For most who follow the Android community, this will fall under the “duh” category but it is still good to have confirmation. Essential’s company Twitter posted last night that the Essential PH-1 will be getting updated to Android Oreo “in the next couple of months”.
Get your milk ready–#AndroidOreo is coming soon to Essential Phone. Watch for updates in the next couple months. pic.twitter.com/GEV1ntvDao
— Essential (@essential) September 18, 2017
The news certainly isn’t a surprise and reading between the lines, it looks like the update to Oreo could come at some point before year’s end. That would be great to see and would fall in line with the company’s commitment to rolling out updates quickly – both major and minor updates.
For those who haven’t been keeping up with the goings-on in the Android community, the Essential PH-1 is the first phone from Essential, the company founded by Andy Rubin. For those that don’t know, Mr. Rubin is the co-creator of Android.
The Essential Phone has certainly had a lot of fanfare before and since its release but there have also been a few bumps in the road. Reports of the camera quality when the phone was first released were pretty poor but that has been improved over the last few weeks with software updates.
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 from Essential and Amazon, 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 is available for $699 although quantities remain somewhat limited.
