Nothing’s first-ever smartphone has reached the end of the road. The company has confirmed that the Nothing Phone (1), stylized as Phone (1), will no longer receive software updates, closing the book on a device that helped put the London-based startup on the map back in 2022.
The farewell isn’t silent, though. Nothing has started rolling out one last update, and it should land on every Phone (1) still in circulation over the coming days. Under the hood it carries the July 2026 Android security patch, along with a familiar cocktail of bug fixes, performance tweaks and general system stability improvements. After this, the phone is on its own.
That’s a fitting end to a four-year run. The Phone (1) was announced on March 23, 2022, and went on sale on July 21, 2022, arriving with Android 12 out of the box. Over its lifetime it collected three Android version upgrades and four years of security patches — exactly the support window Nothing had promised at launch, which is more than plenty of budget-friendly rivals managed to deliver.
For anyone who missed it the first time around, the Phone (1) was the handset that turned a case full of LED strips into a talking point. Its transparent back and rear Glyph Interface lighting gave it a personality that few mid-range phones could match. But it wasn’t all show. The spec sheet held up its end:
- Display: 6.55-inch OLED, 1080×2400 FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+
- Memory: 8GB or 12GB LPDDR5 RAM
- Storage: 128GB or 256GB UFS 3.1
- Battery: 4500 mAh
- Cameras: dual rear camera system
- Durability: IP53 splash, water and dust resistance
All of that arrived at £399 for the base 8GB/128GB configuration, a price that made the Phone (1) an easy recommendation for buyers who wanted something with a bit of flair without stepping up to flagship money.
The end of software support doesn’t mean the phone stops working — the July 2026 patch will keep it reasonably secure for a while yet, and the hardware is still perfectly capable of everyday duties. But it does mark a milestone. The Phone (1) was Nothing’s proof of concept, the device that showed a new brand could break into a crowded market on design and value alone. With its support lifecycle now wrapped up, it moves gracefully into semi-retirement, having done exactly what it set out to do.
