Future of the Glyph Inteface

Dipu

I am a Nothing fan, investor and I have been following most of the Nothing stuff nearly since the start.

Also the Nothing Phone (2) is my primary Phone since I got it last year. I have explored nearly all the Glyph Interface features and tried to make use of them in daily life. It is definitely unique, good looking and even has “some” usefulness.

But..

I thought as a company Nothing can only do so much and I expected that things would “explode” once the Glyph Developer Kit is released. But nothing (no pun) happened! Just one memory game and another leveler app. I searched but could not find any usable app or ideas around the Glyph thingy that anyone could come up with.

With Nothing Phone 2(a) being the Nothing mid-ranger, they had to keep reduce the LEDs but keep the Glyph Interface to maintain the Nothing signature. So I expect all upcoming Nothing branded phones to have it. What new value addition can Nothing add to the LEDs in future, if the developers could not imagine anything with the developer kit?

Will the Glyph Interface continue to be the USP of Nothing or it would become more of a gimmicky feature (a lot of people say that already) and the lights will fade away?

What are your thoughts?

Louis ☕️

Dipu This is a nice discussion. I personally feel like the Glyph will remain, as it’s very recognisable that his is a Nothing feature and device. How the Glyph evolves, I’m curious to see but I think for the Nothing branded phones (not CMF) it would be a bit silly to move away from Glyphs. Now further down the line, IF Nothing gets to the point where they then have 5+ phones you could argue that you could start to move away from having Glyph and create a new USP from a design perspective. What that is, I have no idea but I’m exciting to see how things develop 🙂

Fr4nKB

As a kind of “android dev” myself I can tell you that their Glyph SDK is still immature (e.g. cannot set for how much a light should be on, cannot set the light intensity and overall buggyness).
I hope that what they’ve done with 2a is just to reduce costs because, even though it has same functionatilies as Phone(2), it’s doesn’t allow to implement complex usage of the Glyph interface (take for example my app).

That said even if it’s gimmicky it’s still different from what the other brands are doing. I remember when I switched from Oneplus 3T to Oneplus Nord and the notification LED disappeared. That, for me, was one of the most important feature as it allowed to see notifications that I didn’t notice the first time. Nothing phones bringed back this feature, although it’s not implemented in the same way.
Maybe they could improve on that, for instance using a RGB glyph or by letting us map any glyph to an app or contact etc (this is more suitable since I don’t think they want to use RGB)…
Also they seem to have abandoned the Glyph progression feature, they could also increase the amount of apps that make use of that.

In my opinion they can still improve/add on the Glyph interface, it makes the phone more unique and removing it wouldn’t improve anything (LEDs are cheap) instead it would remove features that can be considered gimmicky but still something that other phones don’t have.

//project2

My wish for future phones would be a glyph light at the front of the smartphone, eg. as an edge light that can be light up in very different ways and not just as a complete “frame”

asandoval

A Glyph were frequency of the lights turning on and off can play as a differentiator. High Speed pulse, Slow pulse, triple pulse, etc.

Also, like the idea that Glyph can also "bleed in to the front Frame (perhaps where the antennas spacing are, and van also notify you if you put your phone screen up.

Not sure about RGB, I would like White, Yellow and Red. That will keep it Classy and within the same design language and will still give you another differentiator.

The red could be triggr as an emergency beacon in case of an accident, or being lost.

If going to a Pallete of Colors, then you can define your primary color. Use it up on a concert synching with Music.

There are a ton of future aspects that can be addressed.

Ealesy101

I still find the most useful part of the Glyph Interface for myself is the “Flip to Glyph” feature. Helps me stay connected to my notifications, but doesn’t have them blasting sound or vibrations out.

Whenever I have a busy day, I can leave my phone to one side and know if I have missed anything important with “Essential Glyph”.

Is there more utility to be found with the Glyphs? I am sure there will be, it’s still only two years young, so many more opportunities to evolve it.

Nothing’s “Unique Selling Point” is the transparent design, the Glyphs, the minimal software. I wouldn’t wish for any of these to be sacrificed or disappear.

Looking forward to how this thread develops, and how others utilise their Glyphs, if at all. I for one, love them. Even if it is a party piece for music visualisation at times. It truly follows the mission statement, it does “Make Tech Fun Again”.

MarkFrancis

I have been very disappointed with the lack of usable functionality with the glyphs. There are all these individual areas of light, but all I use are the essential and countdown glyphs, I don’t see the point in having individual light patterns for different callers, other than for a gimmick.

What I would find REALLY useful would be the option to extend the essential glyph function to more areas; yesterday I had multiple messages on email and WhatsApp, but just one light to indicate all of these events.

Another frustration is the message app does not trigger the essential glyph now. When I first got the phone it did, I have tried all the suggested fixes I can find online, but still no joy.

UPDATE:

I managed to get the essential glyph to light up with text messages, but had to download Textra to get it to work.

One of the reasons I decided to get a Nothing phone was the close to stock Android set up, but it is a bit annoying that the standard text message app doesn’t integrate with the glyph interface.

The lack of flexibility for using different glyphs for essential notifications is another annoyance, it renders the majority of the interface to the level of a gimmick.

I should have spent a bit more and got a Pixel phone, but I was trying to support an innovative British design company.

This will probably be the only Nothing phone I ever have.

KaiR_hler

For me it would be important to assign different glyphs to different apps. E.g. mail app, glyph bottom left, missed call middle right, etc. Combinations of several glyphs allow for several options (useful for the 2a and 2a plus models!).