The Essential PH-2 is a long, thin bar about the length of a standard Android handset. However, it’s also significantly narrower, maybe half the width of a typical phone. 

It comes in four colours which Rubin calls "GEM Colorshift material”. These are iridescent, changing hue depending on what angle the camera catches them.

On the back, there’s a dimple which is probably a fingerprint sensor and a single large camera. A second camera is on the front, offset to the left in a punch-hole in the touchscreen.

Rubin said that there is a  new UI for a "radically different form factor”.  The touchscreen shows a series of stacked widgets of different sizes.

If this really is the next Essential phone, it will actually be something rare in the smartphone industry – something new.

Essential has been operating more stealthily in recent months after the startup’s first phone failed to make quite the splash that Rubin and others predicted.  Reports suggested the company had gone back to the drawing board on what would come next, and if this Rubin tease is anything to go by, the answer to that is something pretty weird.