Essential Phone Will Ship Next Week, Shortly After Breaking $1 Billion Valuation (9to5google.com)

New submitter cloud.pt writes: Andy Rubin's Essential Phone will be released next week according to 9to5Google, just shy from its initial June mark. The company has been speculated to be worth around $1.2 billion, after giant Foxconn filed yesterday for a 0.25% acquisition at around $3 million -- clearing unicorn status as it hasn't shipped a single unit at the time. According to Engadget, future and existing pre-orders will have a chance to switch to the Pure White version of the slab, despite initial shipments being scheduled to be of the Black Moon variety. Essential's storefront orders will get the device unlocked, while the only parties offering the device will initially be Sprint. Rumor has it Amazon plans to sell the device as it invested in the company through its Alexa fund. No matter the contract attached, it will come with the full range of network capabilities unlocked.

Comments

I just don't care anymore

[Hadlock]

Halo phones were good enough in 2013 with the advent of the Nexus 4, I don't see a whole lot of improvements over this compared to the Nexus 5. The Nexus 5 was so good that the Nexus 5x was a bit of a downgrade, and now my Pixel... well i still don't like it as much as the Nexus 5.
 
Maybe I'm getting too old, but the only reason I buy a new halo phone is because my old halo phone died a horrible death or was stolen.
 
Who are they marketing to? Is it the 20-something group? There's no brand on this, and the brand, if it were branded is so small nobody will have heard of it to be impressed. Or you can buy an existing Halo Phone like a samsung or an apple and get a great phone.... I have yet to see a phone released in a couple of years that won't do everything from snapchat to games to netflix. The Moto G4 I had while I was waiting for my Pixel to arrive (after the 5X did the bootloop thing over Christmas) feels just as fast as the Pixel, and it's less slippery to hold.
 
Other than the quality of the camera, I just don't see the point of buying a halo phone anymore. It's just not worth it. It's like, what brand socks do you wear? Do you care? Are your feet warm and dry, or not? It's hard to tell from minute to minute exactly how warm your feet are under normal circumstances. Will it text, call, facebook and netflix? Ok, great. I don't care who makes it or what it's made out of as long as the battery will last until morning for my alarm to go off.

Re:I just don't care anymore

[Hadlock]

Unless you're in the Northeast, $600 will buy you a ticket to anywhere in central america, anywhere in the northern half of south america, and most of southeast asia. If you're on the east coast, you can sometimes fly to Spain for that.
 
If there's a 2% noticeable difference between the $150 phone, and the $650 phone, is that $500 difference going to be worth the opportunity cost of traveling somewhere new and interesting for a weekend? Or getting that cavity filled? Sending your kids to summer camp for two weeks? Maybe you're 23 with a college degree, no responsibilities and unlimited disposable income, but that's a boat payment for me. I have hobbies and uses for $500. A phone is a phone, and the quality difference is almost impossible to tell the difference; my pixel next to my moto G4 requires knowledge of which one has a textured power button. Don't let marketing delude you.

$1b in value

[hsmith]

Haven't sold a single thing. Rofl. World has gone fucking insane.

Hmm.

[Presence Eternal]

The stated philosophy of no crapware is all well and good, but let's see what I can google for specs. Hmm. Screen is not amoled. Fingerprint sensor on the damn back. No audio jack. No microsd. Not waterproof. Seven hundred bucks. Not to be nasty, but a lack of crapware on a crap phone is not much of a selling point.

Re:Hmm.

[cloud.pt]

I see your point, but marketability and appeal for phones doesn't have to catter only to your specific needs on a phone. Dropping the AMOLED and a microSD tells me you're in the Samsung bandwagon, which I can understand (not relate) having used the previous 2 Galaxys as my personal device for 3 years now, continuously. But it has actually been scientifically and practically proven that AMOLED is not better - not in battery, not in color accurate representation, and contrast is a pet peeve when basically most use a phone gets is around bright environments. It's personal preference, and for Samsung it's actually financial preference as it's what they invest in. I'm sure the sense of ownership kicks in while watching movies in your dark bedroom, when black screens pop up and everything gets pitch-black, and looking at your iridescently dark phone when screen is off face up on a table. but that's really it. I've learned the latest and greatest LCDs perform MUCH better in the sun which is where I need my phone.

Now, microSD is a bummer but who carries around more than half an hour of 4k content let alone an entire library of TV shows and/or FLAC. People don't have the time to consume or film a ~100GB sinkhole. They don't even have the time to wait for 100GB-orders of magnitude transfers with UHC-2 at 150MBs theoretycal (which is what most would get unless they're dirty rich). What people have is a latent sense of insecurity for non-expansion, yet completely neglect UFS 2.1 is a godsend. It's like having range anxiety on a 2.3s 0-60 Model S - it's pathological. Google knew their shyt when they pitched cloud storage would be the future for entertainment media, they were just a little too early with their push back in the Nexus 4 and now everybody got a piece of the pie while we geeks all cry for "expansionism" (no pun intended).

When I look at this phone I see an updated, improved Mi Mix that actually gets the attention it deserves from its manufacturer (in this case for obvious reasons: it's their only device). I see a beautifully design titanium build, a material which has pretty much been neglected by everyone other OEM for cost; I see an actually usable accessory paradigm - simple, cheap('ish); I see a screen that doesn't use a stupid form factor that will suit nothing but your own damn useless OS modifications (*wink wink* S8). And that doesn't need to be LCD to wow me.

I also see Apple price tags on a newcomer - rookie mistake really (but they are already riding the hype in the seed funding market, it's only a small jump to consumers); like the S8, an underwhelming amount of RAM for a 2017 flagship - big NO-NO, clearly based on too much trust in system-based management by none other than the OS creator. This is a mistake everybody else seems to make but OnePlus I might add - I mean, is ram that costly or is it really so hard to understand Java is a HUGE memory hog and garbage collection really sucks because most app devs simply can't cope with day-to-day use usage patterns. This won't improve with time, trust me, Android rarely gets better on RAM management in magnitudes that have visible effects?

And obviously I see no analog jack, but if you're the type to walk around with audiophile-priced and/or sized headphones, a super-duper small USB-C adapter isn't a problem - it's not like it's a Macbook Pro needing 3 of 4 of those at once because "MOST MY HARDWARE IS JUST FINE WITH USB non-C". It's one small dongle, which is gonna be used either once per year or 24/7 and never detach from it's peripheral cable. And in different ways that Apple sells their jack-less world, I actually believe there IS a future for a "last-link" analog conversion strategy, where audio is continually digital until it reaches the very electronics that reverberate analogically to your eardrums, but it will take its time to come like all audio technologies do (Atmos anyone?). Audio quality is a speculative commodity - it is only worth as much as the people whose ears you trust brag about it, and when you take a plunge it's mu

Re:they must bring something to the table.

[ShanghaiBill]

They also courageously left out the headphone jack.

yeah but...

[supernova87a]

Some things that I can pretty much guarantee will not be "essential" with this phone:

• 1) privacy protections,
• 2) bug fixes and legacy support after 1 year,
• 3) people, software, and hardware, and infrastructure to help you when it turns out to be a phone that doesn't work for any reason...