Nothing, according to OnePlus' co-founder, will be the first Android phone.
On its next big thing, the design-led startup founded by the OnePlus veteran appears to be collaborating with Android and Qualcomm.
Shoaib Ansar 
Nothing, the new business co-founded by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, seems destined to release a phone at some point. If signals from Pei's Twitter account are any indication, 'eventually' may not be that far away.
Pei tweeted "Back on Android," which, admittedly, isn't much of a smoking gun if it's enough to pique the interest of the OnePlus devout. Perhaps he's recently upgraded from an iPhone to a new Samsung S22 Ultra — the subsequent tweet praising Android 12 being lovely adds to this.
The Android account's and Qualcomm account's follow-ups, however, truly hint at something approaching. "We've got a lot to catch up on Carl," Android added, winking, while Qualcomm simply used a joke to show the three are all working together – just look at the tweets. I'm not going to sit here and describe memes and emoticons because I value my dignity.
Back on Android
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) February 15, 2022
Back on Android
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) February 15, 2022
Even if you assume the Android message is just a friendly "welcome back to the platform" message (which the winky face appears to disprove), the Qualcomm tweet appears to be a clear indication of some sort of collaboration between the three companies.
The fact that the brand isn't nearly the same these days is thrilling for OnePlus enthusiasts. Instead of competing with the big boys, the upstart is now owned by one of them: Oppo, with the same stable of phone brands as Oppo as well as Vivo and Realme. The phones are fine, but the brand identity is lacking.
Meanwhile, Carl Pei established Nothing, a new company dedicated to... going up against the big brands. Nothing began with the Ear(1) true wireless earbuds, which were ahead of their time when it came to affordable noise-canceling earphones — we wrote about them in our Nothing Ear(1) review "They have a lot of features for how cheap they are, and they sound fantastic as well. You won't find a better pair of noise-canceling buds for the money right now."
So we're looking forward to seeing what Nothing can do to shake up our list of the best Android phones – hopefully, we won't have to wait long.
