I’ve recently returned from a work trip to Japan and took my Nothing Phone (3) with me. I ended up meeting quite a few people who were curious about the phone after noticing it left face down on tables during meetings and dinners.
What was interesting was that the same topic came up multiple times: cases and charms.
This wasn’t too surprising, because there were two things I noticed very quickly in Japan:
iPhones are extremely popular, with a huge amount of support for cases and accessories.
A large number of people use phone charms attached to their cases.
Honestly, it felt like 90% of the people I saw commuting had some kind of charm attached, either purely for decoration or as part of a wrist strap setup. Phone charms are also very common prizes in gashapon machines, so they’re widely available and clearly part of the culture around personalising devices.
Seeing Nothing’s push into the Japanese market got me wondering whether any thought has gone into making sure the default transparent cases packaged with the phones include holes for phone charms? My Phone (3) and Phone (4a) cases don’t seem to have them, and a couple of colleagues expressed disappointment that they wouldn’t easily be able to customise the cases with charms they already own if they switched to Nothing.
