Nothing Phone (2a) special edition incoming as Community Edition design contest invites fans to submit concepts

A few short weeks after Nothing launched the affordable variant of the Nothing Phone (2)(curr. $624 on Amazon), the Phone (2a), effectively its Google Pixel a-series killer, the company announced the Nothing Community Edition Project.

The Nothing Community Edition will see Nothing collaborate with community members on a special edition of the Nothing Phone (2a), with the top-performing entrant in each category going on to work with Nothing's various teams to bring the project to life.

The Nothing Community Edition Project will kick off on March 26, when Nothing announces the full brief for the hardware portion of the competition. Nothing has split the Community Edition Project into four distinct stages.

The hardware design phase will focus strictly on altering the device's hardware; the wallpaper design phase gives entrants a chance to design the phone's stock wallpapers; the packaging design stage is about customizing the unboxing experience; and the marketing campaign portion lets community members get involved in the branding side of things.

Anyone can submit their ideas for whichever phase they want to participate in, allowing the Nothing community to flex their creative muscle where it's most appropriate.

The four stages of the Community Edition Project are scheduled to happen as follows:

• Hardware design: March
• Wallpaper design: May
• Packaging design: June
• Marketing campaign: July

Nothing hasn't made mention of a target price for the Community Edition Nothing Phone (2a), but Nothing CEO, Carl Pei, said in the announcement video, which you can watch below, that the project would likely not be profitable for the company, and that a firm budget had not yet been established.

What has been made clear is that Nothing does intend to sell the Nothing Phone (2a) in some sort of volume, although it wouldn't be surprising to see the device launch as some sort of limited-edition variant.

From the naming scheme alone, it seems as though Nothing is sort of poking fun at devices like Samsung's Galaxy S23 FE(curr. $609.99 on Amazon), where FE supposedly means "Fan Edition," since those FE versions of Samsung's phones have received some criticism for price and feature creep over the years. .

You can submit your entry to the Nothing Community Edition Project on the Nothing Community forum, or keep track of the project at the dedicated Community Edition page on Nothing's site.