(Image source from: Digitalspy.com)
Widgets are now a useful thing. And they're kind of useful. In fact, it's like having a mini superhero on your screen, with information at your fingertips and easy access to save the day. At least widgets should be like that. Brands like Apple, Samsung, and OnePlus are all adding widgets to their user interfaces. But often these widgets are more like shortcuts than the mini-superheroes we all want. However, there is one brand that we have used that has really good widgets, but this is not the case. Over the last few years I've tested several Nothing phones, including the Nothing Phone 2, Nothing Phone 2a and Nothing Phone 2a Plus. All of these smartphones are characterized by their distinctive, clean design and Nothing OS and are highly praised by critics and experts. However, one feature of Nothing Phones that doesn't get enough attention is its functional widgets.
While testing the Nothing Phone 2a Plus, the company shared with us an exclusive APK file of a new widget called News Reporter. This widget will be available on mobile phones soon. I've been testing the widget for a few days now and I'm impressed. This experience inspired the idea of this article. Realizing that no other brand has had such success, Nothing Cell Phone Widgets has added essential features and functionality that can be accessed directly from the home screen. The new News Reporter widget, for example, does more than just open the News app. The really cool News Reporter widget is a daily digest that uses artificial intelligence to collect news in a simple and intuitive format. The message was read by Tim Holbrough, CFO of Nothing. No registration required. This widget uses artificial intelligence to curate news in eight genres: Business, Entertainment, General, Health, Science, Sports and Technology. Select one or more genres that interest you and the AI system will summarize the articles and convert them into audio (Holbro voice). Each story has a 1 minute summary and you will see a total of 8 stories per day. The widget is updated every morning with new stories and you can easily skip stories by going to the quick settings panel or the media player widget.
The widget is very easy to use. When you're ready (and have 8 minutes) to hear a summary of the day's news, just tap the widget. With a strange introduction, the message is read out in Halbrough's voice. You can still use your phone while reading the news. Open your favorite program and experience no interruption in the news. The exception is when you launch Gemini Shortcuts with the audio feature set to the default setting. This will automatically pause the widget for a second to see if you say something. Otherwise the widget itself will continue. You can stop reading the news at any time. In this case, just tap the widget. You can continue from this point at any time during the day. The aesthetics are also very well done. For each message, the widget has eight lines that resemble an audio waveform. The widget displays an animation by reading each message. Each line turns red, and after the number of seconds of a news story, the red line disappears and turns gray to show how much time remains for that particular news story.
Camera widgets aren't exactly new, but they were introduced this year. When India Today Tech spoke exclusively to Mladen Hoys, President of Nothing OS, he hinted that such a widget is in the works. I finally got to test it on the Nothing Phone 2a Plus and the results were excellent. The Camera widget basically allows you to choose your preset and set a shortcut for it on your home screen. For example, my widget is a preset portrait mode with a 50mm lens, auto HDR enabled, monochrome filter, medium bokeh, and light watermark. So when you tap this preset camera widget on your home screen, the camera will open with settings enabled.
The widget allows you to choose a name, mode, lens (if you want a rear or front camera, wide-angle lens or ultra-wide-angle lens, or both), required focus distance, HDR settings, aspect ratio, flash settings, timer, filters , retouch settings, bokeh settings and whether or not to watermark the image. From these options and settings you can create your own presets. You can create more than one of these and can always go back and edit an existing preset by long-pressing the widget and selecting “Widget Settings.” There is also a very useful widget for ChatGPT. You can use ChatGPT 4o mini on the go without having to log in to ChatGPT. Use text, audio or image search directly from your home screen widget. You can also search images directly from the widget.
To enable this, go to your widget settings after downloading the ChatGPT app on your phone. Here you can see that you can choose between “multiple” and “single” widgets. Multiple widgets have text, audio, and video links in one widget. The only widget is for sound only. You can choose widgets depending on your normal interactions with ChatGPT. For example, if voice interaction is enabled, you can switch to voice mode by swiping and tapping the home screen widget. The ChatGPT program automatically opens in audio mode.
The thing is, there isn't really a proper widget for anything. It's not just about creating shortcuts. Home screen widgets in NothingOS really add functionality, allowing you to quickly access information without having to navigate through pages, apps, or folders. Before you call me out, many other brands offer widgets in their interface. Samsung has been doing this for years. Apple has also focused on widgets and shortcuts in recent years. But when it comes to the functionality of these widgets, no one is better than Nothing. Particle for direct object
