Earlier this month, the first phone by Essential was revealed.

Essential is said to be a startup owned by the co-founder of Android – Andy Rubin. With this release, the Essential phone is expected to make a huge impact in the mobile phone industry.

During the release of the phone, no names of the carriers delivering mobile and home telephone service were revealed for the partnerships with Essential. However, the latest buzz has it that Sprint is going to be the exclusive carrier for the Essential phone.

The news came into the light when Niccolo de Masi, Essential President, revealed about the agreement, mentioning Sprint as the network of the future.

Revealing the agreement with Sprint, Masi spoke with USA TODAY. “We like to bet where we think the market is going as opposed to where the market was,” he mentioned. “I feel like we are a new brand and a new consumer electronics company and we are partnering with the network of the future”, he added, referring to Sprint.

According to Essential, the decision was based on a strategic plan.

However, it’s a little hard to believe that Essential chose Sprint on purpose. It has been observed that most of the huge telecommunication companies and renowned mobile or home telephone service providers didn’t show any interests in Essential’s pitch. The reasons could be many!

First off, when it comes to relying on a new OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), the telecommunication carriers providing mobile and long distance home phone service, become quite cautious. Thus, no large carriers budged for the latest Essential phone – the PH-1.

The second reason might be that the big telecom carriers weren’t quite impressed with the pitch that Essential placed. It was thus, quite difficult for Essential to impress the carriers like Verizon and AT&T that have been playing as the lead mobile and home telephone service providers of the time, followed by T-Mobile.

Contrary to this, Sprint has lost many subscribers in the past and thus, it has been taking the newer phones on board in a hope to boost its customer count.

This is the reason that Sprint has recently become the only US carrier partner for HTC U11 and Blackberry KEYone.

The Lingering Risk

For a startup, Essential has a certain amount of risk in its future, calling Sprint its ‘Exclusive Carrier’. This might bring confusion to prospects thinking that they have to be on the Sprint network to get access to the Essential phones.

This can be a misleading statement and things might turn out the way they did when Google released Pixel with Verizon as its exclusive carrier. By far, people aren’t aware that the phone is available at the Essential store as well, like Pixel was available at the Google Store, too.

Pricing

Sprint’s pricing for the Essential phone PH-1 hasn’t been announced yet. However, at the Essential online store, one can get the phone unlocked for $699. You can also get an accessory 360 camera along with the phone, for $50 extra.

So, by far things seem a bit chaotic for Essential. It is yet to be seen if its choice for the mobile and long distance home phone service provider among the leading telecom companies will be fruitful or not.