Category: Essential Phone

In an unexpected move, Essential has quietly released an exclusive version of their Essential Phone on Amazon.  The new Halo Gray variant comes with Amazon Alexa built-in but is identical to any other variant of the phone as far as specs and features.  The Amazon exclusive is $449, the same price as other colors.

The addition of the Halo Gray color comes on the heels of three color variants being released by Essential themselves.  Those colors – Ocean Depths, Stellar Gray and Copper Black – are price $100 more than the standard color models.

Essential teased on Tuesday via Twitter than a new color for the Essential Phone was going to be available starting today.  That color, Ocean Depths, has arrived.  The teal blue with gold highlights version of the PH-1 has the exact same internals as the current Black Moon and Pure White versions but you get what is a pretty stunning looking color combo to set you, and your phone apart.

The new Ocean Depths color is available starting today.  It is exclusively available through the Essentials site and costs $599, $100 more than the standard color models.  In addition to this new color, two more were announced today and will be available starting next week.

In the six months that the Essential Phone was available in 2017, the startup company shipped only 88,000 units and shows that the company, despite its deep Android roots in Andy Rubin, has a long way to go to hit the mainstream.

The figures came from IDC researcher Francisco Jeronimo who posted it on Twitter.

. @Arubin‘s @essential smartphone is still a long way from becoming a successful venture. In 2017, it shipped less than 90K units (first six months after launch) pic.twitter.com/NHVlA2Gjzr

— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) February 12, 2018

The numbers certainly reflect on what was a difficult birthing process for the company’s first phone.

If there has been one criticism of the Essential Phone, it has been the camera and the camera app.  Frankly, it was a hot mess when the phone was released but the company has been making huge strides in updating both the firmware and software to improve photos from the phone.  Today, they are getting a little better.

There is an update to the Essential Camera app in the Play Store that brings a lot of fixes as well as Auto-HDR support.  The update is version 0.1.096.003 and a lot of work has gone into it around HDR in general.

In a somewhat surprising announcement on Twitter yesterday, Essential, makers of the Essential Phone, said that they were abandoning their current Android Oreo 8.0 build to start an 8.1 build for customers.  The 8.0 build has been in beta for a few weeks now and the company stated that stability issues where the driver behind the decision.

An update on the public release of Oreo: pic.twitter.com/fPJRtX7kvY

— Essential (@essential) January 30, 2018

The decision means that any Oreo build for the Essential Phone is going to be delayed, in the company’s terms, “a couple of weeks”.

The camera app for the Essential Phone has a new update rolling out in the Play Store that brings a lot of new features and improvements.  The company announced the new camera app build on Twitter a couple of days ago.

Today we released an update to Essential Camera App that includes app shortcut support for mono, selfie and portrait modes, optimized Camera Roll performance, and various stability fixes. Download it here: https://t.co/zXoZ765GHF

— Essential (@essential) January 26, 2018

If you have an Essential Phone, the app update is now live in the Play Store.