A lot of the apps face issues with storage access. apps like pdf readers, emulators, scanners, termux, and even nothing’s own recorder app no longer works because all of them run into storage related issues. these apps work for a few minutes after restart but do not work after a short while. while I initially thought this issue was specific to me, seems like a lot of people with Phone (1) are running into this issue as evidenced by the following posts on nothing.community as well as reddit:
https://nothing.community/d/30297-inconsistent-access-to-app-sandbox-directory-on-nothing-phone-1-since-early-march-2025
https://nothing.community/d/35292-phone1-storage-access
https://www.reddit.com/r/NothingTech/s/wE2JlIVCjr
while people who have posted in the community are few, I personally know 3 other people with the same issue, who all own a Nothing Phone (1). I also happen to own a Nothing Phone (2a) and it works just fine with all of these apps mentioned earlier.
If you are someone who has the same issue, there’s a temporary fix. Clone the apps that you face this storage related issues with. This cloned app will now work without running into the same issue.
It’s sad that Nothing won’t acknowledge this problem and the users are left to figure out fixes on their own.
Before anyone says “contact support” / “send feedback” or whatever, I tried. They have no idea either, but can’t blame them.
After a good amount of time researching the root cause of this issue, I’ve stumbled upon these posts from other communities (oxygen and color os) . Atleast their problem is fixed.
The issue seems to be due to children instances being killed / not allowed to start (for example Geminiman wear os manager or Shizuka won’t work because the adb server, which is the child instance of the app, gets killed)
I’m honestly unsure if the team is even aware of this bug. My attempts to make them aware of the issue has just been in vain. Will wait for an update and if that doesn’t fix the issue, I’m probably tossing this phone away.
Good luck 🫡
Update #1:
Another bug : System File Picker does not work either.
Tell me, @Carl , how is someone supposed to use the phone they paid for when such crucial functions are failing?
