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Android Creator Andy Rubin Launches Top-of-the-line Essential Phone (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the new-phones dept.

The much-anticipated smartphone from Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, is here. It's called the Essential Phone, and it runs a custom version of Android. Priced at $699, the Essential Phone offers top-of-the-line specifications including "an edge-to-edge display that one-ups even the Samsung Galaxy S8 by bringing it all the way to the the top of the phone, wrapping around the front-facing selfie camera." From a report on The Verge: It's a unique take on a big screen that makes the phone stand out -- and it's smart too. Often, the status bar at the top of an Android phone doesn't fill that middle space with icons, so it's efficient. The screen does leave some bezel at the bottom of the phone, but nevertheless it's as close to the whole front of a phone being display as I've seen. Essential is launching the phone in the US to start, and it's filled the phone with radios that should make it work on all major carriers, alongside usual Android flagship internals like a Qualcomm 835 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. [...] Essential will ship a 360-degree camera that can click in to the top of the phone, and the company will also offer a charging dock. Both connect to the phone with small metal pogo pins. They won't entirely replace USB-C for most people, but Essential is clearly hoping that they could someday. Speaking of ports, there is no traditional 3.5mm headphone jack -- which is a bummer. We're told that it will ship with a headphone dongle in the box.

13 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. What it means... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ... and it runs a custom version of Android. ...

    Correct me if I'm wrong. So it won't get the updates from Google directly, right? We need to wait for him to get around to passing the update to the phone, correct?

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  2. Apologists unite! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Appears to be glass-backed like iPhone 4, no analog audio jack, no removable battery, no SD card slot, proprietary power plug. But it's running Android so it's ok, right?

    1. Re:Apologists unite! by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually I wanted to ask whether its software makeup is free of the pesky "cannot-remove-the-google-crap"

      Or you could just disable it, and you'll never even notice that it is there unless you go way deep into the settings menu.

      requires you to root and flash it, but if it fails already at the hardware level

      Personally, I'm less and less interested in rooting phones. Rooting is good for adding features that aren't included stock, which was important in the early days because a lot of phones were outright incapable of doing certain things without going beyond the software stack. But these days, not only are the phones quite feature packed, but the UI is well designed too. The only reason I root is so I can use my call recording app and CF.lumen. Most phones can record calls except for the Nexus and Pixel line, unfortunately, but newer versions of Android make CF.lumen irrelevant. My current phone is a Nexus 6P, and more than likely I won't need to root with whatever I have next (which I'll probably upgrade to when the 6P stops getting updates.)

      And good riddance to be honest. Rooting means you have to manually intervene every month in order for your phone to be able to take updates, which is annoying, and some apps do different things to detect root, which you have to do some hackery to get around.

  3. Sorry guys by dmesg0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    No headphones jack - no money

    1. Re:Sorry guys by dmesg0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunately they didn't. Otherwise I would tell them that it's very stupid for a newcomer to reduce the number of potential buyers without a good reason.

    2. Re:Sorry guys by swillden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Unfortunately they didn't. Otherwise I would tell them that it's very stupid for a newcomer to reduce the number of potential buyers without a good reason.

      (Prefatory note: I do not expect that this will convince you to buy a phone without a headphone jack, and I'm in no way trying to imply that you should if you don't want to.)

      You're assuming there isn't a good reason. Most consumers assume that device designers can just stick anything they want into a device, any place they like, but that's not remotely true. The headphone jack has been causing problems with the placement of components, especially antennas, for years now because the thing is enormous, cutting deep into the device, and has to be on the edge and at one end. The USB port is a similar problem, it's less than half as deep and it serves many purposes -- including audio.

      The obvious engineering solution: eliminate the huge and anachronistic headphone jack. Hardware engineers have been afraid to do this for a long time, because of the obvious backlash from consumers who don't understand the complexities involved and will see it as nothing more than a way to extract more money from them in the form of new headphones, or adapters for their old ones. This is why Apple called their decision "courageous", because they decided to accept the backlash.

      Now that Apple has broken that trail, you can expect everyone else to follow suit, not because they particularly want to emulate Apple, but because there are good engineering reasons for doing it. Over the next couple of years, you will see almost all "flagship" devices dumping the headphone jack, and within four or five years the only new devices that still have it will be those who are catering specifically to the market of people who demand it. Meanwhile, USB-C headphones will become cheap and plentiful, as will adapters.

      Personally, I haven't used a headphone jack in at least a year. I find wireless headphones to be so much more convenient to use that I'm willing to put up with the necessity of charging them. I know lots of people find the quality of bluetooth audio to be unacceptable, but that actually has nothing to do with bluetooth per se, because the protocol can easily support high quality audio, and everything to do with the implementation in current-generation devices. And it's been something of a vicious circle: bluetooth audio sucks so audiophiles don't buy bluetooth headphones, so there's no reason to build bluetooth headphones with high quality audio. The coming dearth of headphone jacks is likely to break that circle, I think. I hope so, because I like not having wires from my pocket to my head, and although I'm rarely bothered by bluetooth audio quality, perhaps because I rarely listen to music, I wouldn't mind having better.

      Anyway, the bottom line is that there are good (to hardware engineers) reasons to lose the headphone jack, and I suspect that you're going to find it increasingly hard to find phones that have one. Not right away, but in a few years.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Sorry guys by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Have you actually ever disassembled a reasonably modern phone? I run a small repair shop after hours, so I have. The headphone jack is not particularily large, it absolutely doesn't have to be in a corner (although it helps) and it is usually a module with several other stuff attached or placed on it, like the LEDs, ambient light sensors or antennas (which often are just plastic covers with metallic ink lines drawn on them. As for the USB port being half as deep - it depends. It doesn't take much room when soldered directly to the motherboard, but by now the manufacturers finally realised that it tends to break off and make the USB port as a module with a flex cable attached. This module is most certainly not smaller than the headphone jack module (which is usally not just the headphone jack anyway). Oh, by the way, there is actually quite enough room inside a phone thanks to the large displays they tend to have nowadays. You have to realise that most of the hardware inside a phone is not that different to the hardware of a smart watch. The only thing that is difficult to avoid is a certain thickness (LCD + frame + adhesive + battery + back cover - that much room is necessary), but a headphone jack is slim enough to fit in.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  4. The sort of phone we need by DeplorableCodeMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is a phone that is analogous to the Steve Jobs era MacBook Pro. Expensive, well-built, upgradeable (in a limited sense as laptops go), repairable, long term support. For a phone that is like that, I'd not only pay $1k up front, but be willing to fork over $150-$200 for a support package that guarantees that, barring bankruptcy, the company will provide timely software updates past the first two years.

  5. The Chinese have done a better/fuller screen by zedaroca · · Score: 3, Informative

    it's as close to the whole front of a phone being display as I've seen

    The Xiaomi Mi Mix doesn't f up the screen with the front camera by adding it at the bottom, where both this and theirs don't have a screen.
    Some screenshots give the impression the screen isn't so large, but that's due to the on screen controls having a black background.

  6. Do people want edge to edge display? by DirkDaring · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't. If you have a phone with it, is it worth it? Can you even use a case with it?

    1. Re:Do people want edge to edge display? by freeze128 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have a phone with a small bezel on the left/right sides. When I hold my phone, the fleshy part of my hand overlaps the bezel and makes contact with the screen, which the phone interprets as a "touch". I already have my phone in a case, and yet this STILL happens. I would probably find the Samsung edge phones to be completely unusable.

      I don't want a bezel-less phone. Only phone designers want a bezel-less phone. I have no idea why. What I *DO* want is increased battery life. They should work on that instead.

  7. Re:No Retina Display? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Retina and Retina HD are marketing terms invented by Apple. They're trademarked, and nobody else can use them.

    A "Retina" display is any display with a density between 300ppi and 325ppi. A "Retina HD" display is any display with a density >= 326ppi. The iPhone 7 has a 326ppi display, the iPhone 7 Plus has a 401ppi display, so those are both "Retina HD".

    The Samsung Galaxy S8 has 571ppi. The Essential Phone has 503ppi. So they both have higher densities that outclass the current generation iPhone. If they were Apple devices, Apple would probably call them "Retina UHD" or something.

  8. Stop with the edge-to-edge by John+Jorsett · · Score: 5, Informative

    Any time someone with a no bezel phone hands it to me, I have to treat it like I'm defusing a bomb. Almost inevitably a fraction of a finger touches the screen and there goes whatever I was supposed to look at. Leave enough of a bezel that the phone can be handed off to another person.