What you need to know
- Nothing announced the final software update for the Nothing Phone 1, the original device that debuted in 2022.
- It carries bug fixes and the July 2026 security patch, while also celebrating the phone’s achievements thus far.
- A major highlight for the Phone 1 during its teasers was its Glyph Lighting system, which has seen a few iterations since then.
It’s the end of an era. Nothing announces before the U.S. holiday that its original phone has obtained its final update.
In a community post, Nothing officially drew the curtain over its first phone as its final supported software update has been pushed to users. The final patch is pretty light. Nothing states users can expect “general improvements” and bug fixes (pretty standard stuff). It’s also rolling out “overall system stability” updates and the July 2026 security patch, wrapping up four years of security fixes.
If you have a Phone 1, you’re one of a kind. Nothing walks through the device’s achievements, noting that it first debuted with Android 12 and that its final OS update brought it to Android 15. Not only did the Phone 1 begin our journey with Nothing, introducing us to “ideas around a cleaner, more intentional smartphone experience, from the Glyph Interface and dot matrix design language to a more focused take on Android.”
Nothing credits its design philosophy to the Phone 1, as the lessons learned from it continue to shape its software and phones. To celebrate, the post adds that its Software Marketing team member, Rohit, is going back to the Phone 1 for a month to share their experience with it in 2026 and see how it holds up.
It all started in 2022
If we’re talking about four years of updates, that takes us back to 2022. Teasers said Nothing’s first phone was “Coming Soon” in the summer of 2022, and there was some serious hype around it. For the sake of this post, I’m talking about our readers. You could say that ~80% of our readers were either “definitely interested” or curious about the Nothing Phone 1. Around 19% said the device didn’t interest them, but not everything is for everyone.
Nothing had truly inserted itself into a market heavily dominated by Apple and Samsung. It wasn’t easy, yet here we are. The device’s Glyph Lighting system was the star in teasers showing the phone in full shadow. What’s more, Nothing’s head of design, Tom Howard, said the clear chassis, which let us see its internals, was because they “really wanted to bring the inside out, and that meant working with the engineers to start from first principles.”
Bringing things to 2026, we’ve been seeing people on TikTok drop their iPhones for the Nothing Phone, or at least think about doing it. Perhaps this timing is significant. Nothing’s O.G. device is no more (for updates), while it teases a new era: the Nothing Phone 4b.
Android Central’s Take
Nothing was interesting four years ago, and it’s still interesting now. I’m a gamer, and you could say that whenever a gamer sees glowing lights, you’ve got their attention. To that, I’d say you’re damn right (for me, anyway). My dumb jokes aside, Nothing’s phones have always held a different aesthetic compared to the rest of the industry. There are risks. It’s what sets them apart. Even its OS is something different that helps its phones stand on their own.
