We talked about the Galaxy Nexus on its 10-year anniversary last week and how it’s one of those phones that sticks out in my mind as one of the most important to Android’s history, even if it was a terrible phone. Another phone that I’d put in that category, mostly because it was a camera away from being incredible, was the Essential Phone. We never did get a follow-up, but the crew who made it (sans Andy Rubin), a company called OSOM, are about to give us something close to it.
The Essential Phone (or PH-1) is one of those devices that was ahead of its time in design, felt as premium as Apple’s best phones, and ran the software we enjoyed with an update speed that not even Google could match. It’s camera was absolutely the worst of the worst, it struggled with network connections, and the display was put on upside-down or something, causing it to have never-ending touch issues, but if you look outside of those flaws, I’m still not sure you’ll find a sexier phone, even today.
Of course, Essential died because Andy Rubin. We never got the Essential Phone 2 or those weird GEM phones, but OSOM has teased their first phone and I’m sure you’ll find that it looks familiar.
OSOM sat down for a brief chat with Android Police and sent them this one image of the back of the device. Look at that thing – how can you not feel the Essential phone vibes from it? It’s so hot.
While not a finished product that you can buy, this could be pretty close to what they’ll offer next year. And yes, the first OSOM phone, dubbed OSOM OV1 (for now), will be fully revealed at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in early 2022 and then arrive next summer. Once it does, we know it’ll have a couple of cameras on the back, a rear fingerprint reader, a Qualcomm chip inside, a clean Android experience, and a lot of privacy-focused stuff going on. The plan is to sell it unlocked without carrier partners in the US (plus Canada and some European countries).
Is this – a privacy-forward phone – something a lot of people will want to buy? That doesn’t sound interesting enough to get the attention of many, but OSOM CEO Jason Keats seems to believe there are enough and that his company doesn’t need to sell 90 million of these phones to be successful. So that’s good, I just hope they don’t get so caught up in the privacy angle that the camera is dogsh*t, performance and display responsiveness are bad, and the phone can’t hold a cell signal (Keats says it should be fine and that was an Essential problem because of Rubin).
Also, if the word crypto is mentioned anywhere near this “privacy” phone, we’re never talking about it again.
Anyways, the follow-up to the Essential Phone is coming next year! That’s actually pretty exciting.
Reading this on my Essential PH1. Let’s hope they price this right
loved my essential and still keep it around for my drone. The camera I never had an issue with, but I did load the google camera.
I would buy a ph-2 in an instant, but this ov1 does not give me that essential vibe I am looking for
Also, if the word crypto is mentioned anywhere near this “privacy” phone, we’re never talking about it again.
That’s a weird flex but ok
Has my attention. Loved the form factor of the Essential phone – flat, Flat sides, flat screen. Got the notch right on the first try. Used it until it died. Cameras never bothered me. They keep improving it over time. But then again most pics I take are instructions, prices and recipes. Not social media sharing pics.
Also a privacy focused phone has my attention. I already add a 1111, DuckDuckGo and lots of other protection. Would be nice to have it built in.
Essential Phone’s update speed was bananas…
https://media1.giphy.com/media/WmezFYG1Jz2g/giphy.gif
It does look sexy. Flat display possibly? The Android market needs more OEMs but unfortunately I’m not sure at this point anybody can last.
Looks like a nice back – – – but the back isn’t really that important. We’ll see at MWC
From the video, it looks like its slightly larger than the PH-1 🙁
my poor tiny little hands.
Phone companies have no love for us with smaller hands!
“unlocked without carrier partners” which, though not by the literal words of it, usually means no Verizon support, unfortunately.
Yep. So VZW users essentially have Samsung, Apple & Google to choose from at this point.
Moto? OnePlus?
well i had the essential on verizon so hopefully this will work on VZW also
This company will last about as long as Essential did. Deliver one phone to market, maybe two, and that will be all she wrote for these guys.
They seem to think they are setup to make phones without much money and without needing to sell a ton. That all sounds far too good to be true. But man, we need another phonemaker so I’m gonna just drink all their kool-aid lol.
I hope they succeed, we really need more options in the US, basically we have Samsung, Oneplus and Google at this point.
And OnePlus feels like they are about to peace out too.
Yeah, basically Oppo now.
OnePlus has basically been Oppo long before it was a public thing. Whatever Oppo did, heavily influenced OnePlus’ decisions. OnePlus ran a pull about the headphone jack which told them their followers were overwhelmingly in support of keeping it. Oppo announced a new device dropping it and so OnePlus did as well since many of their phones have been Oppo hand-me-downs.
Yes, the hardware has always shared components and a common design language though there have been some differences. It’s really that now with them basically switching to ColorOS and some of the other things recently that shows they are basically just turning into Oppo, there was at least some separation and uniqueness to OnePlus in the past, but that’s basically gone.
There’s a good YouTube video that talks about why all enthusiast brands will eventually betray you and even specifically discusses OnePlus. They’re all forced to eventually go mainstream or the way of the dodo. The best enthusiasts can do to combat it is to not overly commit to a single brand and be ready to jump to the newest enthusiast brand when the previous one goes mainstream.
Behind it all is just Qualcomm, though that does seem to be breaking down at the moment.
that triangular camera has got my attention, and its nice to see clean, straight sides on a non-apple phone, we still have to learn literally everything else about it, but i like what I see!
It’s likely going to be changed before release, because Fairphone is already using the same camera module design.
I need to see how this unfolds. If it has the level of software support the Essential PH-1 had then I will be interested. It will have to be a Gen 2 for me to actually consider it. I hope it succeeds though.