Android creator’s new phone is Essential

ALTHOUGH IT MIGHT’VE DROPPED A FEW ‘ESSENTIAL’ FEATURES...

Andy Rubin is the man behind the Android OS, but he apparently doesn’t much like the “weird new world” we live in, where smartphones come with “unnecessary features cluttering our lives”. In a bid to change that, Rubin’s releasing his own smartphone with a scratch-proof ceramic-and-titanium body and modular design that’ll let owners add accessories to change functionality. Christened the Essential Ph-1 (commonly known as the Essential Phone), it features a flat 5.7-inch (2,560 x 1,312-pixel) edge-to-edge display (called a ‘Full Display’ by Essential) and all the other flagship smartphone technologies we’ve come to expect, like a high-end Qualcomm processor, 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage, fingerprint sensor, and dual cameras. What it does lack, however, is a headphone jack, although like the iPhone 7, it’s been reported that the Essential will ship with a 3.5mm adapter-dongle in the box.

The handset will run a version of Android with a customised user interface that promises to evolve with the user. The phone is being touted as “interesting”, but is it actually interesting enough to compete against the likes of Apple and Samsung? There’s, as yet, no word on an Australian release date.