Daily Authority: ???? More Nothing

???? Good morning! Australia qualified for the World Cup last night, beating poor old Peru in a penalty shootout. I’d be more excited, but the World Cup in Qatar isn’t a great look….

Nothing Phone 1?

Nothing has mastered the art of teasing and so it’s no surprise that the Nothing Phone 1 is being very gradually unveiled, ahead of a July 12 launch date.

Something is coming though: Nothing keeps showing off tiny segments of the phone …along with some cool birds.

• There have been several pics, including this one today and yesterday.
• I wouldn’t say I get the bird stuff: there are blue budgerigars which I recognize, and er, some kind of parrot.

Anyway, what we see:

• Some clever people like Ben Geskin have puzzled the images together, along with the elements unveiled at the Nothing hype launch a few months ago, to give you the above compilation.
• You can start to see elements like camera, side fingerprint sensor, and in another pic, elements that look like the wireless charging coil.
• What it looks like, to me, is a metal frame, then a white color scheme, and glass, and then finally, you can see a bunch of internals that are also white, including the charging coil, and what looks like some mesh and careful lines.
• If this is right, other approaches like this, such as the HTC U11 Plus and U12 Plus, sort of just hinted at the internals that weren’t as carefully configured.
• Also, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition had a “transparent” design, though it was fake: Xiaomi just pasted cosmetic parts on the back and hid the real guts.
• So, expect a nice design, and I guess the best guide would be the Nothing Ear 1 design.
• And, a few months later, you’d naturally expect Nothing to put up a matte black design as well.

Tomorrow:

• As for what’s being unveiled tomorrow, it’s hard to guess. Will a full photo reveal come?
• I keep asking myself how much we should care.
• On the one hand, there’s the obvious welcome that should be paid to a new phone company trying to add something to the ecosystem.
• On the other, there are the wild overpromises from founder Carl Pei, the fairly bleak Nothing launcher that emerged for no obvious reason, and the reality that smartphone design is stuck in a glass sandwich approach.
• It’s not impossible that Pei and the Nothing team have figured out a killer feature that will be interesting and useful but it’s not hugely likely, and there’s no track record.
• So, let’s see what emerges tomorrow… but if it’s just more drip-drip leaks, they won’t be in this newsletter.

Roundup

???? Er, well, here’s an unboxing video of the unreleased Pixel 6a. That’s unexpected. (Pre-orders start July 21 for $449, so…) (Android Authority).

???? Big Tech has a new antitrust nemesis: John Oliver, with a 25-min long segment talking Apple’s “blood money,” Google’s search dominance, and most of all, Amazon (Gizmodo).

???? “What is a record, sports or otherwise, that will likely never be broken?” (r/askreddit). (Yes!)

Chart Tuesday

Here’s a chart race of the most popular websites since 1993:

• If you remember those early 90s times it’ll help, but it’s fun to see the eras changing.
• The issue now is: both TikTok and Snapchat would be up there with the most popular websites, but they’re apps, so, I don’t know.
• But Instagram does manage to make the top 10 towards the 2020s, at least.

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.