Carl Pei, one of OnePlu’s co-founders left the company in late 2020. It was a sudden and surprising move, and rumors spread out that the former mind leading the OnePlus team wasn’t happy with the company’s directions. A few months later, OnePlus announced a merger with Oppo, and Pei announced its own company dubbed Nothing. Seeing these two events, we could understand that Pei was pretty aware of OnePlus future under Oppo’s wings, and he wasn’t happy with that.
With Nothing, he announced a focus on smart products including wearables. However, shortly after the Nothing brand reveals, we saw it acquiring Essential and all its patents. Then, the rumors about a possible Nothing smartphone exploded. This month, the company finally confirmed it’s working on a new smartphone dubbed Nothing phone (1) pretty soon. The company wants its device to be a real Android answer to Apple iPhones.