As some of you might have heard, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei announced his departure from the company last year. Pei has since gone on to create a new company called Nothing, with the first product being a pair of wireless earbuds. However, it seems that maybe Pei could be moving back to smartphones.

This is according to a report from 9to5Google who discovered that according to a filing at the UK Intellectual Property Office, Andy Rubin has signed over ownership of his Essential company over to Pei’s Nothing. This process was said to have been completed earlier this year in January.

At the moment, it is unclear what Pei’s Nothing company intends to do with Essential. One of the reasons Pei left OnePlus was because he wanted to explore the technology market, so returning to smartphones doesn’t really feel like that. At the same time, perhaps there were things related to smartphones that Pei wanted to do at OnePlus but couldn’t, so it is possible that acquiring Essential will now allow him to do those things.

Either way, we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. Essential initially debuted their smartphone with a lot of hype, but it kind of fell short. Could Nothing have what it takes to revive the brand?

Filed in Cellphones >Rumors. Read more about and . Source: 9to5google