Essential Space | Feature Wishlist

(Also shared on Reddit) I’ve been using the Nothing Phone (3a) for a few days now, so this by no means a review. I just wanted to positively highlight this feature (and I’ll make another post for the camera also)

My Pixel 6 pro had screen issues and I really had to change phone. I was eyeing the Galaxy S Ultra series for the S-pen to take quick notes on the go and also desktop mode for productivity, but I couldn’t get myself to spend so much money on a phone anymore. Moreover most phones look so bland and boring these days. Nothing is really refreshing in its looks and approach.

The Essential Space is still very beta and limited in functionality, but it’s convenient nonetheless. By using the dedicated key you take a screenshot and you can type a comment or talk. Push once to type or talk, click and hold to just talk, like a push-to-talk button. It will then save the screenshot + text/speech as note to be accessed later in the Essential Space and then also:

• Transcribe your speech (in any language!)

• Summarize what it sees on the image (also in any language)

• Give your note a title, usually an awkward one

• Make possible todos with a timestamp and reminder.

• Elaborate on your note or answer questions you asked

• The original audio is still available in case the transcript was inaccurate.

You can group your notes in folders manually.

Unique selling points

I’ve been trying dedicated AI hardware like the Omi pendant or notetaking apps like Limitless or other speech transcription apps. But those really focus on ‘lifelogging’ or meeting transcripts, they don’t work to make quick notes and reminders on the go. They also don’t work multilingually, which is a must for me. Moreover they don’t give you access to the original audio. The quick note taking is what I always wanted from an AI device. Somehow Google, Apple and Samsung failed to recognise this use.

The Essential Key also works from the lock screen. When the button is pushed on the lock screen or home screen it doesn’t add a screenshot to the note, it’s just text. Taking a quick note from the lock screen so I don’t need to open my phone is exactly why I wanted the Samsung S-pen. This is now solved for me!

What Essential Space shouldn’t be is a replacement for an assistant. It’s really a notetaking space (even though maybe it could integrate with an assistant somehow). Currently the Essential Space provides the answer to your questions in the note but the phone doesn’t awkwardly or obnoxiously interact with you directly like an assistant or chatbot does. If you want to have the reply to a question straight away you can use an assistant like Gemini or Perplexity by holding the power button. The functionality split is smartly done: hold the power button to access an assistant, hold the essential key below it to add a note.

Improvements needed

Carl Pei said in a recent YouTube movie that they will further build on this app and e.g. also add a web portal so you can access your notes from different devices. That would definitely be a plus.

Apart from the web portal, at least we should be able to

• Search our notes! With or without chat functionality.

• Edit a note (if text) or add text to a note (if transcript)

• Edit the title of a note

• Edit the todos, because now they’re often very awkwardly phrased and not always scheduled at the right time

• See the timestamp of a note and sort chronologically

Preferably Nothing should also:

• Expand the todo functionality or integrate it with an existing todo app

• Allow us to manually add notes and todos within the essential space

• Provide some from of calendar integration

• Save the url to a web page we screenshotted so we can revisit later