Nothing's glowing new phone is a light in the dark

Key Takeaways

Nothing has introduced the glow-in-the-dark Phone 2a Plus Community Edition, shaped by community input.
Limited to 1,000 units, this unique phone features a phosphorescent material, lasting hours without a power source.
Community-driven design spans from hardware to marketing. The phone is available for £400 (roughly $520 CAD) starting on November 12th.

Have you ever been in the dark and couldn’t find your phone? Or perhaps just want your phone to glow at night? If that sounds like you, this new phone from Nothing might interest you.

Nothing has announced a new version of its Phone 2a Plus featuring a unique glow-in-the-dark design and packaging created in collaboration with members of the company’s community. The phone is fittingly called the Phone 2a Plus Community Edition.

“From hardware to wallpapers, packaging to marketing, this smartphone has been entirely shaped by the imagination of Nothing’s community,” Nothing said in a press release.

The glow-in-the-dark phone will be available on Nothing’s website starting November 12th. U.S. pricing and availability is not clear. The phone costs £499 (about $520). It’s limited to just 1,000 units, so it could go fast. You can pre-register your interest on Nothing’s site here.

Nothing’s Phone 2a Plus dazzled me with personality, performance, and pricing

Nothing is back at it again.

The phone’s creation process was done in four stages

Aside from glowing in the dark, the coolest thing about this phone is, without a doubt, how the community helped shape it. Starting with the hardware design, Nothing’s Design Director Adam Bates and CMF Designer Lucy Birley collaborated with Astrid Vanhuyse and Kenta Akasaki to help create and bring their glow-in-the-dark phone concept to life. They accomplished this by using a green-tinted phosphorescent material. “This feature is purely analogue, requiring no power source, and can last for hours before gradually fading until it recharges by daylight,” Nothing said in a press release.

For the wallpapers on the phone, Nothing collaborated with Andrés Mateos who used a mix of AI tools and digital design to help create the “Connected Collection” of wallpapers. The collection features six wallpapers in total.

Nothing

The last two stages were the box and the marketing campaign. Nothing collaborated with Ian Henry Simmonds, who reinterpreted Nothing’s packaging design with his “Less is More” concept.” You can see the box in the image above, and it’s pretty cool. Finally, Nothing collaborated with Sonya Palma, who created a new “Find your light. Capture your light” marketing campaign for the phone featuring a film and digital assets to support the launch of the Phone 2A Plus Community Edition.

I think the collaboration Nothing has done here to create this new version of the Phone 2a Plus is really cool, and I can’t wait to see it in action. A glow-in-the-dark phone just makes sense.