The Essential Phone Gets a $200 Price Slash, Existing Users Get Credit.

The price of the Essential Phone (PH-1), is now $200 less, so $499 off-contract and unlocked. That’s a really amazing price-tag for their debut smartphone, which is my favorite in terms of it straight up industrial design and it great color-tuned displays.

The Essential Phone went on sale a few months ago, but the company believes that as a new startup in a the market where giants like Apple and Samsung basically dominate the available space, there’s a lot of benefit in word-of-mouth and perceived worth. This is the reason why it’s making this price adjustment. Though one has to wonder whether or not the company is seeing the turn-up it was hoping for in terms of initial sales, which is what some early third-party sales estimates have suggested.

Well, regardless of the purpose, this price drop makes Essential arguably the best value-for-money smartphone available on the market right now, and definitely the best Android device in that range. One major flop has been its camera, that launched as a slow and buggy feature in comparison to most other devices out there, but the subsequent camera software updates have improved its speed and reliability a lot, and also, more updates are promised to be expected in the future.

And for the existing users, it has an offer available, – they’ll get a $200 ‘friends and family’ credit they can use to further discount (valid till the 15th of December 2017) a device for a loved one (or even another for themselves, if you also want the newly-released white Essential Phone, for example), or to buy the 360-camera attachment. Existing users will be able to register to redeem the $200 credit on the Essential page, using their phone’s IMEI and serial numbers, along with the email address used to make the purchase.

In a time when the price of flagship smartphones in both iOS and Android worlds are ballooning, this is a very welcome nod to affordability. Without question, if you want an amazing phone at a killer price, the now $499 reduce-priced Essential Phone is the to go for.

However, this is available to the U.S. users only for now.

Source; TechCrunch