None has a special relationship with its community and wants to engage fans on a much deeper level than the typical companies that make modern smartphones. It happened six months ago inviting the community to design a special edition of the Nothing Phone (2a) (the final design was ultimately based on the Plus version).
The process went through four phases and the winners of each phase went to work with the Nothing team to bring their concepts and ideas to life. This is what they created: a glow-in-the-dark Nothing Phone (2a) Plus.
Phase 1, hardware design, was won by Astrid Vanhuyse and Kenta Akasaki, who worked with Nothing’s Design Director Adam Bates and
CMF designer Lucy Birley. Fireflies were a key inspiration and lighting is already an important design element for Nothing, it was a match made in Heaven.
The designers point out that this is purely “analogue”, as it is not powered by electricity or even the phone itself, but by daylight. Then Andrés Mateos won phase 2 and provided six custom wallpapers that matched the look of the phone.
Community Edition: hardware design, wallpapers, packaging and promotional campaign
Phase 3 winner Ian Henry Simmonds created brand new packaging for the special edition, while Phase 4 winner Sonya Palma created the marketing campaign: “Find your light. Catch your light.”
We have good news and bad news for the people who love the design of the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition and want to own one.
Good news first: the Community Edition is available in all markets where Nothing operates and this special model costs the same as the regular model, £399 / €449 / ₹29,999 / ¥55,800. Please note: the models intended for Japan are based on the regular telephone (2a), not on the Plus. The devices have 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space.
Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition
Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition
Now the bad news: only 1,000 units of the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition will be produced. So if you really want one, you should register your interest at nothing.tech before the start of the open sale on November 12. If you wait too long, you may run out of units.
Here is a short promo video that is part of the promo campaign.
Instead, watch this video for a more in-depth look. The Community Edition portion starts around the 9 minute mark. You will meet the winners of the different phases and hear how they, together with the Nothing team, created a tailor-made product based on their ideas.