London-based tech company Nothing will increase the price of its Ear (1) true wireless earbuds on October 26 by about 50 percent.
The news comes from Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who tweeted that the Ear (1) price would climb to $149 USD on the 26th. That’s a 50 percent increase over the current $99 price for the Ear (1) buds in the U.S. Although Pei didn’t say what the Canadian price would be, assuming a similar 50 percent increase, the Ear (1) buds would jump from $129 to about $193 in Canada.
In follow-up tweets, Pei justified the price increase by pointing to Nothing’s growth. The company expanded from its initial three engineers to 185. Moreover, Pei tweeted that the “Ear (1) has received 15 firmware and tuning updates, and is a completely different product” compared to when it launched.
Ear (1) was our inaugural product that will always have a special place in my heart. With almost 600k units sold, this product proved our team's capability to the world and enabled us to leap forward with Phone (1).
Pei also noted that Nothing has sold almost 600,000 units of the Ear (1) and that the product enabled it to launch the Phone (1).
The Vergepoints out that global inflation may also play a role in this change. The publication points to the pound’s slump in value as a potential motive for Nothing to increase the price of the Ear (1) buds.
Given that many reviews pointed to the Ear (1) buds’ value as a major selling point, the price increase may deter future sales. At $129, the Ear (1) buds were competitive, but if you need to shell out almost $200, other options become more appealing (like the third-gen AirPods for about $30 more). With that said, if you were thinking about picking up a pair of Ear (1) buds, you should probably do so before October 26th.
Nothing is drumming up its never-ending hype cycle again for its new Ear (Stick) wireless earbuds. And yes, that’s the name the company is going with this time; Not Ear (2), but Ear (Stick).
These buds come in a tube case and don’t feature silicon tips like the previous Nothing Ear (1)s. Nothing says that the new Ear Stick is lighter and more comfortable and offers a moulded design.
The earbuds were shown off at the Chet Lo runway show in London, England, Nothing’s hometown. The tease featured the new buds in models’ ears and stuffed in unique shear bags, which will also be on sale later this year.
The same press release says that Nothing will release specs for the earbuds sometime before the end of the year, but it seems like some high-ranking members of the official Nothing Discord might get information surrounding specs sooner, so ideally, these details will leak soon.
Based on the press images, there seems to be a subtle texture on the white centre tube. This is likely to offer grip as you pop open the case, through the cut-out in the transparent section points at the camera in the picture above.
You can see another angle from a smartphone shot from the fashion show. In this image, the buds look pretty big in the model’s ears, but it’s difficult to tell without more context surrounding their size.
Ideally, the Ear (Stick)s will sound better and offer a more consistent Bluetooth connection than the Ear (1)s. While my review of Nothing’s first earbuds is positive, I emphasized their reasonable cost, beautiful design and comfortable fit. Focusing on a new design instead of making the software and hardware work better together could be risky for Nothing.
Traditionally, most wireless earbuds with silicon tips and active noise-cancelling are more expensive than models without these higher-end features. That leads me to believe the Ear Stick should be cheaper than the Nothing Ear (1)s. At $130, it will be hard to shave that price down, and still offer a compelling answer to wireless earbuds like the AirPods and Galaxy Buds Live.
If you’re still curious to catch a glimpse of the Ear (Stick)s, roughly 30 photos from the runway are available on Hypebae.
Carl Pei took the stage to announce what’s new from his ‘Nothing’ startup and said, “tech companies aren’t on the consumer’s side anymore, and no one is innovating.”
Then he proceeded to show off a skinned version of Android, some LSD-fueled hieroglyphics and then asked the community for $10 million USD (roughly, $12.5 million CAD).
I’ll give Pei credit. He almost had us in the first half, but after building this much hype and then not revealing a product, he’s starting to come off as more of a salesman and less of the saviour who’s actually going to shake up the tech world.
But I guess that’s the promise of Nothing.
What we learned at the event (NOT THE TRUTH)
To start off, Pei dropped several fun stats about the Nothing Ear (1)s and the Nothing company in general. The wireless earbuds have almost sold half a million units in half a year, and there are now over 300 people working at Nothing.
He also clarified the company’s supply chain is ready even though a large tech company tried to block them. Regardless of that, Pei claims the company has large partners like Google, Samsung and Qualcomm on board to help push the first Nothing phone out this summer.
Carl Pei standing beside the Nothing Phone (1) symbol. This is all that was shown on the phone at the event.
The company even cut the presentation to give us a trailer showing off this symbol. I’m sure people will be unpacking it over the coming weeks, but to me, the bottom exclamation mark stands for fast charging, the symbol in the centre is wireless charging or some sort of MagSafe ripoff. Furthering my speculations, the top left ‘C’ is likely the camera, and the ‘/’ symbol is the antenna for 5G.
Perhaps this symbol will also look similar to the back of the phone since we’re expecting it to be transparent like the Nothing Ear (1)s.
In his whirlwind of hype, Pei started talking about the phone by painting a picture of Nothing as the only true alternative to Apple and the enclosed fortress known as the Apple ecosystem.
The Nothing ecosystem, by comparison, will be open and designed to work with a wide variety of tech products ranging from AirPods to Telsa vehicles. However, he never really gave us any clear specifics about what this might mean. To me, it seems more like Pei is just trying to do a better job at marketing the openness of Android than Google is.
Nothing OS from left to right: Always-on display, the home screen, lock screen and home screen with Nothing widgets.
It was also hard to listen to Pei talk about taking on Apple and innovating in ways that we can’t even comprehend while showing off Nothing OS, which looks like a lightly skinned version of Android 12.
Sure the design is cool and uniform, but design is subjective, and while I might find this one cool, I’m pretty sure my mom isn’t going to be into the cyberpunk aesthetic.
A look at Nothing’s take on Android’s Quick Settings.
The Nothing Launcher for Android is going to launch this April, so I’ll withhold judgment until I can get my hands on it. Pei did mention that it will only be available on select smartphones. My guess would be Pixels and Samsung devices due to the previously mentioned partnerships. However, I’d be excited to see it running on an Essential phone or a modern OnePlus device.
The launcher is supposed to have minimal animations and a high level of brand uniformity. This just looks like a pixel filter on the app ions and a lot of dot matrix design elements to match Nothing’s logo. That being said, the company did show off a cool-looking recorder app that pushes the cyber-punk aesthetics much further than the launcher.
A few angles of the Nothing Recorder app.
Pei also promised smarter RAM management, but that’s only coming in the Nothing phone, not the launcher. This seemed like an odd thing to bring up on stage since most modern phones with 4-6GB of RAM seem fine to me. Perhaps the Nothing Phone (1) will truly feel faster or maybe Pei is prepping us for a phone with less RAM than its competitors?
Nothing is promising three years of OS updates and four years of security updates when the phone launches.
OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei’s new company, Nothing, launched its first product earlier this year: the Nothing Ear (1) earbuds.
The buds sport a very unique look with a mix of white and transparent plastic. However, some people absolutely must dark mode all the things, so it unsurprisingly didn’t take long for people to start asking Nothing launch Ear (1) buds in black. Now, it seems the company might actually do it.
Starting at the beginning, YouTuber Casey Neistat posted a picture of Nothing Ear (1) buds on Twitter that he coloured black with a Sharpie. Nothing shared the tweet, asking if it was something people wanted.
Fast forward several days, and renders of black Nothing Ear (1) buds are making rounds on Reddit, and leaker Evan Blass posted a picture of a black Ear (1) design. The Redditor who posted the renders claims they’re from assets in the Ear (1) Android app.
While that doesn’t necessarily mean Nothing will launch black Ear (1) buds, Blass’ involvement suggests the product could actually be on the way. And if the Redditor did get the renders from Nothing’s app, that would further indicate the company plans to launch a new Ear (1) colour.
Finally, Android Police spotted a tweet pointing to a Nothing video uploaded in July that clearly shows part of a black Ear (1) bud on the desk (it’s visible at 0:39 seconds). So, it seems that Nothing at least toyed with a black colour option before launching the Ear (1) in August — if the company’s already done that, it might not take long for it to get a black colour option ready to sell.
