Hey @Essential Here’s How You Can Steal New Customers From Competitors

essential phone

Last week I bought an Essential Phone, from the Essential company founded by Android creator Andy Rubin. I was interested in the phone when it was first announced because it looked really well built and had a delicious bezel-less screen.

I didn’t buy the phone initially when it finally came out because I wanted to wait towards the end of the year to see what Google did with the Pixel 2. The tipping point came when Essential slashed the phone’s price from $699 to $499 about four weeks ago. Two weeks later it got slashed another $50 on Amazon and Best Buy!

Trading in your iPhone is a great way to get cash to fund your upgrade.

That was it, I had to get the phone.

https://twitter.com/jorgebarba/status/929578501685919744

It’s a beautiful phone, it’s fast and has loads of space. No complaints here.

The only problem is this:

https://twitter.com/jorgebarba/status/930189419113414656

I’ve had two Android phones before, but I had never used Whatsapp until I got the iPhone three years ago; so the whole backing up Whatsapp was new to me. Now, I’m carrying two phones everywhere I go; which is annoying and sucks.

From what I’ve researched there isn’t a straight forward way to transfer Whatsapp data from iOS to Android; I’ve tried multiple things and they haven’t worked for me.

I’ve talked to other Whatsapp users who’ve switched from iOS to Android who’ve told me they decided to give up and lose all their previous chat history; I’m not in that camp.

As I’ve thought more and more about this ordeal, and how other Whatsapp users will have the same problem, I thought this is a great opportunity for Essential to further steal attention and users away from other Android powered phones in the market by doing what others have been unwilling to do: build a mechanism to make it easy to switch from iOS to Android with Whatsapp data intact.

The hype about bezel-less screens is real, and compared to the iPhone X (which costs 2x more) the Essential Phone with a 100gb sim only plan does not disappoint. Next year bezel-less screens will be common, just like Apple removed the headphone jack last year.

So, what say you Essential?

And, please let me know if you’ve found an easy way to switch from iOS to Android with Whatsapp data intact!


Also published on Medium.