Not so long ago we told you Andy Rubin’s upcoming high-end smartphone loses the support of SoftBank which cited a conflict of interest.
However, as we explained to you previously this setback doesn’t necessarily spell doom and gloom for Rubin’s project dubbed Essential. Actually the project is apparently very close to being funded. And this week we get even more reason to believe as, as Andy Rubin has posted a teaser image which gives us a glimpse of the upcoming handset.
Like previous rumors have indicated, it’s pretty obvious from the image that Rubin’s upcoming Essential smartphone will be a bezeless affair a la Xiaomi Mi MIX. And given the icons visible on the screen, it’s quite possible the handset will be launched into the wild with Android onboard – although we can’t be 100% of this aspect just yet.
This theory is corroborated by the fact that not so long ago, a device named Essential FIH-PMI showed up in Geekbench revealing a Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM and Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. Apart from that, we’ve been hearing that the high-end smartphone meant to take on the Google Pixel and Apple iPhone, will feature modular add-ons similar to Moto Z’s Moto Mods line, which will add extra functionality to the phone.
It seems to us as this point that Andy Rubin’s smartphone is indeed happening, although we don’t know when we might finally get to see it on the market. It’s probably going to launch by the end of this year. Hopefully.
Google, do this for Pixel 2/3 please! (Bezel)