THE ESSENTIAL PHONE

THE ESSENTIAL PHONE

Essential is a thing that is absolutely necessary. I seriously don’t know how necessary is this phone for anyone, but the name sounds catchy enough to arouse your interest in this device.

This is a new phone launched by Andy Rubin developer of Android.

What makes this phone special?

1. This is the first phone made with titanium.

2. A 360 degree Camera that clips to the back with magnetic strip, it’s also the smallest 360 degree camera known so far.

3. It’s got a dual lens setup, one of the core features of almost all high end phones now.

4. Gorilla glass 5 don’t worry about any scratches on the phone.

5. Bezel less screen, which is again a common feature of most phones. But what's different about is the screen with the front camera cut out.

6. Stock Android

Let’s talk about some of its features

Essential Phone is quite impressively built with titanium body. As quoted on Essential site "Unlike aluminium, which is what most phones are made of, titanium doesn’t scratch, dent, or bend."

Phone Body is an interesting mixture of titanium on the sides and ceramic back , but then why not make the whole body out of titanium.

It’s got Gorilla Glass 5, Phone looks quite solid and strong.

Finger print scanner is placed at the back and thank god it’s not awkwardly placed like the Samsung S8 :).

Essential also performed drop test of this device. 

As quoted on website “We drop tested the Essential Phone on solid concrete to ensure that your phone could survive a bad accident”.

After performing a corner drop test on solid concrete surface, the Essential Phone’s titanium enclosure survived the fall without blemish, unlike the competitor devices.

Screen

Most distinguished thing about the phone is the screen. Its a bezel-less phone from top to bottom with a cut-out for the front camera. Now my biggest concern was how a video would looks like when played on this screen. So, when you play a video the screen shifts inwards so the cut out doesn't impact the video.

Screen has a resolution of 2560 x 1312 QHD and Aspect Ratio of 19:10.

Camera

Now this is the most important part of any smart phone, apart from the hardware a camera has to be at par or better than a portable camera or DSLR. Since apple has introduced the dual camera on iphone7 most high end phones have been trying to emulate the same in their own way like oneplus5 has a similar dual camera setup with one a standard lens and other is a telephoto lens. What that does is one lens is used for zoom and the other is your standard lens.

Where as Essential has gone for a different approach, they have 13MP Dual camera an RGB and a Greyscale Mono camera with image fusion technology. This kind of setup assists in low light photography performance and provides photos that are rich in colour and detailing in low light. The phone also offers a monochrome mode.

There is also 360 degree camera which clips to the back of the phone through the magnetic strip, also it’s the smallest 360 degree camera.

You can check out some of the videos shot with 360 degree camera on the official site of essential phone i found the videos to be pretty amazing.

360* camera setup with dual lens, magnetic strip at the bottom ,realtime switching engine in the middle

Front camera is 8MP resolution with 16:9 aspect ratio, f/2.20 fixed hyperfocal lens it can capture video at 4K.

Hardware

Essential phone packs a solid hardware with Snapdragon™ 835

CPU: Kryo 280 Octa-core (2.45GHz Quad + 1.9GHz Quad), 64 bit, 10nm processor

GPU: Adreno 540, 710MHz, 64bit

Good enough for all your multitasking activities even if you are a gaming enthusiast or a heavy app phone user , you won’t be disappointed.

It has a RAM of 4GB and Storage of 128GB which is quite sufficient amount of storage on mobile device.

OS(Operating system)

This is the best part about this phone ,Essential phone is on stock android that means there are no heavy skins or unnecessary apps , it has just the basic apps which comes in android.

Battery of 3040 mah with fast charging is sufficient enough to provide a whole day juice for your device.

Pro's

• This is the first phone i have seen which is very minimal , i mean there are no logo's ,no numbers absolutely nothing on the back or the front of the phone.
• It’s got stock android.
• Dual camera.
• Full screen bezel-less.
• Clip able gadgets , although only one is announced so far.

Con's

• No audio jack ,now that’s a bit disappointing , although it comes with connector. So, either you can play music via a Bluetooth earphone or always carry the connector of a USB type-C to 3.5mm jack.
• It’s not water proof or repellent, most high end phones in this category are water proof.

P.S. Now considering the fact that the phone costs a $699 and $749 for the phone +360 camera , it looks like worth a accessory to add on.Although the price point is a bit high as you can get Samsung S8 for a lower price($575 on amazon) and that has got the infinity display and believe me that's something amazing. 

But Essential is a different kind of phone its minimal and a new take on the mobile phone devices.

Although I'm not sure if this will be launched in India or not, lets wait and watch. I would like to get my hands on this bird for sure.