Essential – like any other smartphone manufacturer ahead of a launch – is hyping up its first smartphone the PH-1. This smartphone was supposed to be available back in late June or early July but it still has not launched. Essential’s founder, Andy Rubin had announced that availability and retail partners would be announced next week. Now it appears that Essential is doing a “First Look” event in West Hollywood on August 25th to show off the new smartphone.
The invite for the event was not sent out to press and journalists, and it appears to have only gone out to a small number of potential buyers of the Essential PH-1, so it’s likely a small gathering in West Hollywood in 2 weeks. The invite does show off the phone and the 360 camera and talks about going hands on with both products at this gathering. It also appears that Essential is doing another gathering in New York City on August 21st, that a few users have gotten invites for. So it does really look like Essential is doing essentially – no pun intended – pop up shops around the country for customers to get hands on the device before it’s available (or perhaps shortly after it launches?). It’s a rather interesting way to promote the device, and it’s similar to how OnePlus has been promoting its smartphones lately.
Essential announced its first smartphone in late May, where Andy Rubin showed it off at the Code Conference. The device was supposed to be available within 30 days, but it has not yet started shipping. Rubin did say an update would be available next week for availability. The Essential PH-1 is a rather interesting device. It sports a nearly bezel-less display, with the camera actually inside the display. It also has a titanium frame and the most high-end specs as well. That includes a 5.7-inch QHD display, the Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It’s a fairly expensive smartphone, coming in at $749, but many people will likely jump on-board since it’s Rubin’s company, and he is the guy that brought us Android. Of course if this were any other company, the phone would likely be dead on arrival.
