Would you agree technology peaked in the days of candy-colored gadgets in see-through hues like “Atomic Purple” and “Bondi Blue”? If so, Dbrand would greatly enjoy weaponizing your nostalgia against your bank account.
It’s clearly time: all the news about the transparent tech renaissance
June 27, 2023
It’s clearly time: all the news about the transparent tech renaissance
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Jun 19
Carl Pei teases a see-through USB-C cable for the Nothing Phone 2.The slow drip-feed of rumors and details about Nothing’s next phone continues, with exec Carl Pei tweeting a photo of a USB-C cable (only the ends are clear, which is a little disappointing) that we expect to see debut with the Phone 2 on July 11th.
You know we love transparent gadgets, and while a cable is pretty basic hardware, now that Beats has stepped up to match Nothing’s clear earbuds, it has to do more.
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Jun 16
iFixit now sells a see-thru 65W USB-C PD power adapter.At $65 for a single 65W port and no folding plug, it won’t be stealing too much business from Anker — but when’s the last time you saw a PD charger suitable for your transparent gadget collection? I kinda love the look. Plus, it comes with a 6-foot 240W-ready cable, for whenever those chargers arrive.
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Jun 14
I made my PS5 Fire Orange and Atomic Purple with Dbrand’s transparent Darkplates
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeToday, it’s introduced the $100 Retro Darkplates for your PS5, which give your Sony console a similar effect to the transparent N64s that Nintendo released at the turn of the millennium.
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Jun 2
A fully transparent Steam Deck could soon be yours with these new front plates
Jsaux’s Steam Deck transparent front plate. Image: Jsaux via Overkill.wtf“My favorite new Steam Deck mod is this $30 see-through heatsink backplate,” I wrote in January. “Wake me up when someone makes a transparent front shell,” some readers told me.
Well, your nap is nearly over: Jsaux just confirmed to Overkill.wtf that a transparent front shell is on the way, providing the image you see atop this story (which we’re using with Overkill’s blessing). And ExtremeRate tweeted this earlier today:
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May 15
It’s not Nothing to manufacture transparent gadgets.Nothing CEO Carl Pei has done another of his product review videos on YouTube — this time for Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro.
The most interesting part starts at the 1:35 mark, when Pei mentions that the Nothing Ear 2 assembly line is “like a rainforest” and filled with humidifiers to prevent dust from finding its way into the transparent earbuds or the carrying case. (Humidity makes the dust settle, which is why some people apply screen protectors in a bathroom with the shower running.)
Even after going to such lengths, 20 to 30 percent of units are rejected and have to be remade.
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Mar 22
Nothing Ear 2 review: it’s what’s on the inside that counts
They might look similar, but the Ear 2 earbuds are a much more rounded package than their predecessor. What a difference two years makes.
Back in 2021, Nothing, the consumer tech startup led by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, had only publicly existed for a few short months before launching the Ear 1 true wireless earbuds. They were feature rich for their $99 price point but, at launch, suffered from plenty of bugs and so-so noise-canceling performance.
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Dec 22, 2022
See inside your Steam Deck with JSAUX’s $30 transparent backplate
JSAUX’s Steam Deck transparent backplate. Image: JSAUXJSAUX might sound like just another alphabet soup electronics brand, but it’s quickly developed a reputation as the foremost accessory vendor for the Steam Deck — and today, it’s announced what (I’m fairly sure!) is the very first transparent shell for the system.
And you know how we love our transparent gadgets here at The Verge.
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Oct 28, 2022
Nothing Ear Stick review: fewer features, more polish
The Nothing Ear Stick earbuds alongside their charging case. With new gadgets, you sometimes hear about the “early adopter tax.” The idea is that a company’s first swing at an idea might not be perfect; it might be buggy, badly designed, or otherwise miss the mark in some way. Nothing’s debut Ear 1 true wireless earbuds are a case in point. When we reviewed them last year, we found they suffered from a lack of polish at launch, including some software bugs and a lack of software features.
In contrast, the Ear Stick feel like a pair of earbuds from a company that’s learning its lessons. The user experience is far better this time around, with far fewer connectivity and charging issues, and Nothing has updated its app to offer more control over their sound and shortcut controls. They also come in a redesigned cylindrical case, which is quirky and fun to use.
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Sep 27, 2022
Please don’t let ads on transparent OLED ‘windows’ ruin train journeys
LG Display’s ‘Transparent OLED for Subway Trains’ are already in use within some Chinese trains and Japanese subways. Image: LG DisplayLG Display is showcasing its “Transparent OLED for Subway Trains” at InnoTrans 2022, the world’s largest trade fair for transport technology, where it will feature as a replacement for windows in a concept train from Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway company. The OLED window can be transparent or opaque depending on what it’s displaying. LG Display is using the show in Berlin to expand transparent panel sales to North American and European transport companies.
LG Display has been supplying transparent OLED displays to transport companies in China and Japan since 2020, so we can already see it in action within a number of subway trains in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shenzhen and Fuzhou, as well as within some of Japan’s overground trains. Seeing the transition between a mostly-transparent subway map and a more traditional screen displaying station layouts feels like we’re stepping ever closer to a world that was teased to us by Sci-Fi franchises like Star Trek.
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Aug 17, 2022
Nothing Phone 1 review: something else
Nothing claims its new Phone 1 can “Bring us back. To us” with “deeper interactions” and “brave simplicity.” It’s not the life-changing phone that Nothing makes it out to be; it’s just a good midrange device with flashing lights on the back.
The Phone 1’s unique light-up notification “glyphs” are somewhat useful, but more than anything, they’re a fashion flourish. Given that it’s backed up by solid performance and fair price, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.
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Dec 27, 2021
LG Display shows off a versatile lineup of transparent OLED screens at CES 2022
The OLED Shelf displaying a piece of art. Photo by LG DisplayLG Display has come up with more uses for transparent screens with its innovative new concepts that will be on display at CES 2022: the OLED Shelf, Shopping Managing Showcase, Show Window, and Smart Window. The company is not to be confused with LG Electronics, as LG Display simply creates concepts that other companies can adopt and introduce to the market.
Its OLED Shelf, visible at the top of this story, consists of two 55-inch transparent OLED displays mounted on top of one another, with a shelf at the very top. LG Display says it’s ideal for the living room, where it can display art, a TV show, or one on each of the two screens simultaneously. Always on Display Mode ensures that the screen can stay on all the time. If there was a piece of art on display, that image could stay put just like a painting, all while blending into the wall behind it.
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Nov 30, 2021
These transparent Apple prototypes clearly show the greatness of see-through gadgets
Image: Giulio ZompettiApple device collector Giulio Zompetti has photographed a prototype 29W Apple charging brick, and it may be one of the rare instances where the product-in-progress may look better than the final version. What makes it special is that you can literally see Apple’s design process because of the clear plastic shell, unlike the retail version where the internals are hidden by opaque white plastic.
Zompetti also tweeted another clear prototype, a pair of AirPods that live up to the “Air” name. The retro-futuristic look of the densely packed electronics makes me wish Apple would actually sell see-through gadgets again.
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Aug 5, 2021
Nothing Ear 1 earbuds review: almost something
There’s a lot riding on the Ear 1 wireless earbuds, which are the first product to come from Nothing — a new company created by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei. Backed with investment from GV, Tony Fadell, and influential creators like Casey Neistat, Nothing is aiming to build out an entire family of products that follow the design ethos debuting with the Ear 1. Transparency is at the heart of that: the Ear 1s have a clear “stem” that lets you peer at their internal components, and the unconventional charging case has a transparent lid to keep the buds in view at all times.
Pei has said his motivation for starting Nothing was a consumer tech industry that felt stale, unimaginative, and awash in gadgets that all feel very same-y. I don’t really buy into that viewpoint; sure, AirPods clones are everywhere, but the best earbuds from Samsung, Sony, Google, Amazon, and other big players are all visually distinct. Regardless, Nothing doesn’t see itself as “an audio company,” according to Pei, but the booming true wireless earbuds market seemed like an advantageous place to start. He’s also aiming to capture the same price-to-performance magic that was associated with OnePlus in its early days.
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Apr 10, 2019
LG patents a transparent foldable phone
Image: LG (USPTO)LG has been granted US patent 10,254,863, as noted by Let’s Go Digital, which sets out one potential vision for foldable phones — and it involves a mostly transparent display. Filed in 2015, this patent is just a hint at how long tech companies have been mulling foldables, as well as how weird and outlandish their concepts have been. The idea with this one is that you’d have one half of the device with an adjustable transparency, with the other half having some transparent portion and an opaque section to accommodate its battery. As usual with patents, the why of such a gadget is not explained, only the how.
Earlier this year, LG went on the record with its belief that it’s too soon to launch a foldable a phone, and the company instead opted for a second-screen accessory for its upcoming LG V50. Both of those moves seem justified by the current facts of the developing foldable category: Samsung and Huawei are the only major companies to have announced foldables, and neither of them has been able to price its device under $2,000. LG could, as has been its wont, dive into the chase for hype and engineering prestige, but the company’s more pragmatic approach of late has gone against that. All of which is to say: don’t expect a transparent LG foldable to surface anytime soon.
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Jul 30, 2018
Leaked parts confirm that Xiaomi’s ‘transparent’ Mi 8 Explorer Edition was too good to be true
Image: XiaomiIn May, Xiaomi wowed the internet with its upcoming “transparent” Mi 8 Explorer Edition smartphone that the company claimed showed off the internal components of the phone in a stylish manner, unlike any transparent or translucent gadget before. There was just one problem: there were reports that the exposed circuitboard wasn’t actually real.
Turns out, those reports may have been spot on. Chengming Alpert — the Twitter user who first cast doubt on Xiaomi’s claims — posted leaked pictures of the alleged internal parts, which appear to be little more than a cosmetic plate to cover the actual (and likely less-photogenic) internal components.
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Dec 7, 2016
Small Transparent Speaker is a cheaper, smaller transparent speaker
People Products took the idea of a speaker to its most minimalist conclusion in 2012 with the Transparent Speaker, a glass-enclosed speaker that let you see exactly how the drivers wire together to create sound. The only downside (aside from dust accumulation) was the $849 price tag.
Now, the company is back with a new smaller version of the Transparent Speaker, fittingly called the Small Transparent Speaker, that also comes with a much smaller $250 price tag. Like its larger cousin, it's also crafted out of aluminum-framed glass. It downgrades the sound from two 3-inch drivers and a subwoofer to a pair of 2.5-inch stereo drivers, but it also takes up dramatically less space.
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Jun 29, 2016
These are transparent directional glass speakers and they look amazing
Turtle Beach sent out a press release saying it made a breakthrough, and glass-based speakers may be the future of your home audio. As strange as that may sound, the video is slightly more convincing. The speakers, which Turtle Beach is calling HyperSound Glass, are comprised of multiple layers of transparent materials and film allowing it to "generate a beam of ultrasound" according to the company.
Ultrasound beams are largely inaudible unless you're one of the targeted listeners, making the HyperSound Glass a highly directional and very thin speaker. Turtle Beach showed off the HyperSound Glass at E3 earlier this month, but says the speakers are still in the early prototype phase, which means it'll be some time before you'll be able to replace your Sonos with a sheet of glass — or better yet replace your windows with speakers. But it's looking like like we may end up with glass speakers in the not-too-distant future. Hopefully. I really want window speakers now.
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May 12, 2015
The clear appeal of transparent gadgets
I still remember the first time I saw the transparent iSub speaker revealed by Steve Jobs in 2000. Designed by Apple and sold by Harman Kardon, it looked like a wormhole devouring a Death Star. I had to have it no matter how it sounded because I wanted to own a piece of science fiction.
There’s something undeniably appealing about transparent electronics like Sony’s new LED speaker lightbulb. See-thru cases on products like the Fx0 and Game Boy Advance give us a glimpse at the incredible magic within. It’s like watching an Olympic sprinter drop the sweats to expose a uniformed body purpose-built for the task at hand. Instead of muscle there’s silicon, instead of tendon there’s non-conductive substrate.
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Feb 15, 2013
Has the transparent smartphone finally arrived?
transparent mobile display When will we see a transparent smartphone? It's a question that's been circulating for years, thanks to films like Minority Report and Iron Man 2 that sparked dreams of a diaphanous mobile future, and more than a decade later, it's one that's still without an answer. Sony Ericsson's Xperia Pureness fell flat when it hit the market in 2009, and subsequent concept designs never came to fruition, leaving only a trail of dashed hopes and semi-transparent feature phones in their wake.
Now, Taiwan-based Polytron Technologies is trying to revive the dream, with a transparent multi-touch display that it's begun marketing to OEMs. As Mobile Geeks reports, the key to Polytron's prototype is its so-called Switchable Glass technology — a conductive OLED that uses liquid crystal molecules to display images. When the phone is powered off, these molecules form a white cloudy composition, but once activated with electric current (flowing through transparent wires), they realign to form text, icons, or other imagery.
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May 21, 2012
Double-sided transparent touchscreen prototype shown off by NTT Docomo
docomo transparent screen Leading Japanese carrier NTT Docomo has shown off a prototype transparent touchscreen that can be operated from both sides. One advantage of the display is the ability to modify traditional screen taps in a manner akin to the Shift key on a keyboard, and it also lets you use your mobile device without obscuring onscreen information. It was shown running a Rubik's Cube demo where tapping the puzzle from the front and back allowed for more accurate and complex multitouch maneuvers.
A Docomo representative said that viewing in sunlight can currently be problematic, but placing a dark object behind the screen improves visibility somewhat. Inside Docomo's headquarters, at least, the display looked impressive and in many ways easier on the eyes than a backlit LCD. It certainly tops Sony Ericsson's monochrome Xperia Pureness, though that phone at least had the distinction of actually making it to market. Docomo wouldn't be drawn on when we'll see this display in a shipping device, but since it was hooked up to an external processing unit we're thinking later rather than sooner.
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