The Essential team wanted to make something unique, something fresh and exciting. They knew from the beginning that it wanted to build a titanium phone. The material offers far greater durability. Essential found a small German company that injection-molds the material. The Phone, Rubin says, is the phone he always wanted. It has no branding whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a name beyond Essential Phone, because it’s not Essential’s phone, it represents his owner. It runs Android, with no bloatware or customized interface, with the latest Snapdragon 835 processor, along with 4 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage. Other news are about HD voice, built-in video calling and more. The most important feature is a pair of tiny dots on the back, up there on the right. It’s a magnetic dock for attaching accessories.
The Essential’s first accessory will be shipped in the box with the phone as part of the device: a 360-degree camera, barely larger than our thumb. The phone simply treats it like an internal camera. Other accessories are coming later, and Essential plans to open source the docking system so others can build cool stuff for it. Essential it’s the first part of a technical revolution, it’s creators announced. For the instant, first, the US major carriers confirmed they will support the Essential Phone but some of them observed that some advanced features may nor work. The Essential smartpfone sells for $699.
