Essential Products – Andy Rubin’s new hardware company

Ok, a new phone made by the creator of Android which claims to be extremely well built.<p>However, since most phones now tend to reach the &quot;good enough&quot; level, my main question is about software and left unanswered. What version&#x2F;flavour of Android does it run? How will updates be planned? For how many years will updates be provided? What&#x27;s the size of the security team at Essential?<p>Providing an up-to-date Android with updates for at least 4 years like Apple does is key to me, as vulnerabilities come and go and the only reasonable way to be secure is to get security patches asap.

I like the idea of tougher phones, but to me it misses the mark to talk about the titanium phone case surviving corner drop tests, it&#x27;s the glass that&#x27;s the problem.<p>The number of people I&#x27;ve seen wandering around with cracked phone screens from drops is quite high, and is the reason I put a case which covers the front on every phone I buy.<p>So having no phone case here just means you get the usual after market screen protectors and risk of cracked glass that most other phones suffer from.

&quot;We want to make a device that plays well with others, so here&#x27;s our new proprietary expansion port!&quot;<p>Even better, it uses 60GHz wireless to get data across the fraction-of-an-inch gap between the phone and the accessory. That should be a fun one for battery life.

&gt; Your phone is your personal property. It’s a public expression of who you are and what you stand for.<p>Just no. It&#x27;s just a tool that I use to communicate.

&gt; <i>- Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything on them you don’t want to have.</i><p>Ok, so at first glance this is just a diplomatic, manifesto-ese way of saying &quot;no bloatware&quot;. However, there&#x27;s probably a very pragmatic discussion about what this really means and that just leads us back around to where we are now with who defines &quot;anything&quot; (i.e., the phone app is on table for that discussion...)<p>&gt; <i>- We will always play well with others. Closed ecosystems are divisive and outdated.</i><p>Closed ecosystems are also knowable, stable, and can produce very happy customers.<p>&gt; <i>- Premium materials and true craftsmanship shouldn’t be just for the few.</i><p>So for a few more? There&#x27;s a reason mass-production is an economic success.<p>&gt; <i>- Devices shouldn’t become outdated every year. They should evolve with you.</i><p>&quot;Outdated&quot; is an extremely subjective concept. Hardware that evolves? Do tell.<p>&gt; <i>- Technology should assist you so that you can get on with enjoying your life.</i><p>Should it?<p>&gt; <i>- Simple is always better.</i><p>Now you&#x27;re just being lazy.<p>I&#x27;m a huge fan of big picture, think-outside-the-box vision-casting.<p>But this just comes across as so tone deaf from the very start and ultimately so vapid that it&#x27;s easy to see how these SV figureheads have earned such a reputation for utter lack of self-awareness.<p>Please, if you have become this level of successful, you need someone in your inner circle who specifically is tasked with keeping you grounded.

It doesn&#x27;t seem premium Android phones have something spectacular to differentiate. Sure, you can spice up the camera, make the body more glossy, and add a beautiful screen. But the software is just another commodity that would be available for 1&#x2F;3rd the price. That&#x27;s why Google Pixel would always feel exorbitant even when the price is almost close to Apple iPhone. Seeing Essential&#x27;s price tag, I have the same visceral feeling: &quot;$750 for an Android Phone...? What?&quot;.<p>Here&#x27;s where Apple eats the larger pie: the exclusivity of its experience that can only came at a price. In the past, the naive me used to think why Apple doesn&#x27;t try to dent Microsoft&#x27;s 95% desktop market with its excellent OS. Now I understand why that&#x27;d never happen: you can&#x27;t be premium in people&#x27;s eyes unless you create a brand of exclusiveness.

There are very good reasons that aluminum is the best option for a mobile phone, rather than titanium. The most important is environmental. Aluminum is more abundant than titanium, it is easier and friendlier to extract&#x2F;process. It can be recycled (very important!) and it is cheaper. Aluminum also has much better technical qualities. It is much lighter weight and easier to machine. It is softer, which means the casing will absorb most of the force from an impact when you drop your phone. And as others have pointed out; your screen or battery will break long before the structural casing. I have personally never been bothered with scratches on the casing of my iPhone. I&#x27;m much more worried about the overall environmental impact of the device.

Who cares if the casing is scratch resistant titantium? That case is not the limiting factor for hardware longevity, the non-removal non-user-servicable battery is.

They are selling the phone for 700 dollars.<p>700 dollars for a phone? You can get a s8, HTC, or LG for cheaper with the promotions they are running and those companies have a track record for making phones. They could have been like One plus one and produced a high end phone ~400 bucks. For 700 dollars this will have a hard time getting traction.

Well, I like the &#x27;no logo&#x27; and the open software features. The other stuff looks more or less like a normal flagship smartphone nowadays (yes I like the 360° camera too, but it is not essential). The things that I am missing:<p>- replaceable battery<p>- SD card slot<p>- wireless charging<p>Those three are all essential to the lifetime of the phone. Storage requirements may change, batteries and power connectors may wear off.<p>I still use my 5 old Samsung S3 which has all those features (with updated Software). While I am willing to pay for a newer model (better camera, faster processor, etc.), I can&#x27;t find a phone that promises an equal longevity.

This is the first phone since the iPhone that triggers an &quot;I want that&quot; feeling. Why the negativity?

First-world problem: what business to start when you have too much money and no really good ideas.<p>- Private space program? Everybody&#x27;s done that.<p>- Sports team? Not into sports enough.<p>- Museum? Boring.<p>- Supercar company? IC engines are so last-cen and electrics mean competing with Elon.<p>- Super high end phone? Yeah!

Interesting. So he&#x27;s started a new company to focus on products that have &quot;play well with others&quot; as a design concept.<p>I like the idea he&#x27;s promoting with the phone where all the accessories either magnetically connect or a wireless connection. I hate having to purchase the same things over and over again.

„Why 360 changes everything“<p>Where does all the excitement for 360° videos come from? In its current implementation it adds absolutely nothing for the viewer and strips away the possibility for the creator to tell a story by choosing what the viewer sees.<p>Useful for VR yes, on a flat screen just no.

Seems like a great idea in a space that needs more competition. Apple has a monopoly on designing complete user experiences using technology and I&#x27;m tired of it. Can&#x27;t wait to see where this takes us.

I find the Home product more interesting than the phone: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.essential.com&#x2F;home" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.essential.com&#x2F;home</a>

What is it with these companies putting the latest SnapDragon CPUs in their mobile devices?<p>No one cares about CPU performance. I&#x27;ve got a SD820 now in my Axon 7, and I can tell you there is 0 difference with a SD625 in daily use.<p>Except that the SD625 is cheaper and has an incredible battery life.<p>The only company realising that people care about UX in stead of specs seems to be Xiaomi. Consistently choosing SD625 and SD660 for their phones, because it is clear that any CPU can pull a phone.<p>And let&#x27;s be honest. No one cares about mobile VR.<p>I&#x27;ll take SD625 and 5000mAh battery over SD835 and 6GB RAM any day.

The 360º camera feels like a gimmick. I dig the idea of having it, but it gives me a gopro accessory vibe: pain in the ass to use and store (where do you keep it when you&#x27;re not using it??), it&#x27;ll get lost, etc...<p>I like the idea of a titanium enclosure that is resistant to damage during falls -- but that force needs to be absorbed somewhere. It&#x27;s nice to know that the outer enclosure of my phone is absorbing some of the impact of a fall. If the Essential phone&#x27;s titanium is not doing this – are the internal components going to suffer more?<p>I&#x27;m interested in giving Android another shot but without the ability to go into a store and play around with one, it&#x27;s hard to throw $700+ on blind faith. For example, the Pixel <i>looks</i> incredible in photos. It resembles the iPhone and offers an appearance of quality. Holding in your hand, however, it feels like a plastic piece of crap. If I&#x27;d have gone on photos&#x2F;videos alone, I&#x27;d have been very disappointed.<p>Apple, for me, has been great due to the progressive enhancement and the ability to go into a store and play around. Each phone release is familiar, yet new and refreshing.<p>Every time the latest &#x27;killer&#x27; Android device comes out, it will inevitably introduce a handful of paradigm shifts in both the hardware and software. I feel like you either need to be an early adopter willing to throw hundreds of dollars at devices more frequently, or settle for Samsung bloatware.

I do think pricing is the biggest problem here. Android phones have been flourishing recently because of cut prices (see: Moto G, OnePlus).<p>There&#x27;s a LOT of good options for high end Android phones, and even if you manage to take 2nd or 3rd place, you won&#x27;t remotely get half or a third of the profits.<p>They&#x27;re getting too greedy too early. You have to earn the public&#x27;s trust before you jump in with a $700 device.

I think it looks really good. Not a huge fan of a proprietary expansion port, but I guess there is no other way of future-proofing for certain accessories, like sensors for inside-out VR&#x2F;AR tracking.<p>I hope they get enough traction so that it&#x27;ll be a viable business and these won&#x27;t be paperweights in 2-3 years time

&gt;&gt;&gt; play well with others<p>...And right off the block, no headphone jack.<p>Why do companies insist on just blindly following Apple? Baah.

Here are some angrily and hastily written observations:<p>- No microSD card slot. Yes, 128GB internal storage -- and it being an UFS, which is <i>fast</i> -- is a lot, but there are people who carry data on their phones and require portability and speed. There&#x27;s honestly no excuse not to have a microSD these days.<p>- Small battery; 3040 mAh, seriously, shouldn&#x27;t the OEMs have learned by now? Android is a battery eater, Google doesn&#x27;t seem interested in making the OS more efficient and keeps thinking of half-assed &quot;solutions&quot; like the Doze mode which is basically &quot;if it&#x27;s the night and the phone hasn&#x27;t moved in an hour, please cripple its functions until the owner picks it up&quot;, heh. For Android you&#x27;d best go for the absolute minimum of 3500 mAh or just admit you&#x27;re after a quick buck. If you&#x27;re serious about an Android phone, better just put 4500 mAh or more in your device and then I&#x27;ll take you seriously.<p>- No 3.5mm audio jack. Yeah, keep dreaming, Andy Rubin. Parties with rich friends who tell you &quot;things they hear&quot; are not a good indicator about market needs. And you dare call your hardware &quot;essential&quot;, lol.<p>- Display is not AMOLED. Heard about actually having a black color on your display? Guess not. Heard about dynamically turning off parts of the screen to save power while not losing <i>any</i> part of the image (because the turned off part is black)? Guess you haven&#x27;t heard of that either, nor energy efficiency for that matter.<p>- No word on planned maintenance period -- 1 year, 2, 4, how much? It&#x27;s a crucially important element nowadays, how can Android&#x27;s creator be unaware of that?<p>- Cameras look good on paper but we all know it&#x27;s the camera app which makes the real difference. I bet it&#x27;ll be some default vanilla app which won&#x27;t make a good use of at least 50% of the device&#x27;s camera functions.<p>Overall -- overpriced pretty device. What else is new? The guy is pulling a popularity card to get away with yet another mediocre device and entice naive people to buy it because of his supposed prestige as Android&#x27;s creator.

I am not impressed by the website at all. It is very well designed and in some ways pretends to give you a lot of information but I find myself asking the most basic of questions. What is Essential, does it do hardware, software or both? Is it running a special Android or vanilla? What is the screen made of? There is all this hype about how strong the phone is but I have never heard anyone complain that aluminum is not strong enough for their purposes etc.<p>For a marketing site, I am just not impressed with the amount of important information. Maybe the answers to all of this are in there, but it is so poorly arranged that after checking in a bunch of places I expect it to be. I have given up

I want: - 4 buttons on the finger&#x27;s side, one jogwheel&#x2F;microswitch at the thumb. Buttons are configurable&#x2F;contextual. Of course, also touch-screen<p>- expandable flash<p>- best mobile camera to date<p>- Android (no bloat, unlocked, easily rootable)<p>- no bezel<p>- great battery<p>- size of Xperia Compact Z3 but thinner<p>- withstands rain and beach<p>- upperclass CPU&#x2F;GFX&#x2F;RAM&#x2F;Flash

Looks great. I just wish they went with AMOLED. It&#x27;d be worth the increased price.

I get a blank screen except for the menu. What plugin is needed to view that site?

This is the first paragraph that shows up when seeing the site in mobile safari:<p>&gt; I know people are going to ask me a lot of questions about why I started this company. Why didn’t I just travel the world, ride my motorcycle, tinker with my robots, hang out at my bakery with friends and family. And to be honest I still do ask myself that sometimes…but not too often.<p>1. Maybe I&#x27;m not geeky enough, but I don&#x27;t know who you are<p>2. I don&#x27;t care who you are<p>3. What are you selling? A phone?<p>4. Oh screw this, I don&#x27;t care enough to read past that pompous nonsense...<p>Oh well.

I really like the idea of a mobile phone that just <i>works</i> with a suite of consistent apps for photos, SMS, email, navigation, and whatever.<p>I really like maximizing local computation over cloud services.<p>And at first I thought this might be it. But alas, it appears to be just another pretty and overpriced Android phone. I guess I will continue buying last year&#x27;s latest and greatest at a 50% discount or more once brand new shiny disrupts it.

no jack, no waterproofing, 3000mAh battery for 5.7&quot;, display disrupted by camera, no brand and they ask 700$ for this?

&quot;My software engineers wanted me to talk about our vision for making all devices, even those we don&#x27;t make ourselves, play well together.&quot; This sounds really interesting to me, but I can&#x27;t find anymore information about what that means. Does anybody know?

Interested to see if Sprint and Verizon will support this on their networks. The phone supports all the needed bands, it more a business decision on the CDMA carrier side to certify it.<p>The rumors from a few months ago said Sprint was onboard, we&#x27;ll see if that panes out.

Ahh, so new Android phone shipping only to US where Apple is dominating the high-end sales?<p>I see that going well.

This website doesn&#x27;t work in Safari. Google Chrome is required. Back to IE6 age...<p>UPDATE: Nevermind, it started to work after couple refreshes.<p>UPDATE: Actually, &#x27;home&#x27; section started to work, &#x27;phone&#x27; section still doesn&#x27;t work in Safari.

No mention of waterproofing, water resistance. That&#x27;s the main thing I look for.

I thought Rubin&#x27;s other new product, Lighthouse, a security camera which uses an AI backend to analyze video for anything &quot;suspicious&quot; and notify you on your phone was much more interesting &amp; promising.

dare i say the phone looks underwhelming?<p>the home hub looks interesting, but it seems the main selling point is it can work with other devices? so does it mean I can do things like asking Alexa to stream my itunes library on chromecast?

Shipping to the US only...

All I want is the best processor, most ram, micro sd, replaceable battery and root. Why can&#x27;t anyone deliver this? I&#x27;m here cracking a v20 when I could be happier.

There also seems to be a new smart home device in the making, just click on the right icon in the header. Not sure if that&#x27;s actually new or if I just misclicked...

Between generic brands and Apple, I don&#x27;t think there is room for a third competitor. Fitbit learned this the hard way trying to sit in-between.<p>Trying to make a brand that is more expensive than Apple will likely fail. They have made gold devices before. Plus, most of luxury is perception - and they stand no chance of having better brand marketing and recognition.<p>I don&#x27;t think that the operating system is enough of a differentiator, particularly when Google controls the software while promoting their own high-end hardware.

Lovely site, but scroll lag janks so hard it&#x27;s almost unusable!<p>Also hardware looks lovely. Any chance it runs something other than Android?

I&#x27;m drowning in a pretty website with no summary of what I am looking at.

We are the misfists, the craftsmen ... and uhh... Oh thats already been made. Well dammit it worked once!

I like the 360 camera idea, but how could that not snap to a case for any other phone?

That site makes me sea sick.

Andy has been able to get together a stellar team in such a short time

I bet this phone will not get fast Android updates ;)

Will the battery be easily replaceable?

But does it run SailfishOS?

is a 360 degrees camera really essential?

Ha! Yet another android phone.

They seem to avoid mentioning the version of Android they are running - the specs only say &quot;Android&quot;.<p>I&#x27;d like to be exited about this, but this uncertainty combined with the fact that their security personnel is a team of dogs[1] makes it quite hard for me.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.essential.com&#x2F;about" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.essential.com&#x2F;about</a>

Hope the product is better than the website....

Boy do I miss the websites of the late 90s. How about you spend another second or two thinking about how your content is structured.

&gt; Why didn’t I just travel the world, ride my motorcycle, tinker with my robots, hang out at my bakery with friends and family.<p>Was Andy a douche before he got rich or is that the price of success?

Chrome 40, so all I see is menu headings. Anyone got a summary?

He dumped the pile of insecure garbage called Android on us and now he&#x27;s moving on to reinvent iOS. Got it.

Oh..just another craproid device