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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.
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.
moox. for a new generation.
Haven't sold a single thing. Rofl. World has gone fucking insane.
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.
They also courageously left out the headphone jack.