Essential has spilled the details on its three new Essential Phone colors, Ocean Depths, Stella Gray, and Copper Black, with sales kicking off from today. Announced back when Essential first revealed the phone, the new finishes have taken longer to arrive than Andy Rubin's startup initially anticipated, after the discovery that getting the colors and textures right was trickier than they thought.
This week the folks at Essential will finally release their device in its most unique color: Ocean Depths. This version of the Essential Phone PH-1 promises to be the one version of the phone that's far more elite than the rest - as far as color tone goes. This version of the phone was introduced with the rest back at the device's initial reveal, but remained unavailable until now.
Everyone knew that Andy Rubin's Essential was going to face challenges in trying to break into the smartphone market. After all, that meant going up against established giants like Apple and Samsung, which both have a significant share of the market that's going to be difficult to any newcomer to wrestle away. Today we're finding out just how much the Essential Phone struggled to gain an audience after it first started shipping in July 2017, and the results don't sound good.
Smaller OEMs like OnePlus, Nokia, and Essential boast of their speed at pushing out updates, especially when compared to Samsung’s snail-paced schedule. While that is generally through, it seems that owners of Essential’s first and so far only phone have a lot more waiting to do for one of its biggest updates. After weeks of undergoing public beta testing for Android 8.0, the company has decided to cancel that update. Instead, it will jump directly to Android 8.1, which means an extended period of testing.
The Essential Phone PH-1 has a very slippery body. It's frontside is covered with a pane of reinforced glass, and its back is mostly ceramic. The phone is a good weight (not to heavy, not too light,) but in combination with the front or back lying on any surface at even very small angles, the PH-1 slides right off and down, down to the surface of the floor or ground below.
Over at Amazon the price of the Essential Phone PH-1 just dropped once again. While the original price of the Essential Phone was a whopping $700 USD, the device now costs closer to $435 - with free shipping, to boot. This is not the first time the price of this device has dropped - the company's experienced some early roadblocks on their way to any sort of major unit sales of this device. The fact that this device is on even FURTHER sale now suggests that we may well be headed toward a second gen device that's sold by Essential completely on its own.
The first Essential Phone was a good device, and everything that the first wave of Android phone enthusiasts could have wanted. But by the time the Essential company and the PH-1 existed, the general public had moved beyond their initial any-new-Android frenzy. Now we're in an era where the most fad-friendly phone is king, and only king for a half-cycle. Essential's first phone release is an attempt to check all the boxes for innovation but remain bare-bones at the same time. Therein lies the Essential struggle.
This afternoon the folks at Essential revealed they were sending an Android Oreo Beta 2 software build to their PH-1 phone. This device will get a collection of new features as a result, and all users will have access to said update. Just so long as an Essential Phone user is part of the Oreo Beta 1 club, they're in for the next update.
One of the benefits of not being a giant company is that you are able to move a bit faster and are less bogged downy be legacy considerations. Especially when you’re a small smartphone OEM carrying a nearly pure Android phone. That said, that agility may also cause such smaller companies to make bold promises, just like how Essential is putting some much-requested features on its list for the near future. Whenever that is.
This week the folks at Essential released an update to their Essential Phone's camera app. The Essential Camera app build 0.1.091 was made to bring YouTube Live 360 support for the first time. The ability to broadcast Facebook Live 360 video to a Facebook page was added in this update as well.
This morning the Essential PH-1 phone got an update for its Essential-built standard Essential Camera app. With this update, users were given an array of image quality enhancements as well as a brand new feature. This new feature enables Portrait Mode for the app for the first time.
Right now is a pretty important time for Essential, a company headed by Andy Rubin that's trying to break into the crowded smartphone market with its Essential PH-1. With the phone only a few months old, this can be considered a make-or-break time for the startup. It's strange, then, that founder Andy Rubin has announced that he will be taking a leave of absence from his company.