Essential Phone – A Quick Overview

So Andy Rubin, the creator of Android is back! He’s gone off to do his own thing since leaving Google and I’ve got to say that it’s a gorgeous phone – the Essential Phone. Even the website is beautiful.

Rubin’s a big believer that open platform is the one that wins and obviously the phone runs Android with no bloatware. The Phone, Rubin says, is the phone he always wanted. It has no branding whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a name beyond Essential Phone, because it’s not Essential’s phone, it’s yours. Get it?

If Essential sells 50 million phones this quarter, Jason Keats, the company’s head of product architecture, is totally screwed. Essential simply cannot produce that many phones. That’s the point. (Article)

The really cool feature for the Essential Phone is a pair of tiny dots on the back which is a magnetic dock for attaching accessories.Other accessories are coming later, and Essential plans to open source the docking system so others can build cool stuff for it. But for right now, there’s a super thin 360-degree camera, barely larger than your thumb that will attached to it without the need to pair bluetooth or any software. The phone just recognizes it as an internal camera.

So back to the phone. It’s almost all screen – stretching across almost the entire front of the phone. There’s a slight bezel at the bottom but the screen goes all the way up with the camera right in the middle where usually you won’t have any icons.

The exterior is titanium and ceramic, materials that don’t blemish when you touch them like aluminum does, according to the Essential website. There are 128 gigabytes of storage on the device and 4GB of RAM. So the story is that Apple tried to make a Titanium phone and failed.

The front-facing camera can take eight-megapixel resolution photos, and the back camera takes 13-megapixel pictures and 4K video. It also uses the dual-camera systems  slightly different from most other phones. Rather than use the second lens for telephoto or bokeh, it’s using it for a monochrome sensor. This second sensor will be able to take in more light than a traditional color camera, meaning it can be combined with the regular 13-megapixel for better low-light shots.

…“We’re not for everybody,” Keats says. “You know it’s going to be a little exclusive. (Article)

Granted, that the 2 main incumbents in mobile are Apple’s iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxy series but is there room for Essential? Best guess is that Essential is looking to be scarce and a high quality product (can’t help but point out that that was what Apple was). Apparently everybody at Essential hates the idea that you, your grandma, and your accountant all carry the same phone.

Rubin says that people who buy an Essential phone, want technology that works for them, not the other way around. Maybe i’m saying this too soon, are we seeing the new Jobs? Well, I see a super cool phone and have already made a reservation for it.

Watch Rubin explain about the phone here.

Check out www.essential.com.

Back to Top