Taking... Took the Essential Phone plunge [update #1]

good plan

i use my camera too often but thats a solid phone with an attractive price

I think it looks pretty cool

Do a detailed update w/ some photos if you have the time

Check out the one plus 5T for 500.

First impressions of the phone when you open the box are great. Nice box and packaging design. The braided cables the phone comes with feel very high quality Beats my old Oneplus One for the nicest cable I've received with a phone. Also has a USB-C charger, and USB-C to headphone adapter.

When you buy this phone you will quickly find out there is not much 3rd party support for it right now. You have three options for phone cases, one by Incipio in two colors, one by a Chinese company called Tudia, and a new thin TPU one that just popped up on Amazon a couple of days ago that I haven't seen feedback on yet. There were only 2 tempered glass protector options available. I went with the IQ shield liquid install (Similar to Zag). Would prefer a tempered glass but the only prime-able glass protector has black borders on it and I prefer an all clear protector.

On to the phone. As I mentioned earlier the first impressions of the hardware is very impressive. With Bezeless designs being the new in thing I always though I didn't need bezeless. I've played with S8's, Edges, the Pixel 2 XL, etc. After the Edge I vowned never to get a curved screen again because it makes fitting a screen protector and getting a case that protects the screen a royal PITA. I think Essential absoutly hit the nail on the head with their bezeless design. The screen is gorgeous in person. I carry two phones daily, both an Android and iPhone7. The Essential gives me a screen larger than my wife's iPhone 6s plus in the package the size of my iPhone 7. After one day of using the edge to edge display I'm not sure I want to go back to something with a Bezel. The lack of edges makes one handed operation doable on even this 5.7" screen. The latest update adds a feature where you run you swipe down on the figerprint reader to pull down the notification shade so you don't even have to adjust your hand grip to pull down notifications. Feature works great and is brilliant. The phone's industrial design is IMHO perfection. Absolutely top notch quality feel as good as anything I've ever seen. Not overly thin like the Z2 Force where the phone is so thin it is almost uncomfortable to use. Thin enough to disappear in your pocket. I'm totally in love with the hardware and I'm hoping the software will be acceptable. I do wish it had a headphone jack :( As great as the LCD is I would still have preferred OLED. But for LCD it's about as good as I've seen available on the market.



As far as the phone performance I have had zero issues so far with day to day activity. All my apps I've used so far open instantly with the exception of Audible. When I first launched Audible the App opened fine. Hit the log in button and it just went to a black screen. Shut it down and opened it again and I was able to log in just fine. Audible has been buggy on my Moto X Pure (Likes to crash after a chapter is over when using GPS) so I don't know who to blame yet.

No issues with the camera so far in limited testing. Double tap power button and the camera opens right up and is ready to shoot in less than a second. Compared to my iPhone 7 and my old Moto X Pure the camera seems just as responsive and the image quality is comparable. I haven' used the new Pixel camera or any of the newest flagship cameras to compare. But compared to what I have it seems just fine so far. I'm not a big camera phone person as I use a real camera when taking important pictures.

I've read where some people complaining about the signal strength. One thing with Motorola they have always been strong with their radio technology. Side by side with my Wife's G5 Plus sitting on my kitchen counter they were both reading the exact same -112dBm.

First day of setting everything up and I had 3hr 50min of screen on time and 14 hours off the charger and had 46% battery left. Most of that was internet usage checking FFL stats, setting up the phone, etc. Battery life seems great so far. We'll see how it goes with normal usage.

At the $450 price point it gets a big thumbs up from me after the first 18 hours. I'll report back again as I use the phone more and give it more of a stress test. With Amazon's liberal Holiday return policy and the $450 price point I would definitely recommend this as a phone to try out if you are in the market for a sub $500 phone.

Solid review, thanks for posting and I look forward to your updates.


I need to replace my 3 year old Nexus6, and before it came out I strongly considered the Essential. Like you, I read the reviews and changed my mind to the Pixel2. You're making me reconsider given the price difference.

day 2 3hr55min of SoT 15 hours off charger with 43% battery left. About 30 minutes of GPS navigation, checking emails, 30 minutes of video streaming, web browsing, and 20 minutes of Pokemon Go. Phone is running smoothly with no slow downs or hickups. Found my first bug though. Last 2 days I've gotten in my car 6 times. 2 of those times the phone is connected to the bluetooth but when I play audio it wasn't coming through the speaker. Toggling BT on and off solved the issue but could get annoying having to do that too often.

I'll be checking this thread out for updates as well.

Was going to replace my Note 3 with a Note 7 last year... until that wasn't an option. Note 3 has been holding up fine till recently. Starting to get a bit glitchy now. Don't really want new Samsung, so starting to pay attention to Essential & One Plus 5t.

My mom is still using my old Note 2 She loves it. On it's 3rd battery but still going strong. Even gave her my old HTC M9. Prefered the Note.

One thing to note is edge sensitivity. I've had zero false taps so far with the edge to edge display which has been great. But when wathcing a full screen Youtube video for the first time I could not grab the little triangle at the top left corner to minimize the video. I normally tap the just above the triangle and swipe down to minimize it. It wasn't registering that tap because I was too close to the edge. If I started off the edge and swiped down it would pull down the notification shade. Took me several taps before I figured out what was going on and where I needed to touch. I imagine is there are games or other programs which require touching the extreme edge of the screen maybe it could be an issue with edge sensitivity? So far I'm happy with no false taps. I turned on the developer modes to show screen taps. 99.98% of the time this is a non issue but could spring up depending on what apps you run. With the edge to edge display I'll trade one or two occasional retaps on the screen for not having false edge taps all the time.

How is the 360 camera? When I went to order it they backed the price of the package deal back to $649. Then the day after I order so the price back down to $499. Not sure I would ever use it but I would have gotten it for just $49.