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I actually like the website and what they are trying to do. To me the biggest problem is the design of the phone itself: it's got an interesting LED notificatio
by dilap 4y ago
I actually like the website and what they are trying to do. To me the biggest problem is the design of the phone itself: it's got an interesting LED notification thing going on, but besides that it's a knock-off of the iPhone
I don't want to use a phone that feels like an imitation of someone else's design; I want to use a phone that has its own unique vibe.
(On the website: It's so refreshing to use a website that just scrolls naturally. Compare to Apple's product pages which all hijack the scroll in really terrible ways these days.)
- amelius 4y ago> I don't want to use a phone that feels like an imitation of someone else's design It's just a minimalistic rounded rectangle. You can hardly call it design.
- knubie 4y agoGood design often feels obvious in retrospect.
- dilap 4y agoDefinitely true. I don't fault any phone for adopting the iPhone's basic innovation of "no buttons on the front, rectangular pane of glass", but you can still have your own unique identity within that framework.
- dilap 4y agoEven within the scope of "rounded rectangle", there are a ton of choices that will establish an overall aesthetic feel and visual identity. – How rounded is the rectangle - The thickness of the bezel - How rounded is the phone depth-wide - The shape of the notch - The location and appearance of the speakers - The location and appearance of the cameras – The location and shape and choice of buttons on the side (volume, lock, silence) - Any sort of visual framing of the edge of the phone In all of these respects the Nothing Phone basically just cribs off of the iPhone design language. Compare e.g. to the Samsung Galaxy S22. It still has basic the "rounded rectangle" form factor, but the other elements are unique, giving it its own visual identity.
- amelius 4y agoStill a very small design space that can easily be explored using A/B testing.
- skavi 4y agothe websites font is really nice. reminds me a bit of what apple used to use in their advertising
- LukeShu 4y agoI didn't see it that way at all at first; what it initially reminded me of is when Latin characters appear in otherwise-Chinese or Chinese-produced documents (most familiar example: the manual leaflet that comes with a cheaply produced electronic widget). But after reading your comment, I can see it that way as well. I think the difference is that it's monospace, which is an attribute of the Chinese documents because the Chinese text usually fits on a grid; and Apple would never use monospace that way (I'm sure there's a folklore.org story about how important proportional font rendering was to Jobs).
- hobotime 4y agoLG invented the smartphone-as-slab well before the iPhone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
- dilap 4y ago> After the release of the iPhone the head of the LG Mobile Handset R&D Center was quoted saying he believed Apple had stolen the idea from the KE850 after it was announced as part of the iF Design Award. Huh, interesting! Duly noted. This provides an example of my point: even though the Samsung Galaxy, the iPhone, and the KE850 are all using the same basic slab design pioneered (apparently!) by LG, they all have distinct visual identities. In contrast the Nothing Phone is mostly just cribbing off of the iPhone. They need to take what they did w/ the LED area and apply the same design language to the rest of the phone.