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We ’ ve all experienced the gap between the future we were promised and the one we ’ re living in now ,” says Carl Pei , dressed in black streetwear , in front of a black background lit only by the glow of his new company ’ s name : NOTHING .
It came as something of a surprise when the founder of the successful Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus left his company in October of 2020 . Pei founded the company back in 2013 with fellow tech entrepreneur Pete Lau and , over the next seven years , grew the company into one of the world ’ s most recognisable smartphone brands .
Until his recent keynote , the name of Pei ’ s company — which he founded almost immediately after leaving OnePlus — also pretty much summed up everything we knew about what it was and did . Now , we know a little more than nothing ; not much more , but a bit .
We know what Pei thinks of the current smartphone market : “ Today ’ s product systems are dull , closed , and isolated from the people who use them , but there ’ s still time to fix it — to find our way back to the future we envisioned .”
We know that Pei ’ s mysterious tech startup — which launched a set of earbuds last year to largely positive reviews — is also set to launch its first smartphone this summer , and we know that , if it ’ s half as good as Pei says it ’ s going to be , Nothing is going to change everything we think we know about the modern smartphone .
Carl Pei was born in Beijing in 1989 , but his family soon moved to the United States before eventually settling in Stockholm , Sweden , where Pei was raised . While attending the Stockholm
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