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Google could be poised to launch an Android smartphone that borrows one of the most unique features pioneered by British startup Nothing. The brand, which is now worth $1.3 billion — almost £1bn, has a cabinet packed with awards, including a Red Dot Design Award for its one-of-a-kind industrial designs.
Nothing widely uses translucency to showcase the innards of its smartphones — with screws, cables, and components easily visible from the outside. Its other trademark uses light shows (Glyph Interface) or pictograms on a small dot-matrix screen (Glyph Matrix) to silently signal incoming notifications when the handset is resting face down, so you know whether you need to interrupt what you're doing to pick up your phone.
Phone 3a offers Glyph Interface for under £300
Nothing Phone (3a) launched last year, but remains in the lineup as an affordable option. Starting at £299, it features a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip and a 3,000-nit AMOLED display. Nothing has added a physical Essential Key for AI shortcuts, sports the iconic Glyph interface, and years of software support via NothingOS
Phone (3a)
$299
Nothing believes these systems let you keep your phone lying face down on the table, so you’re more engaged with the people around you. With a quick glance, you’ll be able to work out who is calling you and whether an incoming notification is urgent and requires immediate attention. These handsets ship with software to let you create your own unique patterns of flashes in the trademark pattern of LEDs on the back of the phone case.
While earlier handsets used the Glyth Interface to alert Android users about incoming notifications, the latest Nothing models include a small screen to deliver more information or entire apps
|NOTHING PRESS OFFICE
These can be assigned to specific apps or people in your contacts. Newer handsets, like the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, ship with a version of the Glyph Matrix composed of 137 mini-LEDs. It's the same circular, dot-matrix design that made its debut with the Nothing Phone (3) last year.
It supports so-called Glyph Toys — small apps created by the community to bring some joy to this unique display, so you can quickly check battery life, set a timer, see the current time, or see a rudimentary preview from the viewfinder when using the rear-mounted cameras for a selfie. As with the Glyth Bar, you can assign personalised light patterns for calls, individual contacts, and notifications.
And now, it seems engineers at Google are considering similar functionality for the next Pixel smartphones.
The eagle-eyed team at 9To5Google have dug into the code for the latest beta release of Android 17 and found clues about an incoming feature called Pixel Glow. The latter uses LEDs built into the hardware to offer "subtle light and color on the back of your device to inform you of important activity when it’s face down" ...which sounds very similar to what Nothing has included with its unique hardware designs for some time.
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According to the text unearthed by 9To5Google, the Pixel Glow feature is designed to let you “stay in the moment without losing touch.” Pixel Glow will also be active when speaking or “interacting with Gemini,” the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) model from the US search firm.
Android users can have “hands-free interactions using visual feedback," so you'll know if the microphones are picking up what you're saying, even if you can't see the display. This is a technique used across Amazon's Alexa-branded gadgets, which use lights to show that it's listening to your voice command and processing the request.
The superb team at 9To5Google scoured the code for the latest Android 17 beta and found an early version of the Settings panel to control Pixel Glow
|GOOGLE | 9TO5GOOGLE
The two interactions outlined in the Android 17 beta are:
- Calls from favourites – Subtle lightshow when a favourite contact calls you
- Speaking with Gemini – Visual feedback when using AI assistant hands-free
The Android 17 beta suggests that Google will let you enable or disable either of these features individually. The Pixel Glow brand suggests this isn't something that'll be available across all Android devices, but rather an exclusive new feature for Google's own lineup of devices. Some possible locations could be the Camera Bar or even the ‘G’ logo.
As always, Android 17 remains in beta, so it's possible some of the ideas won't make it into the final release. Take the above rumour with a pinch of salt, as nothing is official until it's confirmed by Google.
In the meantime, if you like the idea of this functionality, Nothing offers a wide range of Android devices equipped with these distraction-free lightshows.