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Yeah the website is a total mess. First visual I see is a picture of Andy Rubin (???). Anyway, AFAICT, it's an android phone made from titanium and has some cool looking attachments.
Is there enough money in $750 Android phones like this? I would imagine this is a commodified market.
Full screen has already been done by Samsung and Apple is likely to be releasing a full screen iPhone 8/X/? around September. And most people use cases so the titanium isn't that compelling. Accessories typically just use Bluetooth to communicate so that isn't much of a USP either.
I think they're selling a new Android phone, plus some accessories like a 360 camera, but the site makes it seem like the 360 camera is the main product.
It's literally the same concept as Apple's Mac Pro website, and there's a picture of a phone you haven't seen before when you open it. How obvious does it need to be?
Ok, a new phone made by the creator of Android which claims to be extremely well built.
However, since most phones now tend to reach the "good enough" level, my main question is about software and left unanswered. What version/flavour of Android does it run? How will updates be planned? For how many years will updates be provided? What's the size of the security team at Essential?
Providing an up-to-date Android with updates for at least 4 years like Apple does is key to me, as vulnerabilities come and go and the only reasonable way to be secure is to get security patches asap.
Totally agree with this - this is what Android OEMs, including Google, don't seem to understand. For all we know this guy has the attention span of a fly and will go off and do something else in 6 months.
I hope they offer a Windows 10 option in the future. Full Windows 10 on ARM with x86 Win32 emulation offers capability not available on Android or iOS. Being able to run Win32 software on the device would be very useful for a lot of people.
It's hard to see any manufacturer seriously revisiting the Windows story on mobile platforms. It has died a couple of times already, and for a casual observer it looks like Microsoft is more committed to Android+iOS story now too.
Yes, but the big difference this time around is that it's the same Windows as on the desktop with the ability to run desktop software. You get mobile plus desktop on the one device which is something Microsoft's better positioned to deliver on than either Google or Apple. And because of that Microsoft will finally start succeeding on mobile.
That was the story with Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 too, and it never happened. Believe me, I bought into the ecosystem and was a true believer. And it never happened.
But again, the difference is that it's full Windows 10 on ARM with x86 Win32 emulation. You can take your 32-bit Windows x86 software and run it with no changes needed if you want to. You don't have to buy into any new ecosystem because there is no new ecosystem.
The x86 desktop application support is for the desktop use case. For a phone you'd plug it into a dock and use it as a desktop or into a laptop shell and use it like a laptop. Like this for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNzatcI9Fqw
I was under the impression that they start with Android and sorta roll their own OS from there on out. At least, that's what I would do if I were bold enough to start a new hardware company with the likes of Apple controlling the sector.
Software and hardware each built with the other in mind is how Apple is able to support updates for 4 years after you buy your iPhone. Manufacturers who use Android aren't able to do so because the two aren't coupled.
Hopefully Essential does it right and take full ownership of their OS. That would be a real game changer.
I used to think the same about being "good enough", but unfortunately my nexus 5x still struggles to give me a day of battery life, despite the fact that I only check e-mail and chat on it.
It's slowness is a little annoying, but definitely good enough.
I don't have battery problems with my 5x. If I'm not using mine much, it will last two days on a charge. Sounds to me like you may want to consider replacing your battery. A $5-10 new battery and ~15 minutes of your time, may be worth it.
If you get more apps (even if you don't always use them), those apps are allowed to drain all your battery. I'm pretty sure that's not the case on iOS.
(No, nothing is in my notification tray or scheduled.)
Did not work in Firefox for me, despite allowing all scripts to run. Plus, as a subjective note, I perceived it overall too designy, i.e. more focus on the "coolness" than the information itself.
Huh? Works for me (FF 53 on Arch Linux). I have uMatrix set to allow only first-party JS by default, but they play nice and serve all JS from the same domain (essential.com)
I still find the website overdesigned, of course, but the technical execution worked perfectly for me.
It killed Safari on my MacBook Air. Chrome seemed to perform a bit better. I almost gave up on the website before find a browser that played well with it.
(a) It is one of the worst abuses of parallax scrolling. Everything is moving about in a chaotic, flickering fashion with far too many sections. And you have text blocks always covering the images.
(b) It is showing four products on the one page. Four. And seemingly jumping between them.
(c) Almost all of the text is very hard to read. It's light grey on dark grey. Dark grey on light grey.
Absolutely no offense, I want to see the works of people who does this kind of comments all the time. I mean, I'm really curious what they are doing. I liked the the design of this website, but when I saw your comments it made sense, but still, I want to see what do you like or did.
My main gripe is that in general, I don't think it puts the user first. It's flashy for the sake of it and I find it a terrible user experience. This is certainly subjective, but it's not helping my impression of the product which I now associate with an ideal that is trying to show how clever the designers are but not really put an excellent sublime user experience in my hands (which is what I think they were shooting for. This is all completely subjective, but they are my impressions none the less.
The site "works" on my laptop, but not really on my phone - I'm not a fan of the overly flashy animation intro, again subjective.
I work on a small screen (12.5 inch) - here's my narrative as I load the site - the entire screen is taken up with a menu bar and a picture of the top of a device. I'm not sure what is on offer at first glance. Scrolling down there's a lovely story to draw me in by the founder, but still no mention of what the "thing" he is trying to sell is.
The first mention on the page of any product is "accessories" - so they sell accessories for phones I guess.....I scroll back up - aaaaah one of the menu items is "phone" - maybe they are selling a phone.
That was my user experience on my laptop. On my phone I was greeted with a black screen for quite a few seconds and then a website that was slow and dithering. I tried clicking through to a few sub pages but they froze and then broke my back button completely. Granted it's an old, slow barely internet enabled mobile with a not very well supported OS. Still, it's very seldom I don't get a reasonable experience on well coded websites.
Battery is rather small for Android these days. There's nothing about this phone that would tempt me to trade in my iPhone 7 for this - or any other Android phone for that matter
Interesting. So he's started a new company to focus on products that have "play well with others" as a design concept.
I like the idea he's promoting with the phone where all the accessories either magnetically connect or a wireless connection. I hate having to purchase the same things over and over again.
Who cares if the casing is scratch resistant titantium? That case is not the limiting factor for hardware longevity, the non-removal non-user-servicable battery is.
There also seems to be a new smart home device in the making, just click on the right icon in the header. Not sure if that's actually new or if I just misclicked...
Seems like a great idea in a space that needs more competition. Apple has a monopoly on designing complete user experiences using technology and I'm tired of it. Can't wait to see where this takes us.
And Essential is going to change that and get more market share than Samsung or even Apple?
Please.
There are tons of great choices of Android high-end devices available from Google itself, from LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, htc, even from OnePlus, you name it. Good to have onemore choice with Essential now.
This is the first paragraph that shows up when seeing the site in mobile safari:
> I know people are going to ask me a lot of questions about why I started this company. Why didn’t I just travel the world, ride my motorcycle, tinker with my robots, hang out at my bakery with friends and family. And to be honest I still do ask myself that sometimes…but not too often.
1. Maybe I'm not geeky enough, but I don't know who you are
2. I don't care who you are
3. What are you selling? A phone?
4. Oh screw this, I don't care enough to read past that pompous nonsense...
And, just to make doubly sure there's no chance anyone will know WTF this is all about, let's present it all using an illegible (but no doubt extremely hipster) grey text on a grey background website design!
Of course you got downvoted for telling the truth. Essential seems to be in pre-launch and Rubin is one helluva competitive advantage who early adopters will know about.
Yeah, this didn't make sense to me. It's the most important real-estate on the page, and not only is he humble-bragging, but he's instilling some doubt into his commitment to the project. "And to be honest I still do ask myself that sometimes.."
It's also so informal and personal that it made me think that what followed was going to be kind of a blog entry, or a simple and static announcement page, not what was actually a pretty compelling product walkthrough.
But then at the end I scrolled back to the top, and was like, was this actually effective? It doesn't read like marketing speech, and I did end up reading the entire page. Maybe they know something that I don't? But it still seems so misplaced among all of the obvious craftsmanship that went into the rest of the page.
>Jokes aside, if you don't know who he is you probably don't need a smartphone.
Wow, how incredibly dismissive and insulting. There's estimated to be something like 2 billion smartphone users globally. Sorry that some of us aren't as cool/hip/in touch as you to know the name of one (admittedly important) person involved in their development.
> Jokes aside, if you don't know who he is you probably don't need a smartphone.
Do you know who Nils Bohlin was? If not, I guess you don't need three point seat belts in your car. Maybe I'm being facetious, but this seems to me about as on point as your comment – which is to say not at all.
Of course I can enjoy the benefits of a smartphone, even need them, regardless of whether or not I know who someone is.
the home hub looks interesting, but it seems the main selling point is it can work with other devices? so does it mean I can do things like asking Alexa to stream my itunes library on chromecast?
They seem to avoid mentioning the version of Android they are running - the specs only say "Android".
I'd like to be exited about this, but this uncertainty combined with the fact that their security personnel is a team of dogs[1] makes it quite hard for me.
Wow. For a platform that struggles with security, listing a security team entirely composed of dogs comes across as the equivalent of "I drive better drunk!". One has to wonder whether it was intended as a joke or as a dismissal, and in both cases it evidences an alarming attitude towards a very serious problem.
EDIT: If there were humans on that team in addition to the dogs, I'd not be nearly so upset.
Well professionally I'd like a human photo. If this were a shy photo, I would hope for not a cute puppy photo, but a human animated icon. There is a bit I called professional prsentation vs being cute, but this is a startup and it's someone else's company.
Moreover, their whole website is not accessible when JavaScript is blocked, leaving the impression that security-minded people are not their target audience at all - which is really a pity!
What does it matter? If a website for a new router only supported Internet Explorer, I definitely would know either I'm not their target market, or they know nothing about that market, or they don't care.
I would argue that the percentage of people who care about websites working with JavaScript disabled is so low that no hardware company considers them a target market
I wasn't saying that no JS support is hurting them. I was objecting to the notion that them being separate teams is relevant. It's perfectly reasonable to judge a product by how it is marketed.
Not sure there is an issue here... I think it's just a joke about 'physical security' of the premises.
Most team pages I've seen don't specifically identify people working on infosec aspects of the product. That could be an attack vector if you're really being paranoid.
That's a myth. If someone were to attack your infosec engineers physically or virtually you need to build your company from the moon because only nation states and the 1% richest would be able to afford the ride there. If someone were to do social engineering well it will be done, regardless of title. :)
No seriously I bet you this is just a blunt humor attempt. Someone thought it was cute. Those who prefer to remain hidden from camera just don't want to be seen on the Internet. I probably should go on LinkedIn and look for someone with security title working for this conpany, I might be right.
I already said it, social engineering will work regardless whether someone hides their identity. Government knows who works for who. IRS is a good source, so this is a myth that hiding photo can save someone's security. No it is a false sense of security. When I said it's a myth it's satirical
The less information available about the infosec and (more importantly) the sys admins the better.
Nation states are like any organization. They are resource and time constrained. If you set the bar high you will eliminate the low hanging fruit adversaries. Force them to put the work in... Plus if you show them you are very careful and watching everything you will force them to be extra careful, as not to tip off any surveillance, which expends more resources.
Whether or not they can actually be anonymous is not the ultimate goal. That would require a lot of work and attention to detail. But you can still do some basic stuff to make the lives of hackers hard.
That's false sense of security you and many have. It takes very little time for nation states to identify who works for XYZ company.
If what you suggested is the right practice, then why is Google Zero Project members a public thing? A lot of them are publicly known. If infosec people are vulnerable, isn't your building security guard vulnerable? We got tens of thousands of hackers attending DefCon, Blackhats, and other security events every years and shouldn't we be worried? We got some of the most respected hackers and security engineers on planets attending them. How do you think government (FBI) recruited an anonymous hacker to work for them? Aren't your network engineers not vulnerable? Let's not kid ourselves with this ridiculous and quite frankly stupid obfuscation. If people are easy to fall for social engineering, let's find a solution that address the problem. Your impression of hidhing behind the curtain is basically the sterotype of hackers in basement. History has taught us the only famous computer programmer yet to be revealed is the creator(s) of Bitcoin. We don't knod if any nation states know who created Bitcoin. Otherwise, the government has pretty good hand in finding people. Resource constraint is a joke. If government wants to hack into Verizon they would have the resource assigned.
Sorry to be harsh but this is again false sense of security. Most startups would have developers have access to production so developers are just as vulnerable as infosec folks. Then why reveal the rest of the team? That counters your argument malicious actors would have a harder time to social engineer. So let's really not pretend we are doing better without revealing infosec because that's just nonsense in practice unless you are working on a project that may have serious retialation such as defeating Wanna worm then I understand masking your identity.
> It takes very little time for nation states to identify who works for XYZ company.
If it requires a person to spend time researching non-open source intelligence avenues then I disagree.
The point is by not doing something a company can gain something. That's not a big ask for the marketing team not to mention names in any public interface.
It's easy to assume that 'nation state' surveillance means that a sophisticated person will hunt down a piece of information. But that's actually quite a resource intensive request.
Quickly finding someones name on publicly available resources and adding it to a list is on quite a different level than having a hacker/trained person hunt down a hidden piece of information that must be triangulated from other disparate pieces of information. And I say this having spent quite a bit of time doxxing people for fun myself - it's a time intensive activity regardless if it was ultimately easy to do. The less information available the much hard it is to do.
But it is a pretty much a lost argument here because (1) developers aren't shielded, (2) developers are as vulnerable to social engineering as any infosec (but probably even more vulnerable if said infosec workers are very careful). The issue is the effort is neligible in a manhunt. For non-nation state actors like you and I, sure, it takes a huge effort. But if you don't everyone, then there is very little gain from hiding only people in infosec. In my experience, a lot of developers have production access. Compliance do not care if developers have access or not, auditors only care about if approval is in place and audit report can be produced without tampering. Also, in many enterprise, infosec often don't have access to actual production, they are just managing incident response process. Therefore, it is not usual to see massive social engineering, because it only takes one victim. Even if said victim has no access to most of the data, a breach in network is already a gold mine.
Also, you probably are familiar, sites like LinkedIn can be a great source for getting list of employees, and guessing company email is usually takes some effort once the attacker figures out the naming convention of email addresses.
Anyway, partial information is just as bad as full disclosure when the unhidden secrets are just as useful as the hidden one. So we either hide everything or we don't hide anything.
That's a myth. If someone were to attack your infosec engineers physically or virtually you need to build your company from the moon because only nation states and the 1% richest would be able to afford the ride there.
Marketing person: "I think it'll be cute to add our pets to the about page!"
Employees with dogs: "Aww! It'll be so cute to add our dogs! Let's give them fun titles!"
Most people: "So cute! Look honey, they have a picture of a dog named 'Cosmo' that's their 'Head of Security'! Haha!"
Hacker News: "This is an affront to the serious nature of computer security and an insult! I am shocked that a startup would make such an attempt at 'humor' when the OS they use does not have 100% perfect security and our privacy and digital security is being threatened daily by the men in black. I will never buy this product!!!!!11"
Situation: There are 0 people and 2 dogs listed as the security department on a platform where security has long been a metaphorical joke and is now evidently a literal joke.
HN: What's the big deal?
Most people: It's a little creepy that everyone knows everything about me, and the identity theft epidemic kinda sucks. Not much I can do other than keep an eye on the accounts, chase down fraud as it happens, self-censor, and pray I don't get hit with ransomeware. I have other battles to fight, so I hope the tech industry has my 6 on this one.
The About page lists a fairly large number of engineers, some of whom who no doubt have responsibilities involving security. But Essential is not Android, and nor are they Google, so they have a much smaller subset of security concerns to deal with as a handset maker.
I like the idea of tougher phones, but to me it misses the mark to talk about the titanium phone case surviving corner drop tests, it's the glass that's the problem.
The number of people I've seen wandering around with cracked phone screens from drops is quite high, and is the reason I put a case which covers the front on every phone I buy.
So having no phone case here just means you get the usual after market screen protectors and risk of cracked glass that most other phones suffer from.
My intuition says that it's very difficult to get a phone to impact glass-first and that 99% of all drops are going to see it dance on the corners, if only for an invisible fraction of a second, before flopping/sliding down on the glass. My intuition also says that those corner impacts are going to be a much greater threat to the hardened glass than the final face-first flop/slide.
The universe doesn't necessarily obey my intuition, of course, but since it differs quite dramatically from yours I thought I'd mention that there's an alternative model of the problem which supports the actions Essential Products is taking.
The glass cracks from a corner drop because the aluminum flexes and/or deforms much more than the glass, effectively focusing the force onto a small part of the glass's edge, which is the weakest part due to the hardening. Increasing stiffness and decreasing deformation spreads the force out across the edge, multiplying the effective strength.
There's a reason why cracks almost always seem to start at the edges. In the most severe cases of direct impact of the face on a sharp/hard protrusion, you get a radial crack pattern, but by my estimation those are a tiny minority.
Not sure we're differing that much. My point was that the titanium shell they're providing doesn't (to me) remove the need for a case as they're saying it does.
Any drop which damages the glass of a phone is a problem. A phone with a cracked screen is at the very least damaged and potentially entirely unusuable.
My point was that they're addressing something which isn't the weak point in the system. Aluminium might scuff, but that's generally just a cosmetic issue. If a phone manufacturer wants a phone which doesn't require a case, they need to address the glass problem.
My point was that by addressing the corner problem they are addressing the glass problem because glass breaks primarily due to poorly diffused corner impacts, not face impacts.
I thought the same thing, and you'll notice they don't show the glass side of the phone in the drop test video or in the "after" photo. Given the edge-to-edge design I would be very worried about that.
It uses Gorilla glass 5 which is the more resilient commercial glass ever made for a phone. And the titanium case gives it significant rigidity. So this should be one tough bastard!
For what it's worth, my Rhino Shield "crash guard" case [0] has saved several iPhones from multiple waist-high drops onto concrete. Shock transfer into the screen simply does not seem to be an issue.
It doesn't cover the front, it just extends a few mm in front of the screen to prevent "flat front" impact. It's still susceptible to smashing the screen on a corner, but how often does someone really drop their phone screen-first on the corner of a stair?
Because I have owned several, and none of them have broken despite several impacts on hard ground. Meanwhile the iPhones of my friends and family have not been so lucky in other cases (that aren't massive Otterbox cases). Small sample size, but relatively controlled experiment.
I think a lot of luck is involved. I have regularly dropped iPhone's from chest height to concrete and the only time I had any screen damage was when there happened to be a tiny stone where the phone landed. Not that cases can't make a difference but iPhones are pretty durable nowadays.
I had a Otterbox but hated its bulk, so I stopped using it after a year. Then I cracked two screens in a year from waist-drops. For the last year I got one of those minimal silicone cases [0] and it has surrived a few more similar drops without cracking. Might be luck, but just that tiny bit of padding seems to be enough.
I've had a couple Android phones that had pretty bad cracks on the display. My partner always purchases iPhones and they seem about the same, in terms of damage when there's no case. Having handled both, the phones do seem roughly similar in terms of flex and hardness (Apple, Samsung, Motorola).
My data is entirely anecdotal, but they seem about the same to me.
I like the idea of tougher phones, but to me it misses the mark to talk about the titanium phone case surviving corner drop tests, it's the glass that's the problem.
There are good rugged phones that don't need a case. Caterpillar (yes, the bulldozer maker) has a phone brand.[1] Kyocera and Samsung make rugged phones, as do some smaller players. Also, the web site for this new phone doesn't mention MIL-STD-810G testing, which is the usual standard for rugged portable devices. (For that, it's OK if the case gets scuffed, but the thing has to work after the drop testing. The parent article seems more concerned with the appearance than the functionality.)
Those phones look really intriguing to me. I feel no need to keep up with the latest flagships—I just want a phone that is good enough, as long as the camera is decent.
If Fairphone produces a phone with USB-C charging and sells it in the United States, I'm sold.
Yeah, going out of your way to make sure everyone knows that your phone is just a communications tool is a louder expression of your personality than a bright pink Hello Kitty case IMO.
That's totally why I have a phone with a simple black case. It's not because I went with the most pragmatic case in a color that matched the phone, but because I secretly want to be a special ops ninja, but because of dress code requirements, I'm only able to put my phone in a tuxedo.
There are very good reasons that aluminum is the best option for a mobile phone, rather than titanium. The most important is environmental. Aluminum is more abundant than titanium, it is easier and friendlier to extract/process. It can be recycled (very important!) and it is cheaper. Aluminum also has much better technical qualities. It is much lighter weight and easier to machine. It is softer, which means the casing will absorb most of the force from an impact when you drop your phone. And as others have pointed out; your screen or battery will break long before the structural casing. I have personally never been bothered with scratches on the casing of my iPhone. I'm much more worried about the overall environmental impact of the device.
Of the 8 reasons you listed why Al is allegedly superior, 7 are reasons that it's actually the lower-grade product and the 8th (drop resistance) is simply incorrect. To a first approximation, overall acceleration doesn't kill glass or batteries, it's the uneven application of force that kills them. I'd imagine that increasing the rigidity of the frame improves drop resistance a great deal.
Are you trying to argue that being cheaper, lighter weight and recyclable makes aluminum a worse choice for a mass produced mobile device? Are you insane?
"We want to make a device that plays well with others, so here's our new proprietary expansion port!"
Even better, it uses 60GHz wireless to get data across the fraction-of-an-inch gap between the phone and the accessory. That should be a fun one for battery life.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] threadIs there enough money in $750 Android phones like this? I would imagine this is a commodified market.
> the casing is made out of titanium rather than aluminium -- the makers claim this is more resistant to drop damage.
> there are hole-clip attachments near the camera for peripherals (Notably the "360 camera" that they are also selling)
> There are no logos on the phone
I'm not sure if I've missed anything
The phone part of the site didn't show anything for me.
I didn't see mention of a camera!
To be fair, all phones look basically the same. Not saying that there aren't differences, but most phones are difficult to tell apart at first glance.
It is not at all obvious what the webpage wants to tell me.
However, since most phones now tend to reach the "good enough" level, my main question is about software and left unanswered. What version/flavour of Android does it run? How will updates be planned? For how many years will updates be provided? What's the size of the security team at Essential?
Providing an up-to-date Android with updates for at least 4 years like Apple does is key to me, as vulnerabilities come and go and the only reasonable way to be secure is to get security patches asap.
I hope they offer a Windows 10 option in the future. Full Windows 10 on ARM with x86 Win32 emulation offers capability not available on Android or iOS. Being able to run Win32 software on the device would be very useful for a lot of people.
Here's a demo video they released at the start of the year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U
Also, it simply doesn't make sense when seen through a buisnessman's perspective.
Has been said so many times before.
I've heard this joke before, but go on..
Phone software is so radically different to desktop software that attempting to target the same program to them both makes both worse.
Software and hardware each built with the other in mind is how Apple is able to support updates for 4 years after you buy your iPhone. Manufacturers who use Android aren't able to do so because the two aren't coupled.
Hopefully Essential does it right and take full ownership of their OS. That would be a real game changer.
It's slowness is a little annoying, but definitely good enough.
(No, nothing is in my notification tray or scheduled.)
I still find the website overdesigned, of course, but the technical execution worked perfectly for me.
(b) It is showing four products on the one page. Four. And seemingly jumping between them.
(c) Almost all of the text is very hard to read. It's light grey on dark grey. Dark grey on light grey.
(d) It doesn't even render at all on Safari/OSX.
The site "works" on my laptop, but not really on my phone - I'm not a fan of the overly flashy animation intro, again subjective.
I work on a small screen (12.5 inch) - here's my narrative as I load the site - the entire screen is taken up with a menu bar and a picture of the top of a device. I'm not sure what is on offer at first glance. Scrolling down there's a lovely story to draw me in by the founder, but still no mention of what the "thing" he is trying to sell is.
The first mention on the page of any product is "accessories" - so they sell accessories for phones I guess.....I scroll back up - aaaaah one of the menu items is "phone" - maybe they are selling a phone.
That was my user experience on my laptop. On my phone I was greeted with a black screen for quite a few seconds and then a website that was slow and dithering. I tried clicking through to a few sub pages but they froze and then broke my back button completely. Granted it's an old, slow barely internet enabled mobile with a not very well supported OS. Still, it's very seldom I don't get a reasonable experience on well coded websites.
I like the idea he's promoting with the phone where all the accessories either magnetically connect or a wireless connection. I hate having to purchase the same things over and over again.
For me it's just another expensive android phone with expensive addons. Is the "docking station" really nothing more than a quick charger?
Why do they call themselves essential?
Please.
There are tons of great choices of Android high-end devices available from Google itself, from LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, htc, even from OnePlus, you name it. Good to have onemore choice with Essential now.
There is a reason why iOS feels buttery smooth compared to any phone running Android.
With that said, have you used a modern Android recently?
Only if you're measuring by profit/revenue.
If you're measuring by actual high-end features delivered, and customer satisfaction, then No!, the high-end smartphone market is very competitive
> I know people are going to ask me a lot of questions about why I started this company. Why didn’t I just travel the world, ride my motorcycle, tinker with my robots, hang out at my bakery with friends and family. And to be honest I still do ask myself that sometimes…but not too often.
1. Maybe I'm not geeky enough, but I don't know who you are
2. I don't care who you are
3. What are you selling? A phone?
4. Oh screw this, I don't care enough to read past that pompous nonsense...
Oh well.
And, just to make doubly sure there's no chance anyone will know WTF this is all about, let's present it all using an illegible (but no doubt extremely hipster) grey text on a grey background website design!
It filled its purpose of filtering those that are further on the adoption curve away
If not, can I suggest ignorantbragg? How about zippbrag? Maybe whaowhatwhenbrag?
It's also so informal and personal that it made me think that what followed was going to be kind of a blog entry, or a simple and static announcement page, not what was actually a pretty compelling product walkthrough.
But then at the end I scrolled back to the top, and was like, was this actually effective? It doesn't read like marketing speech, and I did end up reading the entire page. Maybe they know something that I don't? But it still seems so misplaced among all of the obvious craftsmanship that went into the rest of the page.
You might not know that he created Android, but surely you must know that he created the sidekick??
Jokes aside, if you don't know who he is you probably don't need a smartphone.
Wow, how incredibly dismissive and insulting. There's estimated to be something like 2 billion smartphone users globally. Sorry that some of us aren't as cool/hip/in touch as you to know the name of one (admittedly important) person involved in their development.
Do you know who Nils Bohlin was? If not, I guess you don't need three point seat belts in your car. Maybe I'm being facetious, but this seems to me about as on point as your comment – which is to say not at all.
Of course I can enjoy the benefits of a smartphone, even need them, regardless of whether or not I know who someone is.
the home hub looks interesting, but it seems the main selling point is it can work with other devices? so does it mean I can do things like asking Alexa to stream my itunes library on chromecast?
I'd like to be exited about this, but this uncertainty combined with the fact that their security personnel is a team of dogs[1] makes it quite hard for me.
[1]https://www.essential.com/about
EDIT: If there were humans on that team in addition to the dogs, I'd not be nearly so upset.
Still, the optics aren't good.
It still works on Chrome but you never know what the next firmware upgrade brings...
https://support.essential.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008012428...
Most team pages I've seen don't specifically identify people working on infosec aspects of the product. That could be an attack vector if you're really being paranoid.
No seriously I bet you this is just a blunt humor attempt. Someone thought it was cute. Those who prefer to remain hidden from camera just don't want to be seen on the Internet. I probably should go on LinkedIn and look for someone with security title working for this conpany, I might be right.
Nation states are like any organization. They are resource and time constrained. If you set the bar high you will eliminate the low hanging fruit adversaries. Force them to put the work in... Plus if you show them you are very careful and watching everything you will force them to be extra careful, as not to tip off any surveillance, which expends more resources.
Whether or not they can actually be anonymous is not the ultimate goal. That would require a lot of work and attention to detail. But you can still do some basic stuff to make the lives of hackers hard.
If what you suggested is the right practice, then why is Google Zero Project members a public thing? A lot of them are publicly known. If infosec people are vulnerable, isn't your building security guard vulnerable? We got tens of thousands of hackers attending DefCon, Blackhats, and other security events every years and shouldn't we be worried? We got some of the most respected hackers and security engineers on planets attending them. How do you think government (FBI) recruited an anonymous hacker to work for them? Aren't your network engineers not vulnerable? Let's not kid ourselves with this ridiculous and quite frankly stupid obfuscation. If people are easy to fall for social engineering, let's find a solution that address the problem. Your impression of hidhing behind the curtain is basically the sterotype of hackers in basement. History has taught us the only famous computer programmer yet to be revealed is the creator(s) of Bitcoin. We don't knod if any nation states know who created Bitcoin. Otherwise, the government has pretty good hand in finding people. Resource constraint is a joke. If government wants to hack into Verizon they would have the resource assigned.
Sorry to be harsh but this is again false sense of security. Most startups would have developers have access to production so developers are just as vulnerable as infosec folks. Then why reveal the rest of the team? That counters your argument malicious actors would have a harder time to social engineer. So let's really not pretend we are doing better without revealing infosec because that's just nonsense in practice unless you are working on a project that may have serious retialation such as defeating Wanna worm then I understand masking your identity.
If it requires a person to spend time researching non-open source intelligence avenues then I disagree.
The point is by not doing something a company can gain something. That's not a big ask for the marketing team not to mention names in any public interface.
It's easy to assume that 'nation state' surveillance means that a sophisticated person will hunt down a piece of information. But that's actually quite a resource intensive request.
Quickly finding someones name on publicly available resources and adding it to a list is on quite a different level than having a hacker/trained person hunt down a hidden piece of information that must be triangulated from other disparate pieces of information. And I say this having spent quite a bit of time doxxing people for fun myself - it's a time intensive activity regardless if it was ultimately easy to do. The less information available the much hard it is to do.
Also, you probably are familiar, sites like LinkedIn can be a great source for getting list of employees, and guessing company email is usually takes some effort once the attacker figures out the naming convention of email addresses.
Anyway, partial information is just as bad as full disclosure when the unhidden secrets are just as useful as the hidden one. So we either hide everything or we don't hide anything.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ghcq-targets-engin...
Employees with dogs: "Aww! It'll be so cute to add our dogs! Let's give them fun titles!"
Most people: "So cute! Look honey, they have a picture of a dog named 'Cosmo' that's their 'Head of Security'! Haha!"
Hacker News: "This is an affront to the serious nature of computer security and an insult! I am shocked that a startup would make such an attempt at 'humor' when the OS they use does not have 100% perfect security and our privacy and digital security is being threatened daily by the men in black. I will never buy this product!!!!!11"
HN: What's the big deal?
Most people: It's a little creepy that everyone knows everything about me, and the identity theft epidemic kinda sucks. Not much I can do other than keep an eye on the accounts, chase down fraud as it happens, self-censor, and pray I don't get hit with ransomeware. I have other battles to fight, so I hope the tech industry has my 6 on this one.
and it seems to be buggy with no webgl? using chromium under linux I get "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'getExtension' of null"
The number of people I've seen wandering around with cracked phone screens from drops is quite high, and is the reason I put a case which covers the front on every phone I buy.
So having no phone case here just means you get the usual after market screen protectors and risk of cracked glass that most other phones suffer from.
Apart from major damage I care much less about damage to the shell than I care about damage to the glass
But their drop test conveniently misses that
Drop it face down and we'll talk
The universe doesn't necessarily obey my intuition, of course, but since it differs quite dramatically from yours I thought I'd mention that there's an alternative model of the problem which supports the actions Essential Products is taking.
Toughening the corners doesn't seem to help that.
There's a reason why cracks almost always seem to start at the edges. In the most severe cases of direct impact of the face on a sharp/hard protrusion, you get a radial crack pattern, but by my estimation those are a tiny minority.
Any drop which damages the glass of a phone is a problem. A phone with a cracked screen is at the very least damaged and potentially entirely unusuable.
My point was that they're addressing something which isn't the weak point in the system. Aluminium might scuff, but that's generally just a cosmetic issue. If a phone manufacturer wants a phone which doesn't require a case, they need to address the glass problem.
It doesn't cover the front, it just extends a few mm in front of the screen to prevent "flat front" impact. It's still susceptible to smashing the screen on a corner, but how often does someone really drop their phone screen-first on the corner of a stair?
0: https://rhinoshield.io/
How do you know that?
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HFNP0OQ/
Fwiw, this is called "the spider app" among the younger.
Breaking your screen is called "installing" (the spider app)
Is there a reason Android phones don't shatter as easily? Is it the elasticity of the plastic frame that causes this?
My data is entirely anecdotal, but they seem about the same to me.
There are good rugged phones that don't need a case. Caterpillar (yes, the bulldozer maker) has a phone brand.[1] Kyocera and Samsung make rugged phones, as do some smaller players. Also, the web site for this new phone doesn't mention MIL-STD-810G testing, which is the usual standard for rugged portable devices. (For that, it's OK if the case gets scuffed, but the thing has to work after the drop testing. The parent article seems more concerned with the appearance than the functionality.)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8
Just no. It's just a tool that I use to communicate.
If Fairphone produces a phone with USB-C charging and sells it in the United States, I'm sold.
And your treatment of your smartphone as such is a public expression of who you are and what you stand for ;)
My gf says I'm the worst geek she's ever known since I use a nearly 7 year old PC, 4 year old laptop and a 4 year old trashed phone.
So if my phone is an expression of anything it's that I don't replace things that still work.
Don't worry, they won't sell many of these phones.
Even better, it uses 60GHz wireless to get data across the fraction-of-an-inch gap between the phone and the accessory. That should be a fun one for battery life.
you are better off with Xiaomi Mi Mix running Lineage OS than this joke
People are disappointed, they had probably expected another miracle from andy, that's all.