There have been a lot of rumors around the new project from Android creator Andy Rubin, and now we have some official answers. Essential Phone, his new company, is finally ready to release its first smartphone, and earlier today, the firm unveiled the new handset on the official Essential.com site.
Essential Phone has some interesting features
With the smartphone, the company also revealed an Amazon Echo-like device and a new operating system called “Ambient.” All three were revealed online, but the company is providing only renderings and graphics of the products at this point, so we will have to wait on the final verdict to learn all the details about the upcoming device, notes TechCrunch.
The Essential Phone is the most-anticipated product from Rubin’s new company, as it has been teasing its reveal over the past month. An important thing that you may notice from the renderings on Essential’s website is the attractive edge-to-edge screen and tiny bezel. The smartphone features a nearly bezel-less display that squeezes the central front-facing camera at the top of the handset, notes Android Authority.
However, the screen does not cover the whole of the smartphone. The screen begins at the top of the 5.6-inch device and rolls down to the bottom. The large screen leaves only a little space for the front camera and only a tiny gap at the bottom of the Essential smartphone.
The handset’s back features a unique sensor setup and a fingerprint scanner. The phone has no branding on its back. The screen made from a combination of ceramic and titanium will be stronger than those offered by Samsung and Apple, Essential asserts.
Rubin aims to build an ecosystem of accessories
According to Essential, the smartphone will ship with 4GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with Adreno 540 GPU, and 128GB of on-board storage. In addition, the front-facing camera has an 8-megapixel sensor with 4K video recording capabilities, while the rear camera is 13 megapixels with a second monochrome sensor to assist in boosting low-light shots.
The Essential Phone, which will cost $699, surely does comes with amazing specs and features.
According to The Verge, “It’s an incredibly audacious and ambitious project, with an outlandish screen and the beginnings of a modular ecosystem.”
The company will first release the handset in the United States, and thus, it has filled it with radios that should make it work on all major carriers, notes The Verge. The phone will launch with Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box and will also include NFC capabilities.
Essential will also offer separately a 360-degree camera that can be clipped onto the handset to allow a completely different kind of smartphone-based photography. The company will also be offering a charging dock. According to The Verge, both accessories connect to the handset with small metal pogo pins.
In reference to their Echo competitor Home, the company said, “The home is your own space where you should be able to say what you want, without having to worry about your privacy.”
