Since releasing itsfirst smartphonein January 2021, Nothing has unleashed multiple new products on the market, including earbuds like the Ear 1 and Ear 2, thePhone 2this July, and another set of earbuds plus a smartwatch under itsnewly established CMF sub-brandin September. But what about some of the products that were being worked on but never saw the light of the day? The company has given the world some interesting insight into one such item, theNothing Power 1.
Designed to be a portable charging solution not dissimilar tomost power banksyou can buy today, the Power 1 could charge phones at up to 65W while also supporting wireless charging. In a conversation with Nothing’s head of original content, Heru Prasetyo, CEO and company founder Carl Pei talks about why the Power 1 was ultimately abandoned despite the team spending quite a bit of time and resources on it (viaAndroid Authority).
The design of this product is quintessentially Nothing, including the transparent design, with Pei saying it was meant to debut following the release ofthe Ear 1. There were some obvious concerns about this extremely portable charging solution, with heat being one of them.
Given that it has both conventional wired fast charging and wireless charging bundled in, the thermals were reportedly a major concern during the testing phases. Furthermore, the outer casing was also prone to breaking quite easily, going against the company’s core philosophy of producing durable products.
“This would have been a great product for Nothing in 2021, but in 2023, our ambitions are a bit bigger,” Pei says in the 9-minute videoposted on X. Following the initial testing phases, it apparently became clear that the Power 1 would need an overhaul to be tenable. This was when the company seemingly decided to cut its losses and shelve the product altogether.
While this is no doubt an exciting product, it’s not particularly new. Our Google editorManuel Vonaurecalls purchasing a similar 3-in-1 charging adapter fromAmazon Germanyway back in late 2019, even before Nothing was set up. So any notion of this being an original product idea is untrue. Nevertheless, the London-based manufacturer must be commended for trying to design a charger/power bank in this manner, even if it never saw the light of day.
This isn’t the first time that Nothing has revealed some of the products it was contemplating. The video below, uploaded back in April, talks about a remote-controlled Nerf gun, a mask similar to theRazer Zephyr, a “cloud-like” hoverboard scooter, and more. Since none of these products were ever released, it makes you wonder about some of the other ideas the brand is currently building that may witness the same fate in the future.
While you may not be able to get a Nothing Nerf gun or the Power 1, the manufacturer’s most recent smartphone release, the Phone 2, is among the best-looking devices you can get this year.
