I learned a painful lesson from the Nothing Earphone firmware disaster. That update in August 2025 completely destroyed ANC functionality and it’s still broken NOW. So I cautiously waited over a month before updating my Nothing Phone 3A Pro to OS 4.0. I even checked the forums — sparse posts suggested maybe it was safe. I was wrong.
The core issue: The default launcher’s search function is completely broken.
Before the update, I could:
• Swipe up from the home screen and browse by app category
• Keyboard automatically popped up
• Type “PL” and instantly find Play Store
After the update? Everything is broken.
Even with search enabled in the launcher settings, the keyboard won’t auto-pop. I have to manually tap the search bar for the keyboard to appear — and then it’s completely unresponsive. No text input works at all. The keyboard doesn’t even highlight the keys I’m pressing. This same keyboard works perfectly fine in every other app, so the problem is squarely with Nothing’s launcher.
Restarting temporarily fixes it, but the problem returns randomly. This isn’t a minor glitch — this is complete functional breakdown.
On Nothing’s Quality Assurance and Testing:
This is Nothing’s own default launcher, running on their own software. Any competent QA process would catch this in the first testing cycle. This isn’t an edge case. This isn’t user error. This is total failure of core functionality.
Either they didn’t test this at all, or their testing process is a complete joke.
About Nothing Support: Honestly, calling it “support” is generous.
I’ve had over 20 email exchanges involving 3 different “support representatives.” Every single interaction follows the same useless script:
• Disconnect devices
• Restart the phone
• Unpair/re-pair
• Send logs
This is a complete waste of time and in my hand is still a headphone that I can’t use the ANC function. The reps were polite, I’ll give them that, but politeness doesn’t replace actual competence. They never did any real troubleshooting, just mechanically recycled the same useless steps. I asked at least 3 times can they just send me the previous working firmware and all of my requests are rejected.
After wasting weeks on a support team that’s clearly incapable of solving anything, I’m done.
Bottom Line:
Nothing had real potential. I liked the aesthetic. I liked the vision. I was a fan.
But broken quality and broken support are destroying this brand.
The OS 4.0 launcher bug shouldn’t exist. If it did, support should have fixed it fast. Neither happened.
Of course I can just use another launcher but that would make the reason of choosing Nothing and Nothing OS kinda pointless.
I am not posting this and hope for a fix, as I know there will be *nothing. They may sound they care, they will PM you, Email you asking for all the details and I thought they would care. But they are not. This is just a warning to others: Think twice before updating anything from Nothing. I have been hearing they will fix the ANC “soon” since last September.
I should have learnt my lessons when I have received not 1, not 2, not 3, but 6 times in a row for a pair of defective earphone 1 and they gift me a free pair of ear (open) 1 instead that can’t even do passive noise reduction, thinking they are doing me a great service and bonus when I have absolutely no use of that.
