When Andy Rubin announced his company’s new phone last week it had a lot of people looking to lay down their cold hard cash with the phone still sight unseen. From what we have seen today it may be prudent to wait until we see real world reviews with a couple of images tweeted out looking less than fantastic.
Whenever we see a company leak samples of photos their new or upcoming phone has taken the photos are normally extraordinary, beyond anything that I could certainly reproduce, that is for sure. We have seen OnePlus recently leak some images taken by their upcoming OnePlus 5 and they looked very impressive. Today though we have seen images tweeted out by Essential’s President Niccolo de Masi that were fairly average to say the least. Unfortunately the tweets have now been deleted but luckily someone managed to capture the images before they were deleted:
I am not sure whether Niccolo thought they were impressive images or not but why put them out there unless you think they are impressive? The images saw a few bemused tweets in response with David Ruddock of Android Police replying with:
https://twitter.com/RDR0b11/status/871828012999876608
From the looks of these images we can only assume that the software is VERY pre-production. Google have shown with the Pixel phones just how much difference decent camera software can make to a smartphone camera. You would expect Essential to be working around the clock on the software for this phone, with it set to be released to the world in the next few weeks. As it stands at the moment, paying $700US for a phone with a camera of this quality seems a bit steep. I have no doubt there will be improvements with the camera software in the new few weeks, but these images show that there certainly needs to be.
The hardware on the built-in camera is a dual rear camera setup with 13MP Dual RGB and Mono camera with image fusion technology and 13MP True Monochrome mode. The lens is f/1.85 with hybrid auto-focus including contrast, phase detect and IR Laser Assist focus. Of course there is also an add on 3D camera that can be purchased with the phone. In more recent news Niccolo has tweeted out a quick sample of the 3D camera taken at the NBA finals yesterday. Check it out below and let us know what you think of it:
First 360 video selfie @essential https://t.co/iDUTpY30r4
— Niccolo de Masi (@NiccoloDeMasi) June 6, 2017
The moral of the story is to wait and see how a phone is IRL. Specs mean little in the grand scheme of things with software enhancements and optimisations being the king. Are you considering purchasing an Essential Phone. Have these images made you think twice or at least hold off until you see the finished product somewhere? Or is the fact that it is good looking and innovative phone with an unlockable bootloader got you ready to spend?
What about the name I hear they probably won’t be able to use Essential.
yeah. that’s not looking very promising. seems strange they went right ahead and named the company even after getting mail from Spigen’s lawyers…
There’s no way the Essential phone is going to produce images like that. Let’s just wait.
for sure but they are really going to be busy to clean up that software in only a month- Andy Rubin has said it will be available in a month..
Yes, but for all we know that image was taken using a version of software nowhere near what the final production phone will use. That’s why I think it’s better we just wait and see what they actually release to the general public. Mind you, you’d have thought Essential would’ve been quick to point out that the image was taken with an early version of the camera software (if indeed it was).
What the hell was Essential’s President thinking posting that image…