The Nothing Operating System

RehanZahir

The only thing holding me back from making a purchase… is the OS. I feel like Nothing should have their own unique Operating System, and not join forces with the typical Android Systems. What do you all think?

arpan2308

RehanZahir Nothing OS provides a unique experience and is built over the android operating system. Building on android is nowadays a default choice considering the app ecosystem and the support which android and google provides. The openness of the android helps Nothing to achieve the goal it wants to achieve. In my opinion, it is better to stick to Android.

Heera

RehanZahir have u not seen what happened to Huawei ? It’s very difficult now to compete with monopoly who is leading in the market share. They will try to crush obviously but it will take some time for setup.

KamiKaze

RehanZahir There’s not any room for another operating system besides the established ones, Palm did it and failed all that’s left of it is modern webos on LG TVs, Blackberry tried and failed, remnants of which today make QNX an automotive OS, Samsung tried and failed, only remnant is what their TVs run with tizen, Windows Phone has been dead for years, Amazon tried it they’re barely alive with FireOS only on their streaming sticks and their tablets even then FireOS is a shadow or what they had in mind for it with the fire phone.

There is no point nor is there an ecosystem of apps available for anything other than android or iOS, check any of the linux ports that are practically dead for all intents and purposes because of the lack of an app ecosystem.

tusharakharia

If Android is not your OS, then you’ll fall out like Huawei. Even though they make good phones, they aren’t part of the conversation because of the OS. Fewer apps mean fewer consumers.

sean (1)

I guess you have seen the rumours that Nothing has been building its own ‘non-Android’ OS.

My suggestion would be to work with the makers of GrapheneOS and re-skin it as Nothing OS3 (a proper upgrade, not the snoozefest that is Android 15) to bring their privacy focused OS to the masses. People needn’t be worried about losing access to apps on the Play Store because GrapheneOS is built on the same foundations as Android, so Google built apps (notably Maps) can still be used in a ‘private space’ (sandboxed) away from the rest of a user’s apps so they can’t access most user data.

Google’s monopoly is slowly being dismantled in the EU, so why not lead the way?

Alexshax

There were, there were….. MeeGo, Windows, Blackberry OS, Ubuntu OS….. but hundreds of millions of CHEAP smartphones running Android have displaced these wonderful systems because it was not profitable for developers to write applications for them and fill the app stores. Unfortunately. Creating your own unique OS takes a lot of time and huge costs.

Coldpaw

Nothing is a small start-up company, creating their own OS (even if based on Android without Google) and selling the volumes of phones they need to make a profit that allows them to grow would be more or less suicide in my opinion.

Android pretty much only works for the vast majority pf people due to the access of Google Play Services and Google Play Store, take this out and interest will simply crash and fall flat.

Take Huawei for example, the company has been huge here in Germany, especially in the years with their P20 and P30 lines of phones. Then they were hit with the Google ban and released phones without Google Play and later on their own OS, the could never recover from that to this very day here in Germany. Their marketshare fell from around 20% to 5% within a few years - not because the phones are bad, but people want to buy Android with full app support out of the box.

sean (1)

Coldpaw

So why not fork an open source OS like GrapheneOS, which has access to the Play Store in a sandboxed area? Didn’t the EU make a ruling recently that Google can no longer monopolise with their Play Store and must now open it up to competitors?

MarcinG

All “unique” systems, like Symbian or windows for smartphones, have died quite quickly. So I don’t think, it is right path for Nothing

Coldpaw

MarcinG Or BlackBerry 10. I have used lot’s of phones especially in the mid 2000s through late 2010s. The Nokia N900 with Maemo, the Nokia E7 with Symbian³, then I switched to BlackBerry with BBOS 7 and had most BlackBerry phones with their BB10 OS - which was a great OS, very intuitive, fast and fun to use. Built to be used with gestures right from the start, the whole UX back than was more advanced compared to what Android offers today. Yet it failed, because developers never jumped on board. People wanted Netflix, Snapchat, Instagram and so on - but those were never officially ported to the OS. Then BlackBerry gave up and went with Android, looking back a number of BBRY enthusiasts think if they went with Android right away, they might still be around.

Inbetween I’ve also had a Nokia Lumia 1020 running Windows Phone, again I think the OS was very unique and intuitive in terms of UX, simple and efficient, yet in it’s own ways still eye catching. But it also failed due to missing app support from big developers.

I simply don’t believe Nothing as a still rather unknown and small company could pull off and ve successful with their complete own OS. Other who were much bigger and had much more ressources tried over the years and all failed. I mean Carl Pei just recently said they won’t even release a more compact Nothing Phone for the time being, as it most likely wouldn’t be profitable enough.

Jay

Coldpaw where is blackberry or symbian now? even nokia went for windows ? they are all 6 feet deep rn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrapheneOS
and as per wikipedia , graphene is android based OS but more on privacy focused. if you make OS, you need developers to make their apps compatible with new os, whichever company tried to make new OS, has died and we have seen it. so I dont think its good idea to take this huge risk for start up company. this is monopoly of IOS and android.

Nothing001

Do you even know what you are talking about?

sean (1)

Heera

Depends whether Nothing wants to follow in the footsteps of Huawei (why would they?), or make their own OS like Daniel Micay was able to with GrapheneOS.

vovan-v

Nothing already have a great clean android based os with customizations, so it will be wrong choise lo leave it and make something by yourself without google.

Aniruddha_ICE

Hii guys.

Can we get nothing own os ( like ios, Android)

What you guys think.

Also don’t hesitate to share what features do you guys think to get on nothing own os?

LionsElectrical

Aniruddha_ICE used to be a big time BlackBerry owner back in the day. They had there own OS. That went down the pain and disappeared. Stick with android OS, but make very clean with no bloatware.

vovan-v

I think is no need when you have a good base and you can customizing it, it’s not the point to became like huawei with harmony os.

NarasimhanR

No need another Mobile OS, Its difficult for App developers to build/manage apps for new OS, It will take longer than usual,

hrry

NarasimhanR I’d certainly recommend watching this https://nothing.community/d/19427-how-to-make-something-of-nothing-with-nothing, Carl touches on your question during in his talk.