Nothing likely working on smartphone

London, March 3 Consumer tech brand Nothing Technologies, the newly-launched venture of OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, has been working on a smartphone for over a year and plans to announce it by next month.

According to TechCrunch, the entrepreneur has shown off a prototype of the device in meetings with several key executives from the industry at this week's Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona, as per a source close to the company.

TechCrunch has viewed a photo of one such meeting Pei had with Qualcomma's chief executive.

Details around the forthcoming device are thin, though the source notes that the product will share a similar design language and "elements of transparency" seen in Nothing's first product.

Released in 2021, the earbuds have shipped 400,000 units as of late January, according to the London-based hardware startup.

In an interview with TechCrunch last July, Pei noted that the company had several different devices on its roadmap, prior to teasing out the earbuds.

"We have a lot of products in the pipeline. Earlier this year, we did a community crowdfunding round where we allocated $1.5 million to our community," Pei was quoted as saying by the website.