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Three months after being announced, the Essential Phone is now shipping to buyers

At the time of this article being published, Andy Rubin announced the Essential Phone exactly 87 days ago. Those 87 days have been far from perfect for Essential following shipment delays and executives jumping ship, but at long last, the company’s very first device, the Essential Phone, is shipping out to buyers.

Essential announced this news on its official Twitter account earlier this afternoon, and as you can see from the Tweet below, the company says that emails with a tracking number are beginning to get sent out to customers to keep tabs on the phone as it makes its way to early buyers.

No estimated delivery dates were announced, but Essential did thank its customers for being patient throughout the bumpy road over the past few weeks.

The Essential Phone is easily one of the most visually-striking phones we’ve seen so far in 2017. A large part of this is thanks to the device’s 5.7-inch 1312 x 2560 IPS display that takes up the vast majority of the front with extremely minimal bezels (save for the cutout for the front-facing camera). The Essential Phone is also made out of ceramic and titanium rather than glass and aluminum like we see on most other phones, and this allows it to be substantially more durable and resistant to unwanted scratching.

Along with the standard array of 2017 flagship-grade specs (Snapdragon 835, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage), the Essential Phone also ushers in a brand-new modular system that’s not unlike what Motorola’s been doing four a little over a year with Moto Mods. The Essential Phone’s rear-camera performance has proven to be quite underwhelming in our initial testing, but this is something that should (hopefully) be fixed before units start showing up on people’s doorsteps.

If you haven’t ordered an Essential Phone for yourself yet, you can do so through Essential’s website, Best Buy, or Amazon for $699. If you’d rather get the phone on an installment plan through a carrier rather than buying it outright, you’re unfortunately limited to Sprint for the time being.

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Avatar for Joe Maring Joe Maring

Joe has been a writer and occasional video producer for 9to5Google since July 2017. Follow him on Twitter @JoeMaring1 and send all emails to joe@9to5mac.com.


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