Nothing reveals its "truth" as an aspiring rival for companies like Apple during its first keynote of 2022

Former OnePlus CEO Carl Pei has now revealed "the truth about Nothing" as planned earlier in 2022. This keynote presentation served to underpin his new company's "vision" for consumer tech, which mainly seems to involve re-infusing it with "innovation", self-expression and other aspects of 1970s-esque futurism, which, as the company apparently perceives, is lacking in the products of today.

This is now tipped to start with the Nothing phone (1), a now-confirmed upcoming piece of hardware that should back up Pei's assertions that his new start-up is "not an audio company" after all - in fact, the start-up aims to pit itself directly against Apple through the establishment of an "ecosystem", to be open to "partners" that may or may not include Sony, Samsung and the auto ODM BYD thus far, with scope for a panel of services built around it in turn.

Then again, both of those are intended to revolve around "core" products - such as the phone (1), to be based on a Snapdragon platform for the promise of performance that doesn't come at the expense of battery life.

However, even though many other OEMs partner with Qualcomm to say the same, the CEO has made fresh allusions to a genuinely novel design in the first-gen Nothing handset. 

These hints come in the form of an arguably strange arrangement of shapes, highlighted in white on a black background during the show. The cryptic teaser might thus hint that the same outline might correspond to what will appear on (or in) the Nothing phone (1) somehow.

Then again, little is certain in this vein as of yet. Nevertheless, the OEM has mentioned that a new agreement with the display supplier Visionox thus far in order to make products such as the phone (1) a reality.

Accordingly, Nothing now insists it is in a position to deliver on these aspirations, thanks to a complete team recruited from a "diverse" range of backgrounds such as fashion as well as tech or business, and a supply chain in place despite the OEM's claims of pushback against the same from bigger players in the industry.

Finally, Pei has revealed that its upcoming second round of "community" (or crowd-funded) investing, to the tune of US$10 million this time, will be open soon.

Despite all this detail on how Nothing has made something of not much more than its name and mission statement thus far, further details on the actual launch, availability or pricing for the phone (1) are things that never actually made it to its maker's latest keynote in the end.