Andy Rubin says Essential Phone coming ‘in a few weeks’

There’s a new release date for the first phone from Andy Rubin’s Essential: August, with Rubin saying in an email to potential customers that the phones will start shipping “in a few weeks.”

Rubin says that the Essential Phone is now going through testing with US and international carriers and that his team is “working long hours” to get the device shipped. It’s not entirely clear why carrier certification would be that much of a hurdle, since Essential is keeping its phone exclusive to a few carriers and selling it unlocked to everyone else.

After the phone was announced in May, Rubin said it would ship within 30 days. But that date came and went, without any word from the company. It seems that development must be far enough along now that Rubin is confident enough to give yet another launch window.

Here’s the full text of Rubin’s email:

I personally wanted to thank you for putting your name down for our first phone. We’ve been hard at work getting everything ready and the good news is that we’re now going through certification and testing with multiple US and international carriers.

You might be getting impatient to get your hands on your new Essential Phone (and I’m also impatient to get it to you!) but rest assured that you will have a device in your hands in a few weeks.

In the meantime, give us a shout out using #thisisessential to show the team that sweating the details and working long hours to get this device shipped is worth it.

Andy