The Essential Phone is official:

I dunno if TMo has begun to test 700 MHz in my neck of the woods. (11/30/2018 is supposedly when the TV station will final vacate that channel - only major city in the US without TMo 700 MHz right now.)

This week it seems like my phone is dropping signal to zero when it didn't use to. Argh... Maybe I'll get an iPhone XR or OnePlus 6T... Or maybe I'll get in on Sprint's 1 yr free BYOD plan... Wait, Sprint???
 
CHANG3D said:
I dunno if TMo has begun to test 700 MHz in my neck of the woods. (11/30/2018 is supposedly when the TV station will final vacate that channel - only major city in the US without TMo 700 MHz right now.)

This week it seems like my phone is dropping signal to zero when it didn't use to. Argh... Maybe I'll get an iPhone XR or OnePlus 6T... Or maybe I'll get in on Sprint's 1 yr free BYOD plan... Wait, Sprint???
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Well, I just redid my Essential from scratch last night. Periodically, the calls would not come through and the app sounds would not make a noises until I would reboot my phone. (I am using Mint Mobile which is a NVMO using T Mobiles stuff.)
 
CHANG3D said:
I dunno if TMo has begun to test 700 MHz in my neck of the woods. (11/30/2018 is supposedly when the TV station will final vacate that channel - only major city in the US without TMo 700 MHz right now.)

This week it seems like my phone is dropping signal to zero when it didn't use to. Argh... Maybe I'll get an iPhone XR or OnePlus 6T... Or maybe I'll get in on Sprint's 1 yr free BYOD plan... Wait, Sprint???
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Been thinking about moving my wife to the sprint byod myself. Way too good of a deal to pass up. If it sucks, at least you aren’t out anything.
 
I bought an Essential when Amazon had the Halo Grey version for around $240. Unfortunately five weeks later and in the middle of a vacation in Vegas the camera freaked out and a third of one side of every picture was completely out of focus. Thankfully Amazon went ahead and took it back even though I was outside of the normal return period. I loved everything about that phone but since they didn't have that color in stock anymore I couldn't do an exchange.
 
AltTabbins said:
Been thinking about moving my wife to the sprint byod myself. Way too good of a deal to pass up. If it sucks, at least you aren’t out anything.
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I'd be interested to see if they grandfather all those plans when T-Mobile buys them. T-Mobile has much better coverage where I live than Sprint but unfortunately neither one is anywhere near as good as AT&T and Verizon. I ran the essential phone on Verizon and it works fine after I played around with the HD voice options. Prior to that I couldn't make phone calls.
 
kirbyrj said:
I'd be interested to see if they grandfather all those plans when T-Mobile buys them. T-Mobile has much better coverage where I live than Sprint but unfortunately neither one is anywhere near as good as AT&T and Verizon. I ran the essential phone on Verizon and it works fine after I played around with the HD voice options. Prior to that I couldn't make phone calls.
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Well, so far, my phone has been working quite well on Mint Mobile. (T Mobile towers.) No visual voice mail and wifi calling can sometimes cause problems though. That said, on a different note, I installed the Google Camera APK and it is much better than the Essential phone one. Specifically, no more blurry photos when taking pictures of up close objects.
 
Using Night Sight on Tolyan009 mod is pretty amazing. I decided to load that on my old phone yesterday. It's like Google has decided to make "Hollywood OS" into reality... Not "Enhance and zoom," but I got a feeling Google will make that happen sooner or later. Haha! I have to pinch myself for spending like $220 on getting this phone. But the iPhone XR will remain my daily driver due to cellular reception issues of the Essential.
 
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The 3.5mm HiFi audio attachment is available now. It's $150... If it was $50, I might get one. But that's $100 too expensive for essentially a dead device... All puns intended
 
CHANG3D said:
The 3.5mm HiFi audio attachment is available now. It's $150... If it was $50, I might get one. But that's $100 too expensive for essentially a dead device... All puns intended
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That’s a laughable price. No thanks, I paid $225 for my Essential Phone and this attachment is almost the cost of what I paid.
 
I paid $110 for my LG V20 which is better in pretty much every respect including audio out of the box, geez. I saw the price for that adapter yesterday at $149 and laughed for 5 minutes, seriously.

Apparently the fact that they failed with the Essential Phone was lost on them so they figured the final parting shot would be to price that adapter so insanely high that people would basically just laugh at it which is exactly what's happening. :eek::D:LOL:
 
CHANG3D said:
The 3.5mm HiFi audio attachment is available now. It's $150... If it was $50, I might get one. But that's $100 too expensive for essentially a dead device... All puns intended
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This thing has to be a joke. It's really just another dongle.
 
$150 could buy you an audiophile DAP, or as Tiberian suggested, an LG V20.

That attachment better have downright eargasmic quality and unanimous praise on Head-Fi even when driving extremely demanding headphones for the price - which it probably won't, because there's only so much that you can do with a tiny amplifier like that.
 
exlink said:
Essential Phone PH-1 will no longer be restocked at Essential and several other retailers. Essential is shifting their resources to support the existing user base with speedy updates, and the development of their next mobile product.
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Probably a good idea at this point -- I can't imagine that too many people are still buying the initial phone when it's 16 months old, even with the price cuts. As a startup it can likely afford to spend a bit of money regrouping for the next device.
 
Interesting, I like my EP1, but hope there is a second round. I also hope Alphabet pulls their head out of their nether regions and lets stock Android be the best version again. Segmenting the best stuff to the Pixel if against everything they originally stood for. But then again, that was when the HQ had the famous quote up on the wall...
 
DWolvin said:
Interesting, I like my EP1, but hope there is a second round. I also hope Alphabet pulls their head out of their nether regions and lets stock Android be the best version again. Segmenting the best stuff to the Pixel if against everything they originally stood for. But then again, that was when the HQ had the famous quote up on the wall...
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Current rumors are that Essential is working on a heavily AI driven phone. I've read that the AI would even be used to navigate the phone and execute tasks/functions. I'm not a fan of the idea, but maybe it'll turn out to be something innovative.
 
exlink said:
Current rumors are that Essential is working on a heavily AI driven phone. I've read that the AI would even be used to navigate the phone and execute tasks/functions. I'm not a fan of the idea, but maybe it'll turn out to be something innovative.
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In other words, they're saying Essential's trying to have Bixby on steroids for their next phone?
 
NamelessPFG said:
In other words, they're saying Essential's trying to have Bixby on steroids for their next phone?
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Mind you, just about any other AI assistant is Bixby on steroids, so that's not saying too much! I do hope Essential has some real know-how, though, and isn't just throwing in a few automated functions. Oh, and that it implements a genuinely good camera app with a quality camera to match.
 
Aurelius said:
Mind you, just about any other AI assistant is Bixby on steroids, so that's not saying too much! I do hope Essential has some real know-how, though, and isn't just throwing in a few automated functions. Oh, and that it implements a genuinely good camera app with a quality camera to match.
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Well, I don't hear about Google Assistant being able to navigate through apps and function as a voice-activated Tasker alternative with queued macros, like the Samsung enthusiasts will gladly tout about Bixby.

It's that particular navigation and task execution that led me to make the Bixby comparison specifically. That's why people like it.

Of course, I'm sure a lot of them leave the actual Q&A to Google Assistant, when they need to know something. It just apparently can't control phone functions and apps to the same degree. Maybe that's changed with updates and new Android versions, who knows.
 
The battery life is Outstanding on this phone. I got it from BestBuy last week. Paying $8 a month for 24 months. Had to do it. So far so good with everything with this phone. I'm coming from the LG G5.
 
Daang! Less that $200 for one? That's a nice haul imho.

Side note, I somehow disabled the double click the power for camera, anyone know where that is?
 
This is the year the smartphone gets weird. Reminds me of the early 2000s when the Razr revolutionized things and the industry blitzed to try and have the next cool phone. None of them had any success, and I expect the exact same with this new batch of weird phones this year. Folding phones, skinny phones, wrap around screens, it all lacks substance.
 
AltTabbins said:
This is the year the smartphone gets weird. Reminds me of the early 2000s when the Razr revolutionized things and the industry blitzed to try and have the next cool phone. None of them had any success, and I expected the same with this new batch. Folding phones, skinny phones, wrap around screens, it all lacks substance.
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It’s likely because there is an inverse relationship between price and innovation now with smartphones. Phones are becoming exponentially more expensive yet are less and less innovative each year. People are holding onto their phones longer now as a result.

Companies are trying to kickstart the next big thing when it comes to smartphones with all these “outside the box” designs so they can justify the price. It’ll likely be the folding tablet phones but those are probably 2-3 years out before most of the kinks with them are worked out. Samsung rushed out the Galaxy Fold to be first on the market and we saw what happened there. Even the revised model is very prone to damage from regular use compared to modern smartphones which is bad news for a $2K phone.
 
Until they can make a folding glass phone, I'll never buy one. I have grown too accustomed to glass to go back to using a plastic screen.
 
Cool looking remote control. I’m guessing this phone will be more phone and controller than phone and mini computer. I don’t know if this form factor is made just for Japan or something. Japanese people still uses them candy bar and flip phones.
 
It might be interesting if each little square is a separate app, or you can maybe use two of them to show a 'normal' app on a small screen... Not going to hold my breath for it to be great, but then again I think I can get another year out of the PH1.

Oh- just in case, the 'double click power for camera' is under system/gestures/jump to camera
 
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