Essential Phone now approved to work on Verizon

Essential’s debut smartphone has received approval to run on Verizon, meaning it’s now supported by all four major US carriers. Sprint was the device’s launch partner, so it of course had support, and both AT&T and T-Mobile gave tacit support ahead of the phone’s launch.

But Verizon, for some reason, said it couldn’t guarantee that the Essential Phone would work and that the phone still had to clear a certification process. Evidently it’s now done that, with Essential tweeting out this morning that the phone is now compatible with Verizon.

That all being said, this doesn’t strictly mean that much. Verizon customers have already been able to put their SIM into an Essential Phone and start using the device — it just wasn’t technically supported. Now that it’s received approval, though, there may be more consistent service. Comments on Reddit from Essential owners indicate occasional issues on Verizon, which ought to be cleared up now.

But more importantly: what took Verizon so long to approve a phone that the other big carriers had support for a month ago?