What you need to know
- Nothing announced the latest 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 so far.
- The main highlight for the Phone 1 during the teasers was the Glyph Lighting system, which has been repeated several times since then.
End of an era. Nothing beats announcing that your original phone has received the latest update before the US holiday.
a community post, Nothing has officially lifted the curtain on its first phone as the latest supported firmware update has been pushed to users. The last patch is quite light. Nothing says that users can expect “general improvements” and bug fixes (pretty standard stuff). It also delivers “general system stability” updates and July 2026 security patches, completing four years of security fixes.
If you have a Phone 1, you are unique. Nothing is reviewed about the device’s achievements, noting that it first debuted with Android 12 and that its latest OS update brought it to Android 15. The Phone 1 didn’t just start our journey with ‘Nothing’, it introduced us to ‘ideas around a cleaner, more purposeful smartphone experience, from the Glyph interface’.
Nothing ties its design philosophy to the Phone 1, as the lessons learned from it continue to shape its software and phones. For the record, the post adds that a member of the Program Marketing team, RohitIn 2026, he returns to Phone 1 for a month to share his experiences and see how it holds up.
It all started in 2022
If we’re talking quadrennial updates, that takes us to 2022. Teasers said Nothing’s first phone was “Coming Soon” in the summer of 2022, where it was a serious agitation around. For the sake of this article, I am talking about our readers. You could say that ~80% of our readers were either “definitely interested” or interested in the Nothing Phone 1. About 19% said the device didn’t interest them, but not everything is for everyone.
Nothing had really entered a market where it was so strongly dominated apple and Samsung. It wasn’t easy, but here we are. The device’s Glyph Lighting system was the star in the teasers, which showed the phone in full shade. Plus, Nothing’s head of design, Tom Howard, clear chassis saidIt allows you to see its internal features because they “really wanted to bring it out from the inside, and that meant working with the engineers to start from the first principles.”
Bringing things up to 2026, we were seeing people TikTok ditches its iPhones for the Nothing Phoneor at least consider doing so. Maybe this time is important. Nothing’s OG device is no more (for updates), but it teases a new era: Nothing phone 4b.
Android Central’s Take
Nothing was interesting four years ago, it is interesting now. I’m a gamer, and you can tell that whenever a player sees flashing lights, you’ve got their attention. So I’d say you’re quite right (for me anyway). Dumb jokes aside, nothing phones have always had a distinct aesthetic compared to the rest of the industry. There are risks. This is what sets them apart. Even its operating system is something different that helps its phones stand on their own.
