--- title: "Nothing Phone (1): Carl Pei's See-Through Comeback" url: https://quietmenace.com/tech/nothing-phone-carl-pei-design/ author: Quiet Menace Editors section: Tech published: 2026-10-15 updated: 2026-10-15 topics: Industrial Design, Tech History, Audio --- # Nothing Phone (1): Carl Pei's See-Through Comeback > After leaving OnePlus, Carl Pei set up shop in London and sold a phone you could see into. The lights on the back did most of the marketing. On July 12, 2022, a London company not yet two years old called Nothing unveiled a phone with a clear glass back and roughly 900 LEDs arranged beneath it. Phone (1) went on sale nine days later for £399. It ran a midrange Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chip and wasn't sold in the United States at launch. It got far more attention than that chip would suggest, almost entirely because of how it looked. ## The OnePlus Years Carl Pei was born in Beijing in 1989, moved with his family to the United States and then grew up in Sweden. He started a degree at the Stockholm School of Economics in 2008 and dropped out in 2011 to work in China's smartphone business full time. A fan site he built about the Chinese phone maker Meizu caught the attention of the company, and in 2011 he joined its marketing team. In November 2012 he joined Oppo as international markets manager, reporting to Pete Lau. In December 2013, Pei and Lau co-founded OnePlus in Shenzhen. Pei ran its global business, as director of OnePlus Global, for almost seven years, then left in October 2020. Nothing was founded that same month and announced on January 27, 2021, with Pei as CEO and a base in London. The seed round, reported at about $7 million, came from a list of names that read like a tech dinner party. Tony Fadell, one of the people behind the [Apple iPod](https://quietmenace.com/tech/apple-ipod-history/), was in. So were Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and YouTuber Casey Neistat. The company also picked up the trademarks and logo of Essential, Andy Rubin's shuttered phone brand, in January 2021, without saying what it planned to do with them. ## Enter Stockholm The interesting hire came in February 2021. As reported by [Engadget](https://www.engadget.com/teenage-engineering-carl-pei-nothing-110012034.html) at the time, Teenage Engineering signed on as a founding partner responsible for product design. Its CEO, Jesper Kouthoofd, was named Nothing's creative lead, and Tom Howard, the Stockholm company's vice head, became Nothing's head of design. If you know the playful aluminum gear covered in our [Teenage Engineering OP-1 story](https://quietmenace.com/tech/teenage-engineering-op-1/), the move made instant sense. Pei had spent years selling phones on specs and price. Now he had some of the most admired hardware designers in Europe in his corner. The first product was audio. Ear (1) was announced on July 27, 2021, and went on sale on August 17 for $99. The stems were transparent, showing the logic board, microphones and battery, and the case was a clear plastic shell where you could see the hinge and the magnets that hold each bud in place. Most brands hide all of that behind glossy white plastic. In October 2022 Nothing raised the price to $149, citing component costs. ![A white Nothing smartphone photographed against a plain background](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1664700650953-62e408a415a4?w=1600&h=1067&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop) *Nothing sold the hardware itself as the decoration Photo by Shawn Rain on Unsplash* ## What the Glyphs Actually Do Phone (1) took the transparent idea to the back of a phone. Under the Gorilla Glass 5 sat a set of light elements built from roughly 900 LEDs, which Nothing called the Glyph Interface. It wasn't only decoration. The phone shipped with 10 ringtones, each paired with its own light pattern that flashed in time with the sound. A strip at the bottom edge doubled as a charging gauge when plugged in. The lights could work as a soft fill for the camera, and a separate red light showed when video was recording. A setting called Flip to Glyph switched the lights on only when the phone lay face down on a table. That last feature was the clever one. A phone that can get your attention while lying screen down is a small argument for looking at your screen less, which is an odd thing for a phone maker to sell. It worked as a pitch. The rest of the spec sheet was solidly midrange. A 6.55-inch 120Hz OLED display, two 50-megapixel rear cameras, a 4,500mAh battery, 33W wired and 15W wireless charging, IP53 splash resistance and Android 12 under a custom skin called Nothing OS. Reviewers liked the hardware and complained about software bugs and slow updates at launch. Few had anything bad to say about the looks. ## Transparency as a Brand Nothing turned one visual idea into a whole identity. Clear housings ran from the earbuds to the phones, and even the inside of the Ear (1) case had its name printed where you could read it through the lid. It is a cousin of [Dieter Rams's principle](https://quietmenace.com/design/dieter-rams-ten-principles/) that good design is honest, played for drama rather than restraint. The see-through look also has deep roots in gaming hardware, from clear 1990s handhelds to the transparent editions of the [Analogue Pocket](https://quietmenace.com/tech/analogue-pocket-retro-handheld/). The company kept building. Phone (2) was announced on July 11, 2023, with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. A cheaper sub-brand called CMF arrived the same year. Phone (2a), announced on March 5, 2024, sold more than 100,000 units on its first day, according to Nothing. In September 2025 Nothing raised a $200 million Series C led by Tiger Global, valuing the company at $1.3 billion. The full timeline lives on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_%28company%29). For more on gadgets where the shell matters as much as the chip, see the [tech section](https://quietmenace.com/tech/), our [industrial design hub](https://quietmenace.com/topics/industrial-design/) and the [audio archive](https://quietmenace.com/topics/audio/). Phone (3), launched on July 1, 2025, retired the light strips that made Nothing famous. In their place on the back sits a small circular dot matrix of LEDs called the Glyph Matrix. It looks less like a light show and more like a tiny low-resolution screen, the kind of display a 1980s calculator watch would have envied. --- Filed under: [Industrial Design](https://quietmenace.com/topics/industrial-design/), [Tech History](https://quietmenace.com/topics/tech-history/), [Audio](https://quietmenace.com/topics/audio/) Hero image: Photo by Thai Nguyen on Unsplash (Unsplash License)