Nothing’s Essential Space has been around since the launch of the Phone 3a series. It’s a free AI-powered tool that creates reminders and does other productivity-based functions with screenshots or voice memos. There was fear that Nothing could start charging for this feature, but Nothing has now put those fears to rest in a new interview.
In an APK teardown back in March, we discovered several strings of code related to a “free trial” and “AI credits.” While it doesn’t outright state that there will be a paid service, one could assume that a free trial would be paired with a paid service. A string referencing a claim price of $120 was also found sitting in the Essential Space app, suggesting that could be the cost of a yearly or lifetime subscription.
When we reached out to the London-based firm about our findings, the company provided the following statement:
We’re currently offering early access to Essential Space and are focused on refining the experience based on user feedback. Essential Space is Nothing’s new, AI-powered hub for notes, ideas, and inspirations – designed to capture, process, and recall like a second memory. No decisions have been made yet around potential pricing and our focus remains on improving the product.
The last line in that statement leaves just enough wiggle room for a price to be added down the road. However, it appears that day won’t come for a while, according to an in-house interview with CEO Carl Pei.
In the interview, Pei describes the code we found as “zombie strings” that were left there during development. He adds that in its current form, Essential Space will remain free. However, he doesn’t rule out the possibility of a premium tier being added in the future:
So I think that’s what happened, somebody got their hands on an older version of the APK and they decompiled it and saw that there [were] some strings related to charging for Essential Space. That was never in the production software, it was just like zombie strings we had there for while we were developing it.
But I think at the same time, we’ve not been that great at communicating. We saw the feedback and the questions and we didn’t really tell people what’s coming. But I think since then, we’ve clarified that, at least the current scope of the features, there won’t be a charge. There might be a premium tier in the future. I think most smartphone companies are also developing a premium tier.
For us right now, Essential Space is pretty bare bones. It’s like in a preview mode. We think it’s probably 10% done, [with] 90% left to build. If we’re going to charge, it has to be some substantial value that people can get out of it and not just the current product.
If Nothing added substantially more value to Essential Space, would that get you to pay for a potential premium tier? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
