0:00
So here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for
0:03
From the original post that I put on Instagram and Twitter, I showed you this phone, I've gotten so many tweets
0:09
Lou, when are you gonna show us the essential phone? It's an unusual design, it's a new look, it's a new company
0:16
It's got the heritage. This company here, it's got the backing of one of the original guys behind Android as an operating system
0:24
Andy Rubin. They've come together to create this device that's a clean new look
0:29
A new take on the Android flagship. So I'm incredibly excited to have partnered with TELUS to get my hands on this device early
0:38
and that is the carrier that you will be able to exclusively buy the essential phone from if you are in Canada
0:44
So mine is the black variant, it will come in a few different colors
0:50
You can check those out on their website. And there will also be a kit version of this that will ship with a 360 camera
0:58
which clips onto the back of this device similar to the Moto Mod effect
1:04
It happens to be the world's smallest 360 camera and it just clips onto your phone so you're ready to use that footage immediately. Ooooooh
1:13
Ooooooh. That's a bit of an unboxing experience right there. It's all laid out
1:19
It's almost got an iconic appearance to it now with this cutout at the top for the front facing camera
1:25
a USB type C cable and this is a braided cable. A headphone adapter, USB type C to mini jack
1:32
Can you see the mini jack jack? A power brick also. I believe that's the most powerful brick I've ever seen with a smartphone
1:40
27 watts. This is going to be capable of giving 5 hours of juice to the device with a 5 minute charge
1:46
So that's pretty impressive. There it is. Ah. This is a nice, that's a nice phone
1:55
Whoa, it feels really luxurious. Everything is embedded. Nothing protrudes on the back
2:03
You can see the dual lens system up here, the fingerprint reader there
2:06
We have the volume up and down as well as the power slash lock switch, the sim card tray
2:13
type C connector, and the speaker as well. Now the construction here on the outside is titanium
2:19
making this probably the first titanium phone I've ever held as well
2:24
They compared it to similar aluminum phones dropped on concrete. The difference is, this one is tougher to dent
2:30
So they've used ceramic here, as well as Gorilla Glass 5. Now these two connectors up in the top right corner
2:37
that's where the magic happens with the various accessories that will be able to clip onto there
2:42
Including the 360 camera that I mentioned earlier. It clips on in this location, sits above the phone a little bit
2:48
and apparently it's the smallest 360 camera on planet Earth. Let's take a look at this display, it's a QHD display and I'm expecting a fairly slick Android experience here
3:00
We're also gonna test out this fingerprint scanner on the back, I'll add a fingerprint right now
3:07
Ooh that was fast I didn know how much I was gonna like this cutout at the top Obviously like I said that kind of the stand out way to distinguish this phone
3:17
It's got this incredible screen to body ratio. So check this out. I'll show you the speed of the fingerprint
3:25
One thing I will say, this one is so flat across the back
3:29
You're kind of like wondering for a second if you're on top of it. But it's obviously a huge step ahead of the Galaxy S8 because that one is a weirder thing to reach
3:39
It's an odd shape and the camera's in that location as you know. Not a huge fan of the implementation of the fingerprint reader on the S8
3:45
So obviously a very clean OS here also. It's basically pixel. It's basically stock
3:52
That's wild. Things actually get close to that cutout at the top. The little icon there
3:57
Okay, so for video, let's see what happens. I turn it this way. Ah
4:02
So that's how they get around the cutout issue is you actually get a bit more bezel here to grab onto
4:09
So it kind of moves it in a little bit. So I suppose that could have been a concern for people is like if that would influence your video viewing experience
4:16
But all they do is shift the video this way a little bit and then match it up on the other side
4:21
So you have a similar bezel there that you can grab. Now when it comes to these extreme screen to body ratios, you've seen what Samsung has done with the S8 and the unusual aspect ratio, and then of course it doesn't necessarily match up with the video aspect ratio
4:37
We're seeing some interesting implementations of how to consume media on these devices with these incredible screen to body ratios
4:46
I have to say, this might be my favorite haptic feedback I've ever had on a device
4:51
So here's what I was talking about regarding the drop test. The reason that titanium was used, they outline it a little bit more on their website
4:58
but there's an image here, which Jack can see there now, where they tested this device against some of the competitors with aluminum shells
5:07
Apparently, the titanium on the Essential fared better, dropping onto concrete. I suppose that's good
5:13
I mean, after all, I know so many people that drop their phones. Having a material like titanium is probably a good thing
5:19
Now another thing that I haven't mentioned but it's standing out to me right now is the fact that this device has absolutely no branding on it
5:28
Did you notice that? Look at this thing. There's not a single logo on there which is a very unusual
5:33
I don't know. It's never happened before. What am I talking about? I've never held a phone on this channel without a logo somewhere on it or some kind of writing
5:41
How did they manage that? Like you don't even have the government, you know, the serial number, the FCC
5:48
There's nothing. It's nowhere on there. This idea of not having to advertise the brand of the device that you're using
5:54
If you're somebody who's into the most simple designs possible, then, I mean, you would probably never choose to have text or branding on your device
6:03
Certainly for people in that camp, this has got to be your only choice at the moment, I would assume
6:07
Unless there's some other phone out there, but as I said, I certainly haven't seen it, and it hasn't come across this table
6:13
So this dual lens system on the back of the essential phone is apparently the world slimmest of any system like this In this case you have one that monochrome one that color and it doesn protrude at all Unlike some competitors which I sure you aware of Alright so that covers the cameras on the back but what about this guy on the front the one that getting all the attention
6:32
This is still a significant camera here. It's capable of 8 megapixel photos and 4K video
6:38
Okay, so for the usual camera test here, let's go in and snap a photo of you guys looking at me here
6:46
Boom. And then I'm gonna also test the monochrome sensor. Now the reason they've gone this route with the two lens system is to create better images in low light
6:56
There's actually more information as opposed to what Apple has done in the latest iPhone 7 plus and likely the next iPhone where one of the lenses is zoom and the other one is a more standard format
7:09
So the best way to think about it is they've gone for an emphasis on low light performance
7:14
Video mode is controlled up in this section here and you can switch between 4K, HD and 60 frames per second for fast moving stuff
7:23
I kind of want to test out the 4K mode. Okay, so low light performance, 4K video mode, you can tell it's very dark over here
7:33
Let me take a quick walk over here, this is dimly lit. So this will give you a better idea of the sensor performance in a dark environment
7:43
That's actually pretty impressive at least on the display here. As you can see there's no lights on
7:53
So a little bit more on the specs just to cover everything off. It is a 5.7 inch display at 2560 by 1312
8:01
Those two cameras on the back that I showed you earlier, they're 13 megapixels each with one being the black and white sensor
8:09
It's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM, and it comes with 128GB of internal storage
8:18
The lens on the back is f1.85, and the one on the front is f2.2
8:24
It's also got Bluetooth 5.0, and the battery is 3040mAh. Now, software, I know a lot of people were wondering when this phone was announced, what software is it going to ship with
8:35
I obviously can't speak to that since this is not available retail yet, but the version that mine has on it is 7.1.1
8:45
And in terms of the actual Android experience, it's pretty much stock
8:49
It apparently mattered to Andy Rubin a great deal that there wouldn't be any bloatware on the phone
8:54
So as you can see, it's basically a stock experience. Swipe to the left and you see Google Now
9:00
It's all very familiar and comforting, to be honest, to not see any weirdness going on
9:04
I think that aspect of the interface is going to be one of the major selling features of this particular device
9:18
Alright, so the speaker, it's one of these down firing things. You guys know, I'm not the hugest fan of that
9:24
If you could have forward facing speakers, it's going to be better. That said this type of design this whole screen to body ratio frenzy that going on right now I mean I think the days of asking for forward speakers is pretty numbered I mean you could see even with this device here they had to do a screen
9:41
cutout just for the front-facing camera imagine you had to try to jam speakers in
9:44
there that were facing front-facing it'd be tough. Alright so who is this phone for
9:48
I think Android purists are going to be really excited about this thing because
9:54
what you get out of the box is kind of Android as it was intended. No fluff, no
9:59
No extras. Hence the name Essential. Alright. But because of that. There's a few things missing on here
10:04
That you might have wanted. That are in some other devices. For example. This one here is not waterproof
10:09
And it doesn't have expandable storage. To a lot of buyers. That might not be such a big deal
10:14
But it's something that you need to know about going into this. Maybe you get a little bit back
10:18
From the durability angle. When it comes to drops. And the titanium. And the ceramic
10:23
And so on. And maybe the overall build. As a whole. Another thing to mention
10:26
regarding the screen to body ratio wars is the aspect ratio they've chosen to go with here
10:32
Of course you're probably familiar with the Galaxy S8, I made a few videos about it
10:37
and as you can tell straight away, it's got this slender aspect ratio on the screen
10:41
That's not what you're met with when it comes to the Essential. This is a lot more familiar
10:45
It doesn't roll off the edge, and certainly when you're watching video
10:49
it matches more closely to the aspect ratio you're used to with multimedia
10:54
And one thing more to mention about the expandable storage, at least with the essential phone you're coming out of the gate with 128 gigabytes
11:01
So it's not like they're giving you low storage and then you can't expand it. It's already pretty substantial to begin with
11:07
Is that a silver lining? It's a bit of a silver lining. So obviously this is a brand new device. In fact it's not even at retail yet
11:14
And it does pack a Snapdragon 835. So it only makes sense to run a couple network speed tests
11:20
I want to see what it's pulling from the cell tower. But before I do that, I'll also check it on wifi. We'll do a quick test here
11:30
Now of course this figure here is gonna be limited by your local network, the router that you're using and so on
11:36
Alright, now let's turn wifi off and we're gonna go with the LTE now
11:42
Okay, okay, okay, get after it. Go on now. So that's kind of interesting, we actually did a far better download on LTE than we even did on our WiFi
11:55
That's pretty impressive. To be clear, this test is being performed north of Toronto
12:00
We're on the Telus network right now. So there you have it. Your first look at the Essential phone
12:06
A completely new brand in the space. Obviously this is just an unboxing video
12:11
I'm gonna spend some more time with this. In fact, if you guys would like to see a comprehensive review after I've had more time to use it
12:18
let me know by leaving a thumbs up down below and I'll give you some more feedback from a daily use scenario
12:25
I'm going to pop my SIM card into here and see what it's really all about
12:29
Also, if you'd like to pre-order one of these essential phones, be sure to check out the link in the description
12:35
The details will be there so that you can be one of the first to get your hands on this device exclusively from TELUS here in Canada
