Renownedly hailed as the ‘Father of the Android’, Andy Rubin unveiled a brand new smartphone, named as the Essential Phone. Not only that, Rubin’s company, Essential Products has launched a 360-degree camera and “an intelligent” home smart speaker. Although it is still unknown to us when the handset will hit the market shelves, the device is available for pre-order in the US. Available in 4 different colors-Pure White, Black Moon, Stellar Grey and Ocean Depths, the handset is priced at $699 (almost Rs. 45,200).
The Essential Phone comes in a stellar design with the futuristic aesthetic mindset of the creator written over it. It flaunts a dual camera setup and a fingerprint scanner placed at the rear end along with an almost edge to edge display.There is no visible logo on the handset. The very thin bottom bezel of the phone holds the key for the stunning edge-to-edge display. As the device boasts of a flushed camera design, there are no untidy bumps on the handset.
The Essential Phone is built of titanium and ceramic, which according to the company’s claim provides the highest durability compared to the other high-end contemporary flagship devices. The power button and the volume key are placed on the metal edges at the right hand of the handset. Apart from that, there are two magnetic back pins included at the rear side of the Essential smartphone for modular attachments which will keep you “keep your phone cord-free, future-proof, and always up-to-date.” Both the pins double as a cordless connector which helps to hook up the phone with company’s two modular accessories-the Essential Phone Dock and the 360-degree camera.
Talking about the specifications, the handset boasts of a 5.7-inch edge-to-edge QHD display with 1312×2560 pixels resolution and 19:10 aspect ratio. Moreover, the screen of this Android 7.1.1 Nougat based smartphone is covered by the latest Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The Essential Phone is powered by the 64-bit Snapdragon 835 octa-core (2.45GHz Quad + 1.9GHz Quad) SoC clubbed with 4GB of RAM and Adreno 540 GPU. The company offers 128GB of internal storage capacity to the buyers.
On the optics category, the Essential Phone features a 13-megapixel dual camera setup at the rear end accompanied by phase detect, 3K video support, IR Laser Assist Focus and hybrid autofocus technology. At the front, an 8-megapixel snapper is also placed with 16:9 aspect ratio, f/2.2 aperture, and 4K video recording capabilities.
The Essential Phone is backed by a 3040mAh battery with fast charging support. The handset includes all the modern day connectivity options such as Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, USB Type-C port, 4G LTE, Bluetooth v5.0, GPS, NFC, and GLONASS. Dimension wise the phone measures 141.5×72.2×7.8mm and weighs less than 185 grams. Surprisingly, there is no 3.5mm audio jack is included in the handset. So our guess is Rubin and his engineers will launch a separate modular accessory solely for this purpose.