Nothing Phone (3) to go big on personalised AI, dynamic homescreen

Nothing CEO Carl Pei recently took to X (previously Twitter) to inform followers of Nothing’s future plans, most of which revolve around consumer-level artificial intelligence on smartphones. Particularly in focus, was the brand’s own implementation on personalised AI assistants, and a dynamic homescreen that acts as more than just an app launcher.

Here’s a quick look at everything the brand teased, and what you can expect from the next Nothing Phone.

Nothing Phone (3): Personalised AI assistant

The video showcased what looked like Nothing OS’s own take on an AI assistant, powered with some GPT-4o features. The AI assistant can understand what’s happening on your screen and responding to prompts contextually.

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However, there was one key addition. We see an initial setup process where the assistant will ask you about some personal preferences like “Do you enjoy spending time with friends or family?” and “When you think about spending time with someone special, what qualities or characteristics do you imagine they would have?”

Responses to such questions will then create your personalised AI assistant (complete with animated eyes), which if we understand correctly, will have a specific tonality and more or less of characteristics like humour, sarcasm, etc based on your taste.

The idea is great, and could be the path for the future of AI assistants where the one running on your phone is different in its responses compared to the one running on the next person’s phone.

Looking beyond apps

Pei also zeroed in on how most smartphone experiences today are tailoured around the app-experience, adding that an OS-focused approach could offer a smarter and more intuitive experience. A quick demo shows us a new homescreen that is more than a launcher for apps.

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We see what looks like a card-based interface where in individual tiles are dynamic in nature and will change according to your needs at that point in time, including doing things like showing you relevant QR codes when you have a flight to catch. Still a demo, the feature could take a different form when it is finally announced, which brings us to the bad news.

Nothing Phone (3) may not launch this year

Towards the end of the video, Pei mentions that we can “expect some of these features to come out with the Phone (3) next year, where we can really nail some of these user experiences,” implying that we may not see the Nothing Phone (3) stick to its expected July 2024 timeline and launch a year after the Phone (2) after all.

However, launching the device in 2025 could benefit Nothing when it comes to equipping the Phone (3) with better hardware as upcoming chipsets including the rumoured Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 are expected to be more powerful when it comes to on-device AI processing, which will make the above-mentioned features possible.