Some Essential Phone units reportedly shipped with refurbished parts

Essential Phone (PH-1) has had a mix journey so far. While it has largely received thumbs up for its design and the fact that it comes with stock Android software (which means faster updates), the company faced flack for poor camera performance of the device, something they have been improving gradually with frequent updates to the Camera app.

Plus, the handset has also already seen several price drops, which usually indicates poor sales when a device is merely six months old. A recent IDC report effectively corroborated this when it was revealed that until now under 90k units have been sold by the company in total.

But what’s now coming to light is something that you probably would never have heard of (at-least not in recent times). A person who works with Sprint has revealed that they’ve received a notification saying some Essential Phone units got shipped with refurbished parts.

I work at a Sprint location and we just got notified that apparently a small number of units shipped with refurbished parts.

Wait, what? Refurbished parts in new phones? How can that even happen? Indeed strange – even embarrassing I’d say (if true). So, what now? How’s the company planning to resolve this problem? Well, the Sprint worker says owners of affected units will get an SMS directing them to the carrier’s website for a “resolution.”

Effected units are going to get a text message directing them to a Sprint website for “resolution” – no idea what that means.

Of course, that doesn’t clear everything, like how will the company/carrier make sure owners of all affected units are successfully reached (I mean, users may have switched to some other carrier). ESN could be one route, as the whistle-blower Sprint guy says:

Well because it’s going straight to your phone I’m guessing Sprint knows which ESNs were affected and is sending the SMS to the PTN that it was registered to. That’s just a guess though, they didn’t give us any more information than that.

And more importantly, what’s the “resolution” the notification is talking about?

Well, I think this is a big issue, and Essential needs to come up with an official statement on the matter, clarifying how many units are affected, and whether or not those involve the ones purchased directly from the company itself.

We’re keeping a close watch, and will let you know once more information surfaces. Meanwhile, drop us a comment, or contact us through email if you get to know anything new related to this matter.

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