Buttons are in right now—at least if you’re a designer at Nothing, they are. On its Headphone 1 (the first pair of Nothing-made over-ear headphones), there are all sorts of doodads. A paddle for track selection; a tic-tac-shaped wheel/button for volume and ANC; a pairing button (okay, this one is boring, but still, it’s a button). Even on its recently released Phone 3, there’s a button on the back of the phone for doing really useful stuff with its “Glyph Matrix,” like… playing spin the bottle. No matter what the use case is, Nothing is clearly intent on bringing back tactile input, and it looks like the upcoming Ear 3 wireless earbuds are in on that trend, too.
Offbeat looks. Stronger signal. Material difference.
Ear (3) pic.twitter.com/zM75sk7W6d
— Nothing (@nothing) September 11, 2025
There’s a lot to unpack in this picture of Nothing’s Ear 3, but the main thing that jumps out is a big, obvious “Talk” button on the side of the charging case. It begs some obvious questions, such as, what the hell does that mean? I wish I knew, but I do enjoy the mystery right now. Maybe it’s a way to activate a voice assistant on your phone? Maybe it initiates a call? Maybe there’s a little bug in there that really needs some 1-on-1 convo right now, and only you can help? Hard to say, but obviously, Nothing has some plans for its next pair of wireless earbuds, and it’s not all about just listening to tunes.
There are more buttons on the side of the case, too, in case you weren’t already in full-on tactile overload. What those buttons do is also anyone’s guess, but I do hope they’re at least a little more fine-tuned than those on the Headphone 1. No shade to more buttons (I like buttons), but I’d prefer the execution to be a little more precise.
Ear (3), September 18. pic.twitter.com/7Cyl9T59Ie
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) September 11, 2025
Outside of the button-fest, there’s also a big design shift gen-over-gen, which I wrote about when Nothing dropped its first teaser. Now that we’ve got the full picture, I’m willing to say this: it looks pretty cool! I do think it definitely strays away from Nothing’s transparent aesthetic, but I’m fine with that as long as the buds still have a distinct vibe. Instead of a clean white aesthetic, it looks like Nothing is going for a smooth, metallic silver plastic on the charging case and also a dash of that same silver stuff on the earbuds. I won’t really know how I feel until I lay eyes on them in person, but the shift looks promising and also unifies the design of the Ear 3 and Headphone 1.
Despite having no clue what any of these buttons do, I’m just glad that Nothing has been in the lab figuring new stuff out. The Ear and the Ear A were nice wireless earbuds, but outside of looks, they didn’t move the needle much (okay, they were the first with a ChatGPT integration, but that’s about it). Maybe a “Talk” button won’t either, but I always give Nothing credit for trying. Get weird with it; why not!
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