It also might be the ONLY mainstream Android VR headset after ‘Google Cardboard’.
It really goes to show that Nothing struck a chord with the global tech community, given how everyone’s speculating about what the company will launch next. Sure, the Nothing Phone (3) is in the works and plans on debuting early next year, but it’s fun asking questions like “What if they launched a Nothing foldable phone? (Hint: it would be awesome) Or as designer Ratan Pande asks – What about a VR headset?
Honestly, both the foldable phone and the VR headset would be great areas for Nothing to disrupt. Why? Because they’re both fairly declining industries and the only reason they are is that there’s a lack of exciting products in the area. In comes Nothing. The VR headset, designed by Pande, was created as an aesthetics exercise to see how one company’s design DNA would translate onto a product category that the company isn’t in. The result is fairly interesting, with the Glyph Interface making its way to the front of the VR headset, among a few other pretty cool details!
Designer: Ratan Pande
The Nothing VR Headset is outwardly simple, wowing with aesthetics and that transparent-ish design language that we’ve come to know and love. The form factor isn’t too different from, lets say, the Meta Quest, with a white block strapped to the front of your head. The front panel is transparent, revealing a fair bit of circuitry underneath (probably faux components designed just for the aesthetic), along with two front-facing pass-through cameras, and a few other lenses along the sides possibly for proximity awareness and obstacle detection.
The Glyph Interface is what the eye instantly notices. Borrowing from the Phone (1) and (2a)’s glyph patterns, the two sets of LED strips (one around each eye) help serve as notification lights – not for the wearer, but for people around the wearer. Given the conceptual nature it isn’t really fair to speculate what each individual glyph does, but one can imagine it glows when pass-through is switched on, so people around know that the wearer is aware of their surroundings. The glyphs could possibly do a light-dance when you’re playing a game and you score a point too. Oh, and there’s a red LED indicator when the wearer is recording their surroundings.
Along the back, the design has a setup that all VR headset wearers are all too familiar with. A simple padded eyepiece, with a three-strap system that keeps the headset in place. On the inside, fresnel lenses power the VR experience, providing immersive clarity without too much of a price tag.
It’s fun to speculate what this device could potentially cost. Given that Nothing usually enters a product category with an incredibly competitive price tag, this one would have to easily be under $300 to really squeeze some market share out of Meta. As perhaps the only Android manufacturer to build a VR headset, it could tie in perfectly with the Android ecosystem, relying on a tried-and-tested OS and a total of well over 3 billion Android handsets that will pair VERY well with the VR headset, allowing you to access apps, play games, browse social-media, watch movies, and even engage in a bit of productivity! Will Nothing launch a VR headset? Probably not for a while, given how they’re still trying to establish themselves as a dominant player in the phone category… but one can hope, no?
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