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Essential Phone, available now

essential.com

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Re: Essential Phone, available now

#662
I think Andy Rubin is brilliant, but the more I read about the Essential phone and its history the more I think Rubin just got used to having a super high degree of control over his phone over the years, and doesn't feel comfortable not having a seat at the manufacturer's table anymore.

All of the attempts at differentiation seem muddled. It's upgradeable, not locked in, except the accessories use a proprietary docking system. It's high end, but that's an incredibly competitive space.

I would be shocked if this company last more than 5 years before acquisition/absorbtion.

I can imagine phones that could differentiate against Google/Apple... something super low end spec wise, that sips power and has a new OS built for speed. Maybe. I still think a Web Phone is a good idea. Maybe focus on niches like an exercise phone.

But... Any of this is extremely hard. Rubin just seems to be trying to beat Google at their own game, which I don't see going well.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#663
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an Android phone. Why do I care if the manufacturer is still there a year later?

You won't get any updates. Oh right, it makes no difference.

Really, Android updates rely on every single vendor approving/releasing it? I thought this is why lots of people/vendors ran "stock" android which is what I'd assume a "pure" android phone like Essential would do..

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#664
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Devices shouldn’t become outdated every year. They should evolve with you. I really don't understand this sentiment. I've still got my iPhone 6 Plus. I haven't seen the need to upgrade yet. It does absolutely everything I want. At this rate, the only reason I'm going to upgrade is if I destroy my phone somehow (I've yet to even put a major scratch on any of my smartphones over the years) or if a vendor comes out w…

>>I've still got my iPhone 6 Plus. Not the parent, but that's pretty new. I used a 4s earlier this year and there were several apps that couldn't be upgraded and/or stopped working.

The 6 Plus will be 3 years old in a month. The fact that its still a powerful phone, and will receive OS updates for another couple years speaks volumes about iPhone longevity vs. Android.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered that maybe you're just bad at typing on a touchscreen, and some practice could help? I can type on my iPhone without looking at it, quite quickly, the OS's autocorrect fills in for my slight inaccuracies with pretty damn good accuracy. The size a device must be to have both a keyboard and usable touchscreen puts it squarely out of the optimal solution category.

Respectfully, I've been using iPhones exclusively for ~7 years and I can still type faster on a Blackberry after using it for five minutes. I type WELL over 100 wpm on a computer keyboard, up into the 140wpm for short periods of time. I really don't think the problem is more practice.

I don't have 7 years of practice, but a few, and it is similar for me. It's not even close. For me that's absolute intuitive: Of course one types faster when having haptical feedback. Very intelligent auto-completion and typing by swipe gestures maybe could come close some day, but doing that blindly will take an enormous amount of practice time. I'm not even sure humans can learn that at all, despite what parent said.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#666
post #483

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit. > Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want. Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is c…

> The first actually open platform phone is the one that will have longevity FairPhone is trying to do that, in software, hardware and way beyond: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/

Fairphone has been pushing into the predictable headwinds, without much help from economy of scale or supportive tech partners:

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/is-it-worth-to-buy-a-fairphone...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#667
post #483

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit. > Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want. Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is c…

> The first actually open platform phone is the one that will have longevity FairPhone is trying to do that, in software, hardware and way beyond: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/

Fairphone has been pushing into the predictable headwinds, without much help from economy of scale or supportive tech partners:

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/is-it-worth-to-buy-a-fairphone...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If iCloud was your problem, it's because you weren't using an MDM. That's an OS-independent problem ;)

We use MDM (Air-Watch) and it's still a problem. If the employee uses their personal iCloud account you cannot remove it. You can unlock the device remotely via MDM but you have to have their password for their iCloud account to remove the iCloud account. You have to contact Apple and provide proof of purchase for the device to have them remove the iCloud account.

I'm aware of what happens when Activation Lock happens when personal iCloud accounts are allowed to be installed.

The issue is allowing that to happen in the first place, instead of locking it centrally. That's either a limitation in your MDM's capabilities, or its setup. ;-)

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202804

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though as a Catholic (Laudato Si, Rerum Novarum) it kills me to waste all those materials every couple of years and be part of the environmental degradation of our planet It's not your Catholicism that makes you feel bad for polluting, it's your humanity. If Pope Francis turned around and said there's no climate change and we should all have tyre bonfires for christmas, would you be on-board with that?

Well Pope Francis is not a denier, and in some sense the Church scientists are the least biased in the world, since they are beholden to no one but God. They don't need to be published or get tenure. They can go with or against both academic and political orthodoxy as they choose. So if Francis came out and said climate change is not a concern I would actually pay pretty serious attention to that. And I'm not even Ca…

> So if Francis came out and said climate change is not a concern I would actually pay pretty serious attention to that. And I'm not even Catholic.

Are you paying pretty serious attention when they claim that dinosaurs bones were sprinkled around the world by their god to test our faith?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about this phone (we'll have to wait for the teardown), but iPhone batteries are pretty easily replaceable, and you don't need to go to an Apple Store to have them replaced. I run a chain of independent repair shops and we replace iPhone batteries all day long. A press push for environmental reasons has made sure most smartphone batteries aren't glued in. Now MacBooks and Surface Books, on the other hand,…

Extracting them with a torx driver, heat gun, and an hour's labor is not the same as a swappable battery.

Very true, but we are discussing phones, and without glue on my few year old Mac book air, it was less than 10 minutes as there was no glue. Again you're right, it ain't swappable, but it was surprisingly easier than I thought when it isn't glued.
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