Late last week, Android creator Andy Rubin teased that his new company Essential would be unveiling its rumored iPhone-killer smartphone today. Rubin lived up to that promise and more. The Essential Phone is now official, but the company also unveiled something unexpected.
The Essential Home is a smart speaker with a built in display, that takes on Amazon.com, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Echo.
With Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) only days away from WWDC 2017 and possible hardware reveals of its own, things are about to get very interesting in the consumer electronics space.
Essential Phone Revealed
Andy Rubin knows that between Apple and Samsung Electronics (OTCMKTS:SSNLF), there is little room for a new flagship smartphone. Amazon went there with its Fire Phone and quickly abandoned the market. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has made progress with its Google Pixel Phone, but it has some huge advantages including name recognition and access to Android features it made exclusive to its own device.
So Rubin set out to make the Essential Phone stand out instead of being relegated to the Android “wannabe” bin.
First, its 5.7-inch display is the closest thing yet to edge-to-edge, even extending up to wrap around the selfie camera. It features a two-lens main camera, but unlike the iPhone 7 Plus, the second lens is used a sensor to bring in additional light for better photos in low light situations.
It’s equipped with a Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for performance. There’s optional magnetic charging support with USB-C standard, but no headphone port (an adapter is included). Its fingerprint reader is mounted on the back of the case. And it runs Android.
As shown in the teaser photos, the Essential Phone’s base capabilities can be extended by add-ons that connect to a proprietary port. The first of these is a 360-degree camera that’s billed as the world’s smallest.
Essential also emphasizes the strength and durability of its construction. A ceramic back and titanium frame are used in place of aluminum. The website features a slow-motion drop test of an Essential Phone being dropped on concrete — it survives without a scratch, unlike the iPhone and Galaxy shown beside it for comparison, both of which suffer significant damage to their aluminum frames.
No word on carrier support, but it’s equipped with the radios to be compatible with all U.S. networks.
Essential Home
While the Essential Phone was expected, the Essential Home was not. And the sudden appearance of this smart speaker shows that the company’s ambitions are much larger than expected.
Superficially, the Essential Home takes on the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple’s over-due Siri speaker (which is expected to be revealed next week at WWDC 2017).
Like these other smart speakers, it’s being positioned as the hub of a smart home, able to connect to smart devices and control them through voice commands. It runs Essential’s new Ambient OS and in a big departure from the current crop of smart speakers, Essential says its AI is largely housed within the device.
That’s very different from the current approach, which uses an internet connection to access an AI like Amazon’s Alexa, which is cloud-based.
With Essential Home, the company is making a play for privacy:
“Your home is your private space and we want to make sure that your privacy is taken seriously. We designed Essential Home to directly talk to your devices over your in-home network as much as possible in order to limit sending data to the cloud. Essential Home’s proactive assistant also runs its AI engine locally on the device.”
The touch display Essential Home is also designed to be less obtrusive than the competition. As Essential puts it:
“We are focused on delivering a home assistant that you’ll actually be proud to display in your home. No boxes, tubes or strange lights.”
When and How Much?
Reservations are currently being taken for the Essential Phone, for the U.S. only. The price is $699 in Black Night or White Moon (Stellar Gray and Ocean Depths green are coming soon). For a limited time the 360-degree camera add-on is being offered for $50. After the pre-order period, it goes up to $199.
There is no pricing information or release date as yet for the Essential Home.
It’s too early to say the Essential Phone or Essential Home are game changers — they could well crash and burn. But it is safe to say that with a Siri speaker, the iPhone 8 and the followup to Google’s Pixel Phone also coming soon, 2017 is going to be a big year for the tech industry.
