Let’s talk about the new Essential phone (Prototype?)
Okay so this is really an exciting time for tech. Andy Rubin just came out of nowhere and surprised us with the new Essential phone which looks really good.
Source: Twitter
Last time we saw something like this was the Nokia 7820. Remember that form factor?
I truly do miss the phones from 2000’s where tech was all around the hardware than the software. Yes we couldn’t do 90% of the things related to the www but it was nice to have a phone that looked different and functioned as it was marketed. No fancy software’s no fear of dropping the phone, just pure communication.
Essential has struggled to sell their phones despite being industry first in many aspects. The biggest one would be the first notched display. I was really excited to get a hands on with the first essential phone but till date I have not even seen anyone use it or it’s available for purchase in a country like India where companies like Apple have the newest iPhones on worldwide launch day.
Maybe Essential has a different plan. Maybe they are slowly and thoroughly going through their R&D. But surely need to ramp up their supply chain and manufacturing if they want more people to use it. Everything is pointless if you can’t reach your product to customers who want it.
We know what Andy is capable of. He for god sake made Android. If someone can customise android, he would be the best and the right person to lead the software team. I believe this phone works and can change the whole perception that phones can only be a huge block of touchscreen. Smaller phones do have a great market worldwide. People don’t want phones that can replace their laptops. Most of them just want a good form factor that works. Phones have always been a personal device. It just cannot be compared to a laptop.
But let’s face it. App support is very crucial for any phone to succeed. If Netflix, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram gets pulled away from the App Store tomorrow and is only available on Android, would you still buy an iOS device? The answer is quite obvious – NO. How essential deals with this would be interesting to see. Especially the input. By the looks of it, it’s going to be a split keyboard that will take the input but I guess it’s too early to say. The interface feels more like windows mobile where tiles of apps can update in real-time and you can interact with them.
Battery life can be the top feature since it’s a tall slab form factor and it has plenty of space to even fit in a 3500 mAh battery. Maybe. Just maybe. The screen does look OLED at the moment (depth of the blacks on the screen) but can easily be an LCD since you know how good they can be these days.
I really hope Essential makes a bang in the current mobile phone market. Can’t wait to get a hands on.
