The
Essential Phone is the first phone to come out of Android co-creator Andy Rubin's new company. His quest is simple (but not easy) — build a flagship-grade smartphone, which gives users all the essential basics with no additional bloat and needless bells and whistles on top. Allow a window for innovation to stay open through a special magnetic connector for additional modules.
It's a cool phone, sure, but it launched at the ambitious price of $699. For a first product that is only noticed by us smartphone geeks, that's rather risque. Talking about actually launching — the phone took its sweet time between announcement, pre-orders, and actual shipping. All of those factors made the Essential Phone... not very popular. Just 4 months after launch, it's already down to $450 over at amazon — quite a bargain, really.
Then, we have the
OnePlus 5T — a phone with humble beginnings. Its ancestor — the
OnePlus One was the first “flagship killer”, with its top-tier hardware, and mind-boggling $300 price-tag. The company has grown since and so has its pricing. Its latest warrior, the OnePlus 5T, starts at $499. So, it's actually more expensive than the Essential Phone — who would've seen that one coming, right?
With all that said — which of these two phones would you rather buy, considering they are only $50 apart?
Things that are NOT allowed: