London-based tech company Nothing has unveiled Essential, a new AI-driven platform designed to make smartphones more personal, adaptive, and user-led. Positioned as a break from the rigid and “walled garden” model of traditional mobile ecosystems, Essential introduces tools that let anyone create, customize, and share experiences powered by foundational AI.

Essential Apps: Build Apps in Seconds

With Essential Apps, users can generate lightweight, personalized applications using just natural language. For example:

• Automatically collect receipts from the camera roll and export them as a finance-ready PDF every Friday.

• Show a one-page call brief based on your calendar and message threads.

• Build a mood tracker that links directly to a music playlist.

AI handles the generation process instantly, and the app appears directly on the home screen. Essential Apps are currently in alpha, with a waitlist available for early access.

? Limitations in Alpha:

• Phone (3) supports up to 6 Essential widgets.

• Other Nothing models support up to 2.

• Nothing has confirmed that this limit will increase over time.

Playground: A Creative Hub

Alongside Essential Apps, Nothing has launched Playground, a new open community platform at playground.nothing.tech. Playground allows users to build, remix, share, and download community creations such as:

• Essential Apps

• Glyph Toys

• Camera Presets

• EQ Profiles

Anyone can explore Playground, but those looking to create Essential Apps will need to apply for creation permissions through the website.

Essential Space, Search, and Memory

Nothing is also expanding its Essential suite with tools designed to enhance productivity and memory:

• Essential Space: Organize inspirations and ideas.

• Essential Search: Find information instantly.

• Essential Memory (coming soon): Learns user habits and surfaces forgotten details contextually.

All features are private by design — data remains local unless explicitly shared, with transparency for any cloud usage.

Why It Matters

CEO Carl Pei described Essential as a new era of unrestricted access, collective innovation, and hyper-personalization, aimed at dismantling the legacy “elitist” models of today’s smartphone ecosystem. With Essential, Nothing hopes to position itself at the forefront of user-driven mobile AI experiences.

Developers and creators can start experimenting today by joining the Essential Apps waitlist and exploring the Playground community.

Learn more at Essential.com.

Essential gives users — and eventually developers — a way to create and distribute AI-powered micro-apps outside traditional app store ecosystems. It’s a step toward hyper-personalized, user-led software experiences, with potential opportunities for open community innovation.