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.
Since the phone will be sold unlocked, the frequencies supported by the antenna array and chipset are critical and, as you would expect, the PH-1 has it covered. Here is a rundown of the various supported channels & frequencies:
- UMTS/HSPA+: 1, 2, 4, 5 6, 8
- GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
- CDMA EV-DO Rev. A: 0, 1, 10
- FDD-LTE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 66
- TDD-LTE: 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43
- TD-SCDMA: 34, 39
The PH-1 runs Android Nougat via their Essential Ambient OS. This is the same platform that Essential is using for the IoT platform, including a new Google Home competitor. The company is being very direct in their approach to making sure that this flavor of Android solves the problem of lagging updates and other core updates. They have designed it to be future proof although the details are still not 100% clear.
One thing to note about the notice from Essential is that the modular 360-degree camera will not ship with your phone if you ordered them together. That will ship at a later point than the Essential PH-1 itself.
While the company has given a target of shipping the PH-1, no definitive date was provided. It is expected however that a follow up email to those who pre-ordered will be sent with an exact date or shipping information.
