Nothing's wireless earbud design was inspired by a smoking pipe

There are a few things we know about Nothing, a new hardware startup by a co-founder of OnePlus. We know that Carl Pei helms it, we know its first product will be wireless earbuds (which we assume informs what we're looking at above), we know that Teenage Engineering will handle hardware design and that it's got its fingers into Essential. For some reason. Now the company has laid out its product philosophy in a blog post, touching on a long-term vision of seamless technology and interfaces, and the more immediate future of trying to bring existing products closer to that loft goal of "just barely-noticeable technology".

Last week, Nothing tweeted the first image, and this turned out to be half of the Concept 1. (A colleague asked what Nothing was announcing today, quipping that maybe it'd show the letters 'n' and 'g', which were obscured on the embedded image.)

To be honest, he wasn't far wrong. Alongside Pei's statements on product design and the image itself, there's not much here to go. The see-through casing on what appears to be a wireless earbud is apparently a nod towards its aim of making devices less obtrusive. The shape, too, is apparently inspired "a grandmother’s tobacco pipe", which is at least different from the chopped off q-tip look that epitomized the most popular wireless earbuds so far.

Nothing hopes the product design will ensure feel fresh for many years. The company's first products are set to launch this summer.