After months of anticipation, Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone has finally launched. The smartphone is priced at $699 (approximately Rs 45,200) and boasts some top of the line features such as an edge-to-edge display, similar to the one we have already seen on the likes of Samsung Galaxy S8, along with being powered by Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 835 SoC. The Essential Phone is currently up for the reservation at Essential.com, but only in the United States. The international release of the smartphone will be announced at a later date.
What makes the Essential Phone turn heads in a crowded smartphone market is that it has been built by Andy Rubin – the man behind creating Android, the world’s most popular mobile OS. To add to the frills, it features what the company is calling the ‘world’s thinnest dual camera system built for a phone.’ In addition to that, the smartphone allows all accessories to be magnetically snapped to the phone. The company has also showcased a 360-degree camera accessory.
“Other 360° cameras are big, bulky, and complicated to use. We thought it was about time someone made a 360° camera for the rest of us. Simply click the 360° camera to your phone to point, shoot, and share. It’s that easy,” the company claims on its website.
Additionally, Andy Rubin also said that the device will have a new digital assistant on board. It will go head to head with Google Assistant and Samsung Bixby, although not a lot details are known about it at this point. One thing that’s for sure is that it will have to bring a few new features to the table if it has any chance of competing against its rivals.
Essential Phone specifications and features
Delving deeper into the specifications of the smartphone; the Essential Phone is built with a combination of titanium and ceramic for the added strength. It features a 5.7-inch Quad HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on top.
Under the impressively slim form factor, there is 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. It is powered by a 3,040mAh battery with fast charging. The Essential Phone features a magnetic connector and wireless data transfer. Essential will ship a charging dock with the smartphone that will connect with small metal pins.
For photography, the Essential Phone gets a dual rear camera module featuring a pair of 13-megapixel regular sensor and a monochrome sensor with f/1.85 lens. This module works the same way as the Huawei P9 and P10. Up front, there is an 8-megapixel front camera which is also capable of recording 4K videos. Connectivity options include rear fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi, NFC, and GPS. The phone also ditches the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
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