The Next Essential Phone Looks More Like A TV Remote Than A Smartphone & It's Just Weird

It's been a while since we heard from Essential, Android co-founder Andy Rubin's smartphone company. The Essential phone entered the market with a blast, but it quickly went under the shadows for various inevitable reasons.

After all this time, we finally heard from the company today, and it looks like they're launching a new smartphone very soon. But honestly, their new phone doesn't really look like a phone. Just look at it -

If you think it looks more like a TV remote than a smartphone, then you're not alone. It does indeed look like a highly sophisticated touchscreen TV remote. It's one of the most unusual form factors that we've seen in a while for a smartphone.

Essential is calling it 'ProjectGEM' for now. So we don't have an official name for it yet, but we think it'll be called the Essential Phone 2. As you can see, it comes in a bunch of colors. Andy Rubin says it uses a color shift material. So depending on how the light hits it, it'll look different. Also, the UI, as you can see, is different from what we've seen on any other phone.

It seems to have a lot of widgets on the homescreen, that can be tapped and expanded into a fullscreen app. We're not entirely sure about the user experience on this new form factor, but it'll be interesting to see how it works.

Essential says the phone is in its early testing phase and they'll share more info very soon. As of now, the only thing we know about the phone is that it has a very weird design, a camera at the back with a huge bump, and it comes in a bunch of colours. Well, let's see what Essential is cooking for us.

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Photo: © Essential (Main Image)

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