Carl Pei Teases New Quick Settings Redesign for Nothing Phones

The key selling point of the Nothing Phones has been its user interface. It provides a clean near-stock Android experience with Nothing’s unique spin on it. However, many users have voiced their opinion on how bland and clunky the quick settings panel appears in its current state. Well, it seems the company listened to the feedback as CEO Carl Pei showed off a redesigned quick settings panel for Nothing Phones on X today.

On Tuesday, Pei shared two images of the new quick settings in an X post; one in the dark and the other one in the light mode. The images show the quick settings panel in a collapsed and expanded view giving users a clear look at what they will look like.

The design looks modern while maintaining Nothing OS’ minimal aesthetics. The pill-shaped quick settings toggle is replaced with traditional circular icons. The WiFi toggle that used to take up a good chunk of space is now smaller, as it should be. Mobile data has its own toggle now. However, the Bluetooth toggle still looks similar, rectangular, and shows a preview of the connected devices.

In this concept, the brightness slider is thicker and moved to the bottom, making it more prominent and one-hand accessible. However, it still requires you to completely expand the quick settings panel to adjust the brightness. You also have a sort of horizontal slider to switch between Ring and Vibration modes.

Keen eyes folks will notice a gradient that appears when the QS panel is expanded matching the colors of the album art. This will be a really nice touch if this gradient changes colors according to the album or currently playing content. As Carl mentioned this is a work in progress, so we might get to see it with the release of Nothing OS 3 later this year.

I can’t help but notice that it looks eerily similar to the quick settings on OxygenOS and ColorOS devices. This new design does look more refined and polished. But it will upset stock Androidpurists who liked the close-to-stock pill-shaped look. I also noticed an absence of the dot matrix font style for the clock, which I feel is a good thing because it is almost unreadable.

A lot is going on with the design, but I find it better than what we have in Nothing OS 2.5 right now. Should there be a quick access button for ChatGPT too? I mean, Nothing has already included other ChatGPT integrations in Nothing OS and its earbuds.

What are your thoughts on the new quick settings design? Do you like it or do you want Nothing to stick with the current style? Voice your opinions in the comments section.