So I was very excited to purchase my first nothing product… nothing ear. My plan was to slowly phase out my apple products starting with headphones, then phone, then maybe by then there will be a nothing premium watch too…
Want to start by saying I was super happy with the product, the sound quality, build quality, fit and feel, also the nothing customer service in the shop was great.
However I ran into some difficulties with the nothing ear, that may be very specific to my usage, and i’m not sure if they were faulty or if it was because I was using them with iPhone, or if they are designed that way, so hoping the community can shed some light on my experience and maybe I can repurchase nothing ear rather than have to give apple more money for airpods, because as much as I hate them at the end of the day I just need some wireless headphones that fit into my life with as little friction as possible.
Problem 1: Nothing air disconnecting after a couple of minutes of pausing e.g music, then needing to find case put both headphones back in, close it for a couple of seconds and then open again, then place back in ears to reconnect. I read in the FAQs that they are supposed to disconnect after 10 minutes of inactivity, which would probably be enough for me, although I would like the option to turn this power saving off completely, but mine would disconnect after 1 or 2 mins, which drove me mad. I would like to be able to pause media for as long as I want with just one in my ear and restart my music / podcast by clicking the bud, or on the phone, but without replacing the buds back in the case and then ears, is this an iphone issue? would it be better if I had the nothing phone? With my airpods I can pause my music and then start it again with a press of the airpod 30+mins later, I can even take the airpod out of my ear, play something through Iphone speaker, then put it back in my ear and switch back to airpods, no case involved. I have young kids, one of which wakes up in the night, and sometimes doesn’t go down for an hour or so, I sometimes just have an airpod by my bed and the case is somewhere else in the flat, its easy to put it in my ear and listen to a podcast while I get them back down. I found trying to get my nothing ear to connect in this instance was very tricky, having to get case, put ear back in, then back in my ear while trying to rock a baby to sleep… very specific I know, but it’s often how I use my headphones.
Problem 2: Headphones not connecting when removing from case and doing that embarrassing thing playing music aloud from phone on the tube, or even worse, waking the sleeping baby. With the ear, i found maybe 30% of the time they just wouldn’t connect first time, it would maybe work second time, and sometimes it would connect once back in the case rather than in my ears. I reset them and reconnected them a couple of times, sometimes it worked perfectly, but then it would always not work at the worst time. Again, would the connection be better with nothing phone, is it just an iphone issue? or do you think mine were just faulty? With airpods, I think maybe in 3 years owning them I have only accidentally played music out of my phone once. With nothing ear I did it about 5 times in the first week.
I’m not sure how the bluetooth connection works for each, with airpods, it feels like there are 3 separate things individually connected to the phone with some apple sorcery, that can operate by themselves. With nothing it felt like the case connected to the phone and there was no direct communication between earpod and phone. I’m sure apple is restricting people developing products to match their airpod standard.
If you made it this far thanks for reading! Would love to hear any long time users, with iPhone and Nothing Phone, experiences with my points above. Would also be great to hear if the 10 min power saving standby feature could be added as a switchable mode through software / firmware update in the future.
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