What do you 'really' think of Essential Space?

JamesBeaumont

After owning the NP3 for a couple of months, I’m really not sold on the Essential Space feature. I’m tech savvy and always open for things to make life easier, however I just can’t get it to work for me and it doesn’t provide any genuine use. We need to have the ability to change what the side button does, as for me it’s just sat there as a wasted feature. What’s everyone else’s true thoughts?

Anonymous994

JamesBeaumont I haven’t found a single use case for it. I’ve tried but it feels like a solution looking for a problem rather than something actually useful to me personally.

It’s a shame you can’t natively remap the button from Nothing OS. I’m sure they could come up with some interesting integrations that could be genuinely useful.

It would be way more responsive than having to long press the capacitive button on the back of the NP3 to interact with the Glyph Matrix for instance.

(….and yes, I know you can remap it via ADB)

Odbc

JamesBeaumont it’s garbage. What am I supposed to be scrolling the internet all day and taking screenshots?

pnknot

It’s more like a gimmick on the name of AI. Completely useless for large userbase.

JamesBeaumont

pnknot Unfortunately I do agree. I’m a big advocate of AI and now use it daily for work and personal - but the Essential Space seems rushed together and hasn’t been throughout out properly. If anything, the essential space screenshot shortcut annoys me as I end up with loads of them stored which have been taken accidentally. I do love Nothing as a brand but wish they had taken more time with this part.

Anonymous903

It’s the first gen AI app that serves a specific use and does it well (organising screenshots tasks and reminders), instead of apps that try to do everything and fail horribly at everything.

But that’s still nothing spectacular

JamesBeaumont

Anonymous903 Google Calendar does all of these things with a clean UI, easy navigation and provides exactly what I want to be reminded of. Essential Space is messy, not user friendly. It’s AI ability to describe a screenshot doesn’t cut it for me - that’s what Co-Pilot or GPT is for. - I have however seen the trailer for ‘playground’ which to be fair looks really exciting!

Anonymous931

It’s a phenomenal idea, but the current execution is poor. And every few updates all notes end up deleted on their own so it’s highly unreliable too. As long as we’re stuck with using it only on phone, so without web version, I see no point to switch to it instead of using Gemini (which on its own is far superior in every single aspect, anyway).

Anonymous903

Anonymous931 Gemini might get integrated into essential, because the trailer shows them using Whisper. It would be very useful to swipe from the navbar and ask questions like normal, then can give you info on your essential notes too.

Anonymous931

Anonymous903 I know, but my main gripe with the Essential Space is that there is absolutely no web/desktop version of it. There is for Gemini, it is even in the sidebar if I want that:

Stereobasic

It’s kind of very pratical for making summary of records of meetings, courses, etc. Just having to push 4 times in a button, without anything to ask or write, to send a PDF with a digest of the meeting is amazing. You can directly edit what AI write to change some things if you want and that’s very convenient.

For the screenshot part, it’s not really perfect. It miss a way to vocally ask to directly store things in the good folder when you take the screenshot.

And yes, it need a way to save or back-up things. Maybe just with a PC or internet website to log-in from another device if needed.

Anonymous903

Stereobasic Are those NP3 features? I don’t remember seeing a way to share PDFs on my 3A

Stereobasic

Anonymous903 I don’t know. I just have to click in the 3 dots at the upper right of the AI summary and there is a share button.

Anonymous903

Stereobasic Just checked, it’s there for analysed recordings 👍️

josecordoba

It’s very useful, you have to take the time and find out how you can incorporate it in your workflow.

For me, being able to quickly generate reminders, calendar events and such through a quick voice note is a life saver. It has basically replaced Tasks (the app) on my phone.

My gym requires me to schedule my weekly sessions, it’s so convenient to simply screenshot my Reservation page and have Essential Space add it to Google Calendar for me

JPK108

The recording and AI summarization is very handy for my daily work. I am excited to see how this evolves and becomes more refined over time.

Rhaiven

I love it. Its my second brain. Every reminder, every thing i want to remember or any recipes i wanna safe i use essential space. Its a key feature for me and the reason why i bought the nothing phone 3a.

themountofmint

Well. That’s my to-go app for life rn and no Calendar/Notion/Obsidian helped me in starting planning until I’ve got this.

Sonow I’m just writing everything as a messy thing (usually) and it organizes this all for me and sets reminders if necessary.

Yeah, I can agree there’s a lot to work on. Synchronisation, web version support, an ability to move everything to a new phone, automatically save all the screen directly to Space and etc.