It’s been a while since the launch of Phone 3a and 3a Pro and I think it’s now safe to say Nothing has no intentions of porting Essential Space to older phones.
The reason?
“Phone 2/2a/2a Plus/1 and CMF Phone 1 does not have an extra physical button”.
Well, while that “reason” is technically true I don’t think it can be the real reason.
As the processing happens on cloud, older phones having weaker NPUs can’t be the real reason too (Phone 2’s SoC is more powerful than 3a series). I think the real reason is to make something exclusive to newer phones.
Let’s see what could be done if they really want to bring that feature to older phones:
1 - Replacing ChatGPT visual button in screenshot sheet with Essential Space:
Today I have seen a post in Reddit with the brilliant idea of replacing the ChatGPT button in screenshot sheet. That button was added with an update as an Ai button to simplify sharing screenshots to ChatGPT, it basically does what Essential Space button does.
- Take a screenshot with buttons or 3 finger gesture
- Screenshot sheet appears
- Tap “Essential Space” button or long press the button to save a voice note
- Note and screenshot is saved to Essential Space, no need to have an extra physical button.
Here’s the link to the original Reddit post.
2 - Tapping the back of the device:
In Android 11, Google introduced back tap gestures for Pixel devices to do some actions like launch camera, control media snooze alarm etc. It basically uses phone’s motion sensors to detect vibrations and shaking movements. Apple has the same feature in iOS too. It could be used for Essential Space (and possibly other actions) as well.
- Double back tap to create a screenshot.
- Triple back tap to create a screenshot and a voice recording.
- Assign other actions to these gestures.
One disadvantage for this would be false triggers in pockets as it uses motion sensors, luckily Nothing already has a pocket mistouch prevention feature so this could be tied to that.
Bonus: Here’s a 3rd party app which you can use the feature for all Android 7+ phones: https://github.com/KieronQuinn/TapTap
3 - We already have 3 physical buttons:
Well, if we certainly need a physical button, we already have 3 of them. In fact we already can assign double pressing power button to different actions. Why not let us assign double pressing power or volume button actions to Essential Space button?
- Double press power (or volume) button to save the screenshot to Essential Space
- Double press and hold the button to save the screenshot and start recording a voice memo.
4 - Virtual button (like iOS Assistive Touch) or sidebar
While I don’t like the idea of having a permanent virtual button on my screen, many users just seem to not care at all. I remember Carl posting about that feature here.
He asked “I’ve seen a few comments asking for this in Nothing OS, but don’t really know why it’s needed?”. I agreed with him (you can see my comment under the post) back then but now it seems like a sensible option. The difference would be that it would not be for multitasking.
We could even have it exactly where it is in Phone 3a and 3a Pro to have more in line look. It could have pixel shifting to prevent OLED burn-in too.
Conclusion:
I understand that it would not be the same without the physical button but at least it would let other users have the features to some extent. It also would show Nothing’s commitment to support their older devices as they say Essential Space will be the hub for other upcoming Ai features.
I think Nothing UX/UI designers would have even more brilliant ideas, these are just what comes to my mind at a glance.
Please don’t merge this topic into other feature request topics, I would rather not have this lost under tons of feature request. I think this is more than a regular feature request thread.
