The Essential Phone comes with a modular functionality for a 360 camera and a charging dock.
The Essential Phone, built by Android’s co-creator Andy Rubin, has finally launched today. The smartphone is priced at $660 (Rs 42,600 approximately) and is currently up for sale in the US with a global launch expected soon. The Essential Phone as expected, comes with prominent features and specifications and is available in two colors — Pure White and Black Moon. Here’s a look at the Essential Phone’s top features that make it stand out among other existing smartphones.
Display and design
The Essential Phone features a 5.71-inch Quad HD edge-to-edge display with aspect ratio of 19:10 and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The Essential Phone makes the best use of edge-to-edge display by occupying most of the top part and the bezel surrounding only the front-facing camera lens. The Essential Phone also flaunts a titanium body making it strong enough to survive a drop. The smartphone also features Mi MIX-like ceramic back giving it a glossy finish.
Photography
The Essential Phone features a pair of 13-megapixel dual RGB + Mono camera with image fusion technology and 13-megapixel True Monochrome mode. Rear camera features include aperture of f/1.85, Hybrid Auto-Focus combing Contrast, Phase detection and IR Laser Assist Focus, and 4K Video recording. Up front, the smartphone houses an 8-megapixel camera for selfies with 16:9 aspect ratio, f/2.20 aperture, fixed hyperfocal lens and 4K video recording capabilities. The Essential Phone is also said to feature the world’s thinnest dual camera system ever built for a phone and this is noticeable as the cameras do not have any bump or mount on them.
Performance
The Essential Phone is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor. With this, the Essential Phone joins the league of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the soon-to-be launched OnePlus 5. In terms of memory, the smartphone also comes with 4GB RAM and 128GB onboard storage. ALSO READ: Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone with 5.7-inch QHD display, Snapdragon 835 SoC launched: Price, specifications, features
Modular functionality
The Essential Phone comes with modular functionality for a 360-degree camera and a charging dock. The 360 camera will ship with the smartphone but at an additional cost of $50 (Rs 3,300 approximately). The Essential Phone has small metal pogo pins on its rear chassis through which the 360 camera and the charging dock can be connected. It remains to be known if there would be more modular accessories launched for the Essential Phone. ALSO READ: Andy Rubin: His journey from founding Danger Inc, creating Android, to the Essential phone
Connectivity
The Essential Phone comes with the latest Bluetooth 5.0 for connectivity. After the Galaxy S8 series, the Essential Phone is the second smartphone to feature Bluetooth 5.0 which offers double the speed and four times more range compared to Bluetooth 4.2. Bluetooth 5.0 also increases the connectionless data broadcast capacity by eight times. ALSO READ: Bluetooth 5.0 brings 2x speed, 4x range and capacity boost for IoT devices