Nothing to Launch Phone 1 With Latest Qualcomm Snapdragon Chip This Summer

Carl Pei's tech company Nothing will unveil its first smartphone, the Phone 1, this summer, the entrepreneur announced at an event on Wednesday.

The phone will run on Nothing OS, which the company said will distill "the best features of pure Android." If you're interested in getting a glimpse, a first preview of the OS will be available via its launcher, which will be available to download on select smartphone models from April. It will come with three years of OS updates and four years of security updates.

At Wednesday's event, Pei said the company wants its products to help dispel "skepticism" and "apathy" about tech. He said he hopes the phone will be the "wakeup call" that the industry needs. He promised the phone will look like nothing we've seen before.

Nothing, which launched last year, unveiled its first product, the Ear 1 headphones, last July. Already the company has shipped half a million units, said Pei. But, he added on Wednesday, "we are not an audio company." Nothing has big plans to move into many different product areas, with Pei expressing his ambition to challenge Apple.

The London-based company has some big backers, including Nest founder Tony Fadell, as well as co-founder and CEO of Reddit Steven Huffman and GV (formerly Google Ventures), Alphabet's investment arm. The company also now has over 300 team members, Pei confirmed Wednesday, adding that its supply chain is ready to go.