The Nothing Gallery has leaked giving an early glimpse at a new Nothing OS 3.0 app.
There are none of the expected AI features in the app, so it's missing the really exciting stuff.
Nothing has been talking about Nothing OS 3.0 for some time, promising that this is the user interface that Nothing always wanted to make. Now the new Nothing Gallery has leaked, giving us an early look at what’s to come.
Nothing was one of the first brands to push its beta software out, which will deliver Android 15 as well as Nothing OS 3.0. Quicker off the mark than Samsung – who only pushed out its One UI 7 beta in December – one of the features that has been absent from the beta is the Nothing Gallery, a missing piece of the puzzle.
The Nothing Gallery has now leaked, however, as spotted by Android Authority, who installed it for a closer look. Up to now, Nothing Phone has used Google Photos as its stock gallery, but the move to a dedicated Nothing Gallery perhaps opens up opportunities and allows for the introduction of new features.
When the Nothing Gallery was first teased, there was talk of AI image categorisation, upscaling and image generation, but none of that appears to be in this version of the gallery app that has leaked, leaving us with a basic gallery, displaying images, giving filter options and all with a pretty simplified view.
The reason the Nothing Gallery wasn’t included in the beta might be because those AI features aren’t ready or haven’t been integrated yet, because at first glance, there’s not too much here to get excited about.
Do people want separate gallery apps?
There’s a conflict on Android phones between Google’s services and those from the manufacturer. It’s something that Samsung has run into time and again, providing its own services often in duplication of those that Google offers.
Google has a big ecosystem advantage: you really need to use a Google account with an Android phone to get the best out of it (including access to the Play Store), but you don’t really need a Samsung account, for example. But some features are only accessible when you use a Samsung account and in Samsung apps (like Galaxy AI) where Samsung is trying to take some ownership back.
Nothing faces a similar dilemma and there’s always going to be a conflict between those who want Google Photos with its seamless syncing to your Google account and those happy to have another photos app on their phone. Google Photos gives access to most of the photo AI features you get on a Pixel, and I suspect Nothing’s Gallery exists only as a portal to its own AI functions.
The question is whether people will want this duplication of apps: the additional features that Nothing offers are going to have to be really compelling to get native Android users to switch. This leak, so far, doesn’t give us that compelling reason, so hopefully there’s a lot more to come.
