 Some phones demand your attention. This phone, the Essential Phone, was made by a team led by the creator of Android itself, Andy Rubin. He has a brand new billion dollar company that's trying to create a whole new operating system for the connected world and a smart home device that will run on it. But before all that happens, this phone has to happen. It runs Android and it costs $699, but it feels like a million bucks and it has an all-new wireless module system. And the camera, well, we'll get to that. But first, pay attention. I mean, just look at this thing. The striking design starts, of course, with the screen. It goes all the way to the top with a cutout that accommodates the selfie camera and a couple of little sensors. It goes very nearly to the edges of the sides without any gimmicky curves. And on the bottom, it does have a little chin, but it's not much bigger than what you'd get on, say, a Samsung Galaxy. You should know that it's LCD instead of AMOLED, which means it won't work for VR, if you care about that sort of thing. But what's most impressive about the 5.7 inch screen is that it's bigger than the screen on the Pixel XL or the iPhone 7 Plus, but in a package that's way smaller than either one. Now, I know what you're thinking. Isn't this weird cyclops eye or selfie camera in the middle of the screen annoying? In a word, no. In more words, it basically becomes invisible once you start using it because Android never puts anything in that zone of the screen. Look, I'm just gonna say it. The Essential phone has an aesthetic that I like better than any other phone I've tried in the past year. I really like that this isn't just some derivative knockoff of an iPhone or a Galaxy phone. It's its own thing. The Essential phone feels substantial. It feels dense. It's pretty much the same weight as an iPhone 7 Plus, but in this much smaller package. I do wish it was waterproof, though. There's nothing here to distract from the clean lines of the device. There's no camera bump, and the earpiece speaker is this tiny thin rail you don't even see until the led charging light turns on. And, of course, there aren't any logos on it anywhere at all. The rail on the edge is titanium, and it rides the line of being just grippy enough to instill confidence. The back is ceramic, which cuts down on antenna lines, and it's also, I have to admit, glossy as all get out, and it shows every little smudge of fingerprint, but at least it wipes down easily. Essential says that all these materials will keep this thing from shattering if you drop it or scratching in your pocket, but we didn't actually test those things. Sorry. There isn't a headphone jack, and I know that's the way things are going, but I'm still gonna be a curmudgeon about it. Here's the USB-C dongle. It's a nice dongle, but once I left this dongle and my Bluetooth headphones at the office, and so I was out of luck. Oh, and the fingerprint sensor? It's on the back, in the middle, where you can actually reach it, where it belongs, Samsung. And here we come to it. The most important part, really, of any Android phone review. The camera. Hey everybody. You may have noticed I'm not wearing a suit, and I'm in an office with Viren behind the camera, and Tyler editing the video you're watching right now. Here's the story. A mere hours before we needed to publish this review, Essential pushed out a software update for the camera, which changed the quality of its photos from dumpster fire to pretty good. This is a section of the video where we're gonna tell you about the camera, so I will. There's actually two lenses on the back. One is black and white, the other one is color, and they combine the two images together to make a better photo than you'd get from either one on its own, and it means that there's no camera bump. So I compared it to a Pixel XL, and the Pixel XL is still way faster, and its pictures are slightly better. So we're gonna go back to the rest of the video, we're gonna talk about the modules and everything else that's going on with this phone, and then at the end I'm gonna come back to the camera a little bit. And what I say there at the end, it's still true, but if I had had the original software that I have now, I might not have been quite so, I don't know, emotional about it. So, check it out. There's one more interesting thing to talk about with the Essential phone, and it's related to these two little metal pins on the back. Just like Motorola, Essential is trying to get you to buy a bunch of modules, but Essential's approach is potentially more exciting than what Motorola is doing. These two little metal contacts here are just for providing power, the data is transmitted over wireless USB, and the modules attached via magnets. The first module that Essential is shipping is a 360 degree camera, which costs $199 on its own, but you can get it bundled with the phone for 50 bucks for a limited time. It's an intriguing little widget. It doesn't need its own battery, or display, or Bluetooth radio, so it's super small. It attaches via those magnets with a really pleasing firm snap, and when you do, it automatically fires up the phone's camera. Also, hilarious plot twist, when you attach the 360 camera to the back of the Essential phone, a tiny little fan spins up in the camera to keep the electronics cool. Now, it doesn't actually do it while you're actively recording, so it's not really a problem, but it's kind of weird, right? Once the camera app is open, you can shoot 360 stills or video in 4K, and even stream live. It works, but sometimes it is a little bit buggy. For now, the best thing I can say about it is that it's a really fun toy, but we have to compare its actual quality to other 360 cameras. We just haven't had enough time to do that yet. So, I haven't bothered to talk about the usual phone specs and software stuff, because Essential basically did all the obvious and right things. It's running on the same modern hardware that you can get on other flagship Android phones. It has a Qualcomm 835 processor, and it has all the radio bands you need to work on any US carrier, plus plenty more for around the rest of the world. There's 4 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage, although you cannot expand it. I've been getting better battery life than usual for big Android phones. This thing is easily lasting through a whole day for me with up to 7 hours of screen on time. As for the software, Essential basically did nothing to Android 7.1 here. There's a custom camera app, and the bits to enable the modules, and of course there's a setting to send diagnostics back to the company, and that's literally it. Anyway, I popped a Sprint SIM into the bottom of this thing, and sure enough, there was zero crapware. And Sprint tells me it'll be exactly the same if you buy one of these phones directly from a Sprint store, so seriously, everybody, bravo. I guess I should say that it doesn't necessarily have the fine-tuning of the Pixel, and you do miss out on some of the neat little tricks that the Galaxy can do, but whatever, I didn't miss it. There are a lot of stories you could tell about the Essential phone. You could say it's a luxury phone for people who care about something with a unique design and high-end materials. You could say it's the tip of the spear for Andy Rubin's grand plan to create the next great platform that comes after mobile. You could say it's the new harbinger of the return of modular gadgets where you can plug little things into your phone, and your TV, and your thermostat, anything else you can think of. You could say it's a phone that snuck in right before the Pixel XL2 and beat Google at its own game. If it weren't for the disappointing camera, that might have been the story that I'm telling you right here, and maybe it could be someday with a software update, but we've heard that software update story before, and it usually doesn't turn out well. So I think the most likely story for the Essential phone is that it's a phone you really want to love, but it keeps breaking your damn heart. And yeah, it's a fine screen. It's got a kajillion pixels and really good response... Okay, yeah. Okay, ready?