. Nothing Phone (1) is priced at ₹31999 for base varient and goes up to ₹37999/-. I have ordered Black color and will be posting a full review soon.

What Happened during the Nothing Phone (1) launch event?

Now that you know about the phone (1) let’s get back to the start of the launch event when things didn’t go as planned. As soon as countdown reached zero the video got stuck at a repetitive frame and audio started glitching. Having looked at the glyph interface, at first I thought its part of the launch event. I thought they are trying to do something different but when I had no more patient, I checked Unbox Therapy Live and found out about the malfunction. But soon after the hiccup, the Nothing Event continued.

What happened after the event that lead to #DearNothing and #BoycottNothing?

As pre-planned Nothing sent review units to youtubers couple of days before the launch day. The Embargo for the first impression video was probably set around 9:00 PM IST on 12th July. That’s when all the video from the creator started hitting their youtube channel. In the meantime, youtuber ‘Prasadtechintelugu’ uploaded a prank video where he shows letter as if it is sent by Nothing saying “This device is not for south Indian people”. This image got viral and soon #DearNothing and #BoycottNothing started trending on twitter with the screenshot of the letter from the prank video.

Please note that company did not send any kind of letter to hurt the sentiments of the people.

Next Day Company’s Vice President and general manager for Nothing India clarified on the situation stating that device was sent out in staged manner and many regional creators did receive the review units. You can read the full statement below.

Source: Manu Sharma (Company VP)