Nothing, the company behind the Nothing Phone (1), has something up its sleeve. According to the latest leaks circulating the internet airwaves, there is a Nothing speaker coming down the pipeline.
91Mobiles published what looks like a promotional render via tipster Kuba Wojciechowski, who has been on the mark with gadget leaks before. The Nothing speaker appears designed to be boxy like its Android smartphone sibling. It also has buttons for volume and power controls and a “red-accented” button on the side — I wouldn’t be surprised if that were some action button to activate a digital assistant for smart home commands. Or perhaps it’s a quick mute button.
The render also shows speaker cutouts on the front. 91Mobiles says they’re stand-ins for tweeters and sub-woofers. It’s not unlike other smart speakers on the market, like the Apple HomePod, though Nothing’s version looks a little more like an amplifier than a speaker. There also appears to be a scrolling LED window, which could be a fun aesthetic addition to the purported Nothing speaker. Since there aren’t any technical specifications available, we can only assume.
Nothing has certainly been teasing something on its Twitter feed this week. The first tweet shows what looks like a quality assurance worker testing the circuits on a device — if you look at the monitor in the background, you’ll see an x-ray moving around on the screen. I think I see components.
Something mighty is on the horizon.
Can you guess what we’re cooking up? pic.twitter.com/QZs9k3Hh4X
— Nothing (@nothing) March 1, 2023
The two tweets that followed activated my extreme aversion to insect bodies. The first tweet features a beetle — my colleague, Andrew Liszewski, believes it to be a three-horned rhinoceros beetle — accompanied by a cryptic emoji message (your browser may not be able to show them): “🐞 out, 🪲 in.” The second is a 10-second clip of the same rhino beetle crawling around. Gross!
It’s likely those tweets aren’t even talking about this leaked speaker. Carl Pei, founder of Nothing and former co-founder of OnePlus, did say last year in an interview with CNBC that the company plans to take on Apple with its smartphone launch. Perhaps a super cool speaker integrating with the super cool smartphone is part of that plan. We won’t know anything until there’s an official announcement.