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Any Interest In Rubin's Essential Phone?

Stopped by a Sprint store this afternoon. The girl said it was available for preorder so I asked about a demo. She did not say anything about when they might get one to check out but she was very elusive to tell the truth so maybe soon.
 
co.ag.2005 said:
I did too... 🙂 Pretty excited to try it out. I like how it's shorter and slightly wider than my S8 with pretty much the same sized screen.
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From what I see due to cut out it has a big space wasting top status bar to match the cut out.

So I doubt it had more useable screen area.
 
Essential is what Pixel should’ve been from day one: stock android, premium materials and design with no logo, premium price to go head-to-head against iPhone and Samsung (to a lesser extent). Google is able to achieve such feat easily. But it isn’t their main goal and it never was: their goal is to spread android to as many devices as possible. Speaking in broader terms, Google doesn’t care at creating ultimate experience like Apple does.

And here lies the main problem and main differentiating factor: i, as a customer, don’t want to buy a product from company that doesn’t care much about their product. That’s what keeps me after all these years at Apple’s bay: sure they have their own quirks but MUCH longer support update cycle (5 years?!) means that after a year or two your device still holds interest and will retain aftermarket price contrary to 2 year upgrade limit which means that in two years your essential phone won’t receive upgrades and i doubt will be of any interest to potential buyers.

But i will be glad if Rubin succeeds in his goal.
 
Tenhauser said:
Essential is what Pixel should’ve been from day one: stock android, premium materials and design with no logo, premium price to go head-to-head against iPhone and Samsung (to a lesser extent). Google is able to achieve such feat easily. But it isn’t their main goal and it never was: their goal is to spread android to as many devices as possible. Speaking in broader terms, Google doesn’t care at creating ultimate experience like Apple does.

And here lies the main problem and main differentiating factor: i, as a customer, don’t want to buy a product from company that doesn’t care much about their product. That’s what keeps me after all these years at Apple’s bay: sure they have their own quirks but MUCH longer support update cycle (5 years?!) means that after a year or two your device still holds interest and will retain aftermarket price contrary to 2 year upgrade limit which means that in two years your essential phone won’t receive upgrades and i doubt will be of any interest to potential buyers.

But i will be glad if Rubin succeeds in his goal.
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I disagree. Google has improved Android by a huge margin the last several versions.
 
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Tenhauser said:
What’s the point if this latest version has miniscule install base? Developers don’t have reason to update because 70% devices run outdated android os...
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This is not really true.

Developers care about how the percentage of users that can use their apps.

If you use an app on 7.1 it should basically run the same as a device using 5.0.

In general, 90% of Android devices are using an OS that is able to run almost every app, then Google just cut it to about 75% (Kit Kat from memory) and that's still very good.

It's not perfect but it's becoming far less of an issue as time goes on.
 
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Spaniel95 said:
Would like to see the phone in person, rather than preorder and hope I like the phone
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The phone is great but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, just premium materials and nice design (however, placing the scanner on the back is a design failure). Mossberg addresed the same question to Rubin which he (Rubin) failed to answer
 
JaySoul said:
This is not really true.

Developers care about how the percentage of users that can use their apps.

If you use an app on 7.1 it should basically run the same as a device using 5.0.

In general, 90% of Android devices are using an OS that is able to run almost every app, then Google just cut it to about 75% (Kit Kat from memory) and that's still very good.

It's not perfect but it's becoming far less of an issue as time goes on.
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Also don't forget most it not all of the core stock Android apps are available form the Playstore. You don't need to upgrade the OS to get most of the benefits of newer OS versions.
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Tenhauser said:
The phone is great but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, just premium materials and nice design (however, placing the scanner on the back is a design failure). Mossberg addresed the same question to Rubin which he (Rubin) failed to answer
Click to expand...
Isn't the Pixel FPS on the back? Why is it a failure?
 
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widgeteer said:
It seems all of these threads have a couple of people in them who just want to tell you the phone you're interested in sucks and you should want a different phone. Meanwhile, in general, most of us wind up buying ALL THE PHONES, so we're really not the consumers you have to issue PHONE WARNINGS to.
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The Ocean Depths version is going to be hard for me to resist, when it becomes available. I'm a sucker when green colors are done right on a nice design.

Essential-Phone-Ocean-Depth-Color.jpg
 
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widgeteer said:
It seems all of these threads have a couple of people in them who just want to tell you the phone you're interested in sucks and you should want a different phone. Meanwhile, in general, most of us wind up buying ALL THE PHONES, so we're really not the consumers you have to issue PHONE WARNINGS to.
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😀😀😀
 
The phone looks really nice. If they managed to get rid of that bottom chin, I think it would have looked even better.
 
Wow, this phone looks awesome, just got done viewing all the hands on videos I could find. Hyped up for it, guess that's it for my pixel and on to the essential.
 
Got to hand it to Essential... It's a awesome looking phone with great build quality from what I am seeing in these reviews. I think the Verge summed it up best for me though... It's a phone I want to love but it keeps breaking my heart... No OLED, No waterproofing, and a not so excellent camera for $700...

I really hope the company succeeds though so I can purchase the PH-2!
 
jamezr said:
Also don't forget most it not all of the core stock Android apps are available form the Playstore. You don't need to upgrade the OS to get most of the benefits of newer OS versions.
[doublepost=1503059253][/doublepost]
Isn't the Pixel FPS on the back? Why is it a failure?
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Not a failure but just inconvenient not being able to unlock phone when it's on a table facing up.
 
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So reading these first hands on impressions;

- Very positive for the construction build quality. It's super high end phone, with former Apple engineers working on the Essential hardware, so the attention to detail is like nothing seen on an Android phone. Ceramic back and titanium sides are much more durable than aluminum and glass, and overall better quality. The Essential phone is one of the best quality built smartphones of all time.

- Display they are saying is just a run of the mill LCD, with poor brightness for outdoors. It's not a bad screen, but not as good as the upcoming iPhone 8's OLED or LG V30 POLED.

- Battery life, they say, too early to tell, but looks to be good. Not great, not bad. I think the guy said he got ten hours total use on the phone, being in a very poor signal area, and using his phone a ton. So it should have pretty good battery life, but I wouldn't expect stellar crazy good. The Galaxy S8+ and iPhone 7 Plus being better.

- No Wireless charging

- No IP68


For $700 it seems like a very high end well built phone, and great to see it running a stock like AOSP OS, but with the so so display, average battery life, no wireless charging, no waterproofing, it just seems ok on some fronts, and great on others. I will wait for the Pixel XL 2 announcement first. And also the LG V30 is very exciting.
 
Sprint gives half off contract, it is suppose to work with other bands I thought I read.

Better alternative than buying unlocked and spending $699? Not sure what cheapest Sprint plan is though so maybe not.
 
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