The Essential Phone could be the first phone to get the February Android Security Update patch. Those patches were released yesterday by Google and today, Essential has begun rolling out build NMK24B to the PH-1 which contains the patch.
While the Essential Phone got off to a rough start and still lacks its Android Oreo update (it will be getting 8.1 in a few weeks), the company is certainly making strides to keep the device updated from a security perspective.
If you have a PH-1, the OTA should be ready to download to your device. It is a small download which tends to indicate that the update are the security patches only and no other new features. It is possible, even if not documented, that there are some bug fixes and other improvements in the update.
If you are not familiar with the Essential Phone, it 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.
You can pick one up on Amazon right now for $499
