TL;DR
- Nothing made a device called the Nothing Power 1 but decided to ultimately shelve it because of multiple issues.
- The Power 1 had a transparent housing and was a 3-in-1 portable charger.
- It was meant to launch after the Nothing Ear 1.
Nothing has shared a detailed look at a completely finished product the company failed to bring to market. It’s got the transparent design aesthetics typical of Nothing’s flagship products like the Ear 1, Ear 2, Phone 1, and Phone 2. In fact, it looks pretty great and sounds pretty handy, but unfortunately, it’s something the company had to ditch for multiple reasons.
The product was called the Power 1, a 3-in-1 portable charger from Nothing. It had wireless charging, 65W fast wired charging to charge laptops and phones, and it could function like a power bank. It was also pretty compact and could fit inside a shirt pocket.
Carl Pei, CEO and Founder of Nothing, revealed that the Power 1 was set to release after the Ear 1 wireless headphones when the company had a relatively small team and limited resources.
“This was the best we could come up with. All these features already exist on the market, we were just packaging them together,” Pei said in a video detailing why Power 1 never made it out the door. “This would have been a great product for Nothing in 2021, but in 2023, our ambitions are a bit bigger,” he said.
We learned a lot and grew as a team from Power (1).
In sharing this, I hope that you can take some of our learnings and apply them to yourself! https://t.co/mJw6x5I5va
Pei explains that it was challenging to get suppliers to give Nothing good enough pricing to make the product compelling for consumers. But there were issues with the product’s performance itself.
“A product like this has to perform really well. It has to charge your stuff fast, and it’s quite small. So, we had problems with the thermals. If we used the charging speed we wanted, it would overheat,” Pei said.
Durability was also an issue with the Power 1, and it failed to pass Nothing’s drop tests. The company realized it had to redesign the product, but going through the whole exercise again wasn’t worth the effort. That was the end of the road for the Nothing Power 1.
Want to know more about how the Power 1 came to be and why it was shelved? Watch the embedded video above.
