(Preface this that there is nothing inherently wrong with Chinese phones and most phones in general have Chinese manufacturing for costs, while the defining features of non-"Chinese phones" is the hardware design and software. For the purposes of the post about switching to EU designed products)

Nothing seems like a UK brand on a chinese engineered product.

Literally by the exact same person who started the subsidy of OPPO (subsidy of big daddy BBK) and tried to convince people it was "a little underdog startup" before they came out with the truth. Not a history of transparency.

Nothing phones are manufactured by BYD who says it is a "co-development" which is what companies call it when the manufacturer does the hardware design with specs and input from the branded company.

The ROM teardown revealed that it might have been built on Chinese ROMs and contained stuff specific to the Chinese market that nothing isn't in.

They have pretty much management, sales, and marketing based in londen while in Shenzhen they have a bunch of positions for design, algorithms, firmware, and software.

Hate to link to reddit but he has sources

It definitely is possible that they switch to UK hardware design, software, etc.. In the future, but right now it is not really. At least in the ways that matter to "switching to European products". Since profits are pretty much the only thing that is European about the nothing brand at the moment.

The watch, is definitely, 100% engineered and programmed in China also. Smart watches are much more specialized than smartphone and there are a half dozen manufacturers that do ODM designs for watches that have the supply chains already in place for it and they look exactly like the nothing watches.

[–] Kualdir@feddit.nl 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

This is great information! Just wanted to check. What about Polar and Withings in that case? Do they actually manufacture in the EU?

I am looking at replacing my garmin in the near future as long as the battery life is at least a week and would love to go for an as EU as possible replacement below the 300 euros mark.

The Nothing watch was my first pick due to price for quality, but knowing this I would like to look at alternatives instead.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

No, nobody manufactures in the EU. It is all done in china and india. European electronics manufacturing is mostly for high-margin or high-spec industries like medical, industrial, and B2B products where the cost of manufacturing and the high cost of assembly labor are acceptable.

Polar at least used to do their designs in-house which is how their H-series chest straps became the gold standard for heart rate measurement during activities. They have been doing bio-sensing applications since the 1970s so they definitely have the skill in-house. They also have thousands of employees, so they have the manpower to develop the devices. They also don't have too many devices, though they seem to be releasing more watches recently.

Withings is much smaller, and they release MANY more devices. Based on their job postings, it seems they have design teams in both france and china. They likely design some of the devices in france and some in china. It's a toss up with them it seems, but that is still much more integrated and to the benefit of europe industry than Nothing, as a comparison.

[–] Kualdir@feddit.nl 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

You sir are a legend, thank you for all the information! Will most likely be going for Polar knowing all this