A long-delayed hands-on with Essential’s skinny Android phone

Rob Wainwright, a software engineer who works on the Nova Launcher, says he bought the phone on eBay, and in his video, you can see the mostly operational PH-2 with card-style widgets for apps like Spotify and Uber, along with a smartwatch-style clock at the top.

The video shows off the PH-2’s tall 5.7-inch AMOLED display with 2,160 by 560 resolution and a holepunch camera in the front, while the rear has a protruding camera and a non-functional fingerprint reader. Like the PH-1, this one is also a fingerprint magnet.

While the UI is not fully complete, the video shows off the custom Android launcher that has swipe-up gestures on the bottom corners to go home or back. Many of the cards on the homescreen are essentially just web apps that, when opened, look very out of place — a YouTube video looks like a postage stamp sideways on the top, and the rest of the screen is just the description, comments, and other suggested videos.