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The Verge's Essential Phone Review: An Arcane Artifact From an Unrealized Future (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares Dieter Bohn's review of the Essential Phone: Even though it was announced less than three months ago at the Code Conference, there's already enough mythology surrounding the Essential Phone to fill a book. It comes from a brand-new billion-dollar startup led by the person who helped create Android itself, Andy Rubin. That origin binds it up with the history of all smartphones in a way that doesn't usually apply to your run-of-the-mill device. The phone was also delayed a bit, a sign that this tiny company hasn't yet quite figured out how to punch above its weight class -- which it's certainly trying to do. Although it runs standard Android, it's meant to act as a vanguard for Essential's new ecosystem of smart home devices and services connected by the mysterious Ambient OS. Even if we trust that Rubin's futuristic vision for a connected home will come to pass, it's not going to happen overnight. Instead, all we really have right now is that future's harbinger, a well-designed Android phone that I've been testing for the past week. Available unlocked or at Sprint, the $699 Essential Phone is an ambitious device. It has a unique way to connect modular accessories, starting with a 360-degree camera. It has a bold take on how to make a big, edge-to-edge screen paired with top-flight materials such as ceramic and titanium. And it has a dual camera system that is meant to compete with other flagship devices without adding any thickness to the phone. That would be a lot for even a massive company like Samsung or Apple to try to do with a single phone. For a tiny company like Essential, the question is simply this: is it trying to do too much? In conclusion, Bohn writes: "The Essential Phone is doing so much right: elegant design, big screen, long battery life, and clean software. And on top of all that, it has ambitions to do even more with those modules. If you asked Android users what they wanted in the abstract, I suspect a great many of them would describe this exact device. But while the camera is pretty good, it doesn't live up to the high bar the rest of the phone market has set. Sometimes artifacts are better to behold than they are to use."
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The imperative is to justify an exorbitant cost. There are too many Android phones that are excellent for a reasonable price. To charge ridiculous money you need to be better in every way, not a few.
If the underlying sensor, optics and image processor hardware is good, then the camera quality can be improved from where it is at today with future software updates. I don't see them having cut corners elsewhere and I doubt that they did with camera hardware. They were probably in a rush to ship the device and camera software was shipped when it got to the good enough point.
I did work as a camera software engineer in a previous life. So I have a rough idea of how these things go.
But while the camera is pretty good, it doesn't live up to the high bar the rest of the phone market has set.
Absence of a 3.5 mm headphone jack is a non-starter for me.
But not for me. I don't care one bit about the camera, but the lack of a headphone jack is a fairly major problem. I don't think the battery is changeable, and that's a point in the minus column.
The real problem for me, though, is the memory. 128Gb is unacceptably small for a device that you can't slip an SD card into. That's a showstopper right there.