The “too aesthetic” smartphone? - Yanko Design

Earlier today we were introduced to the Essential Phone. Andy Rubin departed from Google subsequently having "made" Android, to work on this phone and things have been pretty much under the wraps until today, when the telephone was officially unveiled… and boy, what an unveiling!

The Essential Phone looks similar one of those crazy Coroflot/Behance projects washed by some student with the screen stretching from end to terminate. Undeniably, all these crazy concepts are labeled every bit iPhone concepts for the year 2022 and and so on. Notwithstanding, the interesting bit is that the Essential Phone isn't a concept. It exists! Designed with a screen that'south hard to wrap your head effectually, the Essential Phone's front face literally has a screen wrapped around all of it! That's right. Virtually no bezel. In fact, the screen fifty-fifty comes with a pocket-sized indent, assuasive the front facing camera to sit proudly on the acme of the telephone. This is, the Essential Phone.

With the Essential Phone's rather futuristic aesthetic, we have a rather strange conundrum on our hands. Ask yourself one thing. Would you buy this telephone? I for one wouldn't, and my answer would pretty much unlock a Pandora'due south box, but let'due south leave that for after. Strangely, like I said, the Essential Phone looks too futuristic for me, and you may have noticed that products that are also futuristic, seldom take hold of on (Jog your memory… Microsoft did the tablet way before Apple tree did). Expect at the world of Concept Cars for instance. Every yr, automobile companies push themselves to release "conceptual" auto models that are good to await at, but non to own. Even though their aesthetic is admired on Facebook, reposted on Instagram, favorited on Pinterest, nosotros don't run across them as cars that would "fit" on our roads, and honestly, mayhap that's exactly the trouble with the Essential Telephone… and it's a rather fascinating problem. The telephone is fashion too aesthetic or way too groundbreaking to exist adequate.

Moreover, the phone dapples with modularity (nevertheless another tech direction that'southward way to ahead of its fourth dimension… Google ditched the Ara projection, remember?) past putting magnetic connectors on the back that allow y'all to snap a 360° camera onto the back of the phone. It also ditches the headphone jack, a move that Android isn't too bang-up on adopting. The phone volition retail at $699 afterward this year and I'one thousand interested to see if I've been proven wrong (Andy Rubin states that this phone will sell in a limited chapters due to technological constraints), but I'm more than interested on seeing if the phone's presence creates a ripple the style the telephone'south announcement has. If I'thousand right, information technology'll just get to testify that there'south a fine line between the kind of design we love to admire, and the kind of design that we dear to own. Thoughts?

Designer: Essential