Essential was unveiled in May, and the smartphone sports a premium design and look. It comes with a price tag of 9. The high-end device has been pitched against the likes of Samsung Galaxy S8+, LG G6, and Apple iPhone 7 Plus.
Andy Rubin’s Essential smartphone will start shipping in a few week, the Android creator in an email to its customers. Full text of Rubin’s email was put out Essential on Twitter, where he said that Essential is going through “certification and testing with multiple US and international carriers.” Exact date is still unknown.
Essential was unveiled in May, and the smartphone sports a premium design and look. It comes with a price tag of $699. The high-end device has been pitched against the likes of Samsung Galaxy S8+, LG G6, and Apple iPhone 7 Plus. Surely, the phone doesn’t come cheap and it remains uncertain when it will be available for those who pre-ordered Essential in the US. It is unclear when this phone will be available in other parts of the world.
The full text of email by Andy Rubin read:
I personally wanted to thank you for putting your name down for our first phone. We’ve been hard at work getting everything ready and the good news is that we’re now going through certification and testing with multiple US and international carriers.
You might be getting impatient to get your hands on your new Essential Phone (and I’m also impatient to get it to you!) but rest assured that you will have a device in your hands in a few weeks.
In the meantime, give us a shout out using #thisisessential to show the team that sweating the details and working long hours to get this device shipped is worth it.
Andy
We’ve been working around the clock to get our first device in your hands. See this update from Andy. pic.twitter.com/bm5xm5XRKS
— Essential (@essential) July 21, 2017
Essential is a modular smartphone, and it features an edge-to-edge display. The company is selling 360-degree camera add-on attachment separately that will cost $749 (or approx Rs. 48,437). Add-on accessories can be attached to the phone via magnetic sensors. The smartphone gets a 5.7-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560×1312 pixels. There’s no home button on the front, instead a fingerprint scanner cum a home button can be found on the back of the phone.
Essential is made out of a combination of titanium and ceramic materials, and it runs Android. It is powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor, coupled with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage. There’s a 13MP dual-rear camera setup, with the secondary lens being a black and white sensor. The front camera is an 8MP sensor that supports video recording in 4K.
