I like Nothing’s Essential Space, but it didn’t need a button

I’ve had a tough time with many of the AI features rolling out across Android and iOS. I know that many of them are meant to be helpful, and many of my colleagues have found ways to incorporate them into their daily lives, but as a writer and researcher, I often feel like the features are trying to replace what I’m good at. However, now that Nothing has introduced the first version of its Essential Space, I’m starting to change my tune.

Even though I count writing and research among my skills, I can’t always say the same for organization, which is where Nothing’s new tool comes in. It’s like the best of Google’s Pixel Screenshots, Recorder, and a notes app all rolled into one, but there’s one thing I can’t shake: Why in the world did Nothing need to give it a hardware button?

Before I get to just how silly the Essential Key feels, I have to say it again — I like Nothing’s Essential Space a lot. It’s not perfect and certainly still in development, but it’s coming in handy as a replacement for several of the other organization apps I’d typically rely on. The way it works is pretty simple, too — you can snag screenshots or record voice memos, and then the Essential Space will analyze them in the cloud and spit back important reminders and bullet points from your content.

In practice, the Essential Space has become my go-to helper for figuring out my summer concert plans. See, by living so close to both Washington DC and Columbia’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, it’s very easy for me to be ambitious with just how much live music I can experience. With Essential Space, though, I’ve been able to pop through several of my favorite venues to grab screenshots of when different shows are and when their respective tickets go on sale. Nothing’s cloud-based AI models then skim through each concert announcement, pulling prices and showtimes, giving me straightforward reminders that I can run by friends so we can collectively decide whether or not we’re able to make the show.

I’ve also tested Nothing’s Essential Space while planning my weekend for the Boston Marathon. If you’ve ever considered a trip down Newbury Street on race weekend, you know just how busy it can be with shakeout runs and influencer meetups, and making a plan for them can be just as challenging as training for the marathon itself. So, I hopped into the Essential Space’s voice recorder feature while on a run with friends to determine how many group runs everyone wanted to do, and then left my Phone 3a to transcribe our collective thoughts. Once again, it surprised me with how effectively it set up reminders.

Of course, Nothing’s Essential Space is still a work in progress. Although you can capture screenshots and record voice notes in the app, there’s no way to add photos or memos recorded elsewhere, meaning that you’d have to take screenshots of screenshots or memorize and re-record your thoughts before Nothing will analyze them. Thankfully, though, Nothing at least seems willing to make its Essential Key a little better as it goes. My Phone 3a and 3a Pro just received their Nothing OS 3.1 updates, which has added the ability to use the Essential Key within the camera, at least removing one hiccup to adding photos for later usage.

Unfortunately, there might be another problem with Nothing’s Essential Space — it might not be free forever. Right now, the feature comes on the Phone 3a and 3a Pro at no cost, allowing you to capture and upload notes and screenshots as often as you’d like. However, a deep dive into the app’s APK has revealed lines of code mentioning free trials, processing limits, and a potential price of $120. That’s… not a great sign for an app that’s not currently backwards compatible and is restricted to budget phones where the cost of an annual subscription would be close to one-third the price of the phone itself. We’ll have to wait and see how Nothing approaches the future of its Essential Space, but it’s leaving the start of a bitter taste in my mouth.

While I’m still in “wait and see” mode when it comes to how long Essential Space will be free and what it’ll eventually cost, I’ve made up my mind on something else: Requiring the Essential Key to access and add things to the Essential Space is the worst. Or, the button itself might be okay, but I don’t like Nothing’s decision to put it right below the power button because I keep pressing it by accident. I’ve probably lost count of the times I’ve picked up my Phone 3a and pressed a button, only to realize I grabbed another screenshot of my lock screen that I’d then have to delete.

Of course, Nothing isn’t the first to add a hardware button to its latest release — Apple did the same thing when it added the Camera Control to its iPhone 16 series. However, the main difference between the Essential Key and the Camera Control is that Apple’s button is entirely optional. It gives you an easy way to snap a photo, slide between Photographic Styles, and adjust your zoom, but you can also do all of those same things in the camera app as you’ve probably done for the last several years. I’ve used it occasionally, but I haven’t felt like I was missing out by ignoring it.

On the other hand, the Essential Key is absolutely required to save anything to your Essential Space. You have to press it to grab a screenshot and hold it to record a voice note, and there’s no backup option for either feature. Right now, you can’t remap any other hardware buttons to launch Essential Space, nor can you switch the Essential Key to do anything else. Voice commands and screen-based gestures like the three-finger screenshot don’t work either. Worse, the complete reliance on a hardware button means that Nothing’s Essential Space won’t be coming backward to devices we loved in 2024, like the Phone 2a Plus, forcing budget Android fans to update their phones for something that Nothing considers, well, essential.

So, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d like to see Nothing follow in Apple’s footsteps. Not in the sense that I want it to shift its near-stock flavor of Android any closer to iOS, but in the sense that it needs to make its Essential Space more flexible. I like the feature, but I think it needs to support multiple inputs, especially for users who can’t press hardware buttons, in order to actually live up to its name.