In all honesty, considering that this is the company’s very first phone, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that Android 13 isn’t exactly launching day one. The fact that the company is beta testing the software right now is pretty impressive. Several other manufacturers- ones who have the making phones for years, mind you- take longer to even do that.
Carl Pei explains the delay with getting Android 13 on the Nothing Phone (1)
Bringing the latest software to a phone requires more than just expertise. It also requires manpower. You need to have an army of developers to make sure that the software is stable and usable. Unfortunately, this is one thing that Nothing lacked. Pei explains that, when Nothing was looking for software engineers, he had trouble finding candidates. He told the anecdote about one candidate who the company interviewed. Call Pei advised the team not to hire him, but he was the only person they could bring in to interview. After working for all of one day, that employee quit and went off to a different company for work. Because of these issues, the company had to heavily outsource its work. He didn’t mention which companies, but the company had contacted software engineers from other smartphone OEMs to work part-time for Nothing. This also came with its own issues, as the team of engineers was full of people who didn’t have experience working together. That only made things more difficult. Not only that, but Carl Pei also said that”…since they were working on something that wasn’t their own baby, the motivation was a little bit lower than normal when it came to creating a high-quality product.” So, as the company grows, we hope that updates will come more timely as Nothing fleshes out its software development team. While the company has been around for more than a year, it’s still extremely new compared to other companies. It’s still getting its act together, so we can only expect great things from the company going forward.
