Exclusive: Ahead of Phone 2a launch, Nothing OS head Mladen Hoyss explains its UI choices

Nothing is unique — a transparent back design, Glyph interface with gamified customisations, and an OS unlike any other. After using the Nothing Phone 2a for a few weeks, I find that the Nothing OS plays a huge role in making the phone’s experience stand out.

The OS strikes a perfect balance between offering a stock Android experience and customisations, while remaining bloatware-free. The OS features functional widgets that aren’t just shortcuts; it pays significant attention to aesthetics.

Something I found particularly interesting about the OS was that it improves your experience in such a subtle way that it’s hard to pinpoint. For many users who are familiar with Android, it may initially appear as just a different skin or launcher. However, with continued use, you realise the functionality is deeply integrated with the aesthetics. The more I used the device, the more I was curious about the OS. So my curiosity led me to sit down with Mladen Hoyss, the mastermind behind Nothing OS, to learn more about why Nothing chose a monochrome UI, new features coming to the OS, native apps, bloatware, and just generally what makes Nothing OS special.

“We look at functional aesthetics as the North Star to whatever we are designing,” says Hoyss, who has a background in industrial design. “It has to be functional, but the functionality needs to have the same aesthetic as everything else we are doing. It could be a wallpaper or something system-wide,” he added.

“The biggest challenge of Nothing OS is to give users that same experience that they have from unboxing our phone when they see the hardware, as when they turn the phone around. This goes line in line with transparency being such a big part of our aesthetic, so how do we make this really transparent and bring that design language from the back of the phone to the front?” The answer is of course, Nothing OS.