I covered the smartphones during the years of Boom from the Nexus 5 and the emblematic HTC One M7. Then I largely lost any interest. I found most dull smartphones – until I put my eyes on the essential phone PH -1, a phone that could still run the heads almost a decade later.
The essential phone excited me again for smartphones
I can be anal with regard to the design. I did not like to have the giant HTC logo under the screen of the HTC One M7 and its successors. I did not like all the cellular information printed at the back of the Nexus 5. I did not like the iPhone type reception button on Samsung Galaxy phones – or everything that concerns Samsung phones elsewhere (this was completely the change, considering Galaxy phones is now my favorite, and I find myself living in a cleaning of Samsung products). For a while, I abandoned smartphones for stupids, trying to return to an old -fashioned reversal. It was my rhythm for a while at Makeuseof.
When I saw the essential phone in 2017, it was the most excited I had been for a smartphone for almost half a decennia. Here is a device designed by Andy Rubin, one of the co-founders of Android, aimed at being a handset without excess of modern smartphones. The hardware and software would be, as the company name suggests, which was essential.
Such a modern design, it always seems current
These garish logos which were commonly placed under phone screens, just like on laptops and PC monitors, were completely absent here. There was also no logo at the back, nor any other printed text.
The screen almost covered the entire front of the device. He presented what would become later, a small notch for the selfie camera facing forward.
There was a small chin at the bottom of the device, hosting electronics that the manufacturers did not yet know how to tidy up behind the display.
The phone had a titanium and ceramic body that seemed incredible in my hand. The back was completely flat, which was not yet rare, because this bump of almost inevitable camera today.
You can put the essential phone on a shelf in store today, and although the notch and the chin would make it look more like a budget phone than a premium flagship product, it would hardly look like a device that has now been a decade.
But there were reasons why he did not make up for
I did not buy the essential phone at launch or even in its first year of life. Few people have done it. The phone initially cost $ 699, which was a little to fall on new equipment from an unproven company. Those who placed a pre-order had to wait because the phone launched almost two months after its announced release date.
The phone came with a few compromises, such as the absence of a headphone jack at a time when this port had not yet disappeared from other phones in its price range (it at least came with an adapter). The phone was not waterproof or non -reparable either. Worse, however, was the mediocre camera, which would have felt more comfortable on a budgetary apparatus.
Then there were the modular accessories that you could connect to the device for more features. Like all other phones that tried, like the more modern CMF phone, only a few accessories have been published. There was a 360 -degree camera module which, although cool, could not be used long without overheating. An audio module came later, offering a 3.5 mm helmet socket, an external DAC and an amplifier. It sold in one day.
To make matters worse, the phone was launched with software bugs. The first YouTube criticisms watched by millions of people were generally negative, with the video of MKBHD entitled “Except your money!” Ouch.
What happened to the essentials?
When the phone did not sell well at the launch, Essential dropped the phone at $ 499 and gave buyers the first a reduction code of $ 200 to spend on a 360 -degree camera or another essential phone. But only a year after the phone launch, it would be possible to catch units on sale up to $ 250, that is to say when I got hold of one. At $ 700, the phone was difficult to sell. At $ 250? It was almost impossible not to love him. After all, few criticisms said the essential phone was bad. It was just bad for its price.
Before the end of 2018, the essential phone was interrupted. By 2020, the essential company was also essential. The following year, nothing bought what remained of the essential brand, before the launch of the first phone nothing. Carl Pei loved the name “essential” and planned to use the brand before finally being satisfied with nothing, to avoid the confusion of the market.
But while the brand has gone to nothing, a large part of the team behind the essential PH-1 has formed a new company called Osom Products. In what was a wild trip from the outside, the company announced a phone that was clearly like a visual successor of the essential phone, the OV1 OSOM. Before the launch of this phone, however, it was reconfigured in a web 3 phone, focused on the crypto known as Solana Saga – Yes, Solana. The latter was launched in 2023, before OSOM products finally closed in 2024.
The essential phone may have disappeared, but its design is now omnipresent. After all, it does not seem so different from a modern galaxy phone. My Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 now has even fewer elements in the back than the essential PH-1. The main thing may not have survived long enough to become a familiar name, but its short existence has left a brand.
