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Nothing has just revealed its biggest Phone (4b) teaser yetIt's a lower-end alternative to the Nothing Phone (4a), which makes us wonder whether it was originally planned to be a CMF modelIt'll be announced on July 7Something strange is going on at Nothing — just a few days ago the company announced that there wouldn’t be any new CMF phones this year, but now it’s back with a teaser for the first in a new line of phones, dubbed the Nothing Phone (4b). And there are reasons to think this is the CMF Phone 3 Pro in all but name.The main teaser for the Nothing Phone (4b) comes from Nothing’s official X account and includes sketches of various possible designs, thereby not actually giving much away. But it also says that we’ll learn more on July 7 at 11am BST, which is 3am PT / 6am ET / 8pm AEST.We do know a bit more already though, as Nothing’s co-founder Akis Evangelidis has explained on X that “the B Series builds on the success of the A Series by expanding into a new segment, while maintaining a clear product hierarchy.”More tellingly, they added that “the A Series remains our most premium line below our flagship products, which doesn't carry a letter designation.” That’s a roundabout way of saying that the Nothing Phone (4b) will be lower end than the Nothing Phone (4a), and you know what else would have been lower end? The canceled CMF Phone 3 Pro.Phone (4b).Kept sketching the Phone (4a) series and accidentally made a new phone.7 July, 11:00 BST. pic.twitter.com/kQjb76174hJune 23, 2026A CMF phone at a higher price?So why would Nothing repackage the CMF Phone 3 Pro as the Phone (4b)? Well, Nothing has stated that we won’t see any new CMF phones this year thanks to the ongoing RAM crisis, which has meant that “we can't build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF.”What they might be able to do though is sell that phone at a price that makes sense for the more premium Nothing brand. So in other words there’s a chance this is the CMF Phone 3 Pro, just at a higher price than Nothing could get away with while using CMF branding.Of course, that’s just speculation. It’s entirely possible that along with the budget CMF Phone 3 Pro, Nothing was also working on the budget Phone (4a), and that it just happened to tease the latter mere days after canceling the former. But the timing does seem odd.We’ll probably never know for sure whether this was originally designed as a CMF model or not, but we should at least learn more about the specs, features, and perhaps pricing of this phone very soon.

The 84-year-old actor has spent decades bringing Samuel Beckett’s plays to life. Does his recent diagnosis give him new insights into playing ‘sad clown’ Krapp in a drama about age and the battlefield of memory?What a lot of Krapp. Pardon my French but Samuel Beckett’s haunting 1958 masterpiece about regret and isolation is having a moment. Stephen Rea recently took Krapp’s Last Tape on an international tour, Gary Oldman returned to the stage after decades away to deliver the tragicomic one-man show and this summer Stockard Channing will direct it at the Edinburgh fringe, with David Westhead as Krapp. Beckett’s eponymous loner, who sits in his dark den and ritually listens to tapes he made as a younger man, is riding a new wave of popularity.Peter Marinker first played Krapp half a lifetime ago and is preparing to star in a new production, reusing the tapes he recorded in 1983. How does he feel listening back now? “I thought of redoing them – it could have been better,” he says when we meet at the tiny Cockpit theatre in London. That assessment matches the spirit of the self-lacerating Krapp who looks back not just in anger but anguish. Marinker quotes Dennis Potter, who said we should consider our past with “tender contempt”. He adds wryly: “That rang a bell.” Continue reading...