Category: Essential

Just an hour after Google released Beta 4 of Android P for the Pixel lineup of devices, Essential has released their own Beta 3 for the Essential Phone, which is this latest beta from Google.  The update is build is PPR1.180610.066 for those keeping score at home.  If you have an Essential Phone registered in the company’s Android P beta program, you should be getting the update today if you don’t have it already through the Beta app from Essential.

Essential, like OnePlus, Oppo, and Sony to name a few, generally runs a few days or weeks behind Google on these releases.  Of all the partners, Essential is by far the quickest in getting these updates out but today’s one hour gap, even for them, is fast.

Last week at Mobile World Congress, a concept video of the Vivo Apex caught a lot of attention.  The concept phone had a lot of cool tricks, including a pop-up selfie camera.  By building the camera into the chassis like this, it allows for a completely bezel-less design yet also eliminates the much loved or hated “Notch”.  Now it seems we have a bit more clarity on this design from a patent perspective thanks to Essential’s Andy Rubin.

In a Tweet over the weekend, Mr. Rubin pointed to a patent that is in his name, along with others, that is held by Essential.  That patent points out the pop-up selfie camera design and the patent for it was granted on August 15, 2017.

Good news this morning for those of you who pre-ordered the Essential PH-1.  Your device should be shipping to you over the course of the next seven days according to the company.  It follows delays in shipping as the Andy Rubin’s founded company had expected to ship the phones in July.

The Essential PH-1 has a titanium body with a ceramic back, a 5.7″ 2560 x 1320 Quad-HD display, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage built-in.  It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor.  This octa-core processor has four cores running at 2.45GHz and the remaining four clocked at 1.9GHz.

The camera configuration on the back of the PH-1 is becoming somewhat of the standard.  It is a dual-camera setup with a 13MP RGB camera coupled with a 13MP monochrome camera.  It is has a f/1.85 aperture and hybrid autofocus (laser and phase detection).  It is capable of shooting up to 4K video.  The front facing 8MP camera is a fixed focus f/2.2 shooter that can also shoot 4K video.

While the new Essential PH-1 won’t start shipping until the end of this month, we do know who the carrier deal is going to be with on the company’s first device.  Sprint, according to USA Today, will be the exclusive carrier of the device here in the United States.  The phone is going to receive prominent displays within Sprint stores nationally although it was not announced just how long the exclusive relationship would be on the new phone.

The exclusive on the PH-1 is not the first for Sprint as they are also the exclusive carrier on the HTC U11.