I don’t know who the target market is, but a phone like that is going to evoke all sorts of mildly crass jokes. “Is that an Essential phone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”
Maybe they hope to get people using it as a remote in the home media setup? But then why would you work on a maps app?
It’s confusing to me why they’re spending money they don’t have to make a product that seems unlikely to appeal to the average user… Unless it runs on AA batteries? 
I would call it a candy bar phone – interesting too, I envision a future version with a moveable lens on the back to double as a mid range camera and a dual boot with a limited version of Android for the essential features.
I don’t know… I think it’s refreshing to see experimentation this way with different form-factors. Nokia had some weird form factors in the early 1990s with circular phones, leaf-shaped phones etc. They were all really the same phone running Symbian which made it very easy for them to play around with different form factors. It’s probably the same for Essential - the hardware is essentially the same so not difficult to try different form factors; Android will support different form factors now. The biggest expense is probably getting the non-standard shape of screen.
Yes and the market share is still good for smaller shaped phones. Even better with flexible screens.
I can’t imagine this will work out well for Essential. Who really wants to use a very tall, skinny phone? Just doesn’t make a whole lotta sense.
I wonder how apps will scale to the aspect ratio? Remember when the iPad was first introduced, and there were no apps, so you would run iPhone apps with the black bars on the sides, or blown up and grainy? This however does not seem like the kind of device to gain a big enough following for developers to write for it.