- The word essential
comes from the Latin essentia,
meaning absolutely necessary or extremely important.
The Essential company, whose stated goal
is to make technology easier and more accessible,
might someday qualify as extremely important,
but it's first product, the Essential Phone,
fits better into the extended definition.
The brass tacks, the bare fundamentals of a smart phone.
The result is a product at once refreshingly simple,
and frustratingly limited.
I'm Michael Fisher, and this this the Essential Phone review
brought to you by D-Brand.
If you're the type who likes to stand out from the crowd
without being too ostentatious about it,
this hardware was made for you.
It might look like just another glass slab,
but pick it up and you'll find the backplate
is actually made from ceramic,
with a luster and scratch resistance
you can't get from glass.
To me, holding the Essential Phone feels a lot
like handling a domino from an expensive set.
Some people won't like the added bulk
of it's 185 grams, but I love it.
The side buttons are deliciously clicky,
and rather than the traditional soft aluminum,
those buttons are mounted on a titanium mid plate.
This should make the phone more likely
to survive a fall than most.
A big part of the Essential Phone's standout look
is it's screen.
Which is big, even though the phone's chassis is small.
That's thanks to some super slim bezels,
and also this bizarre looking widow's peak,
which is a window for the selfie camera.
This is something I expected to be annoyed by,
every time I looked at the phone,
but I actually came to like the quirky personality
it lends to the design.
I like it so much, in fact, that when I use an app
that doesn't automatically scale to fill the whole canvas,
I get annoyed at the notch's absence.
Speaking of apps, after years of calling
for stock Android on beautiful hardware,
we've finally got it.
My review device had just 16 apps pre-loaded.
And as you might expect, it's insanely quick and responsive.
It's hard to put into words just how refreshing that is.
But, you know the old saying,
- Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
- [Michael voiceover] You see, stock Android is great.
But the upgrades that other manufacturers add on,
well, they can be great too.
Some offer shortcuts to drop the notification shade,
night modes to filter blue light after dark,
gestures to quickly trigger system functions.
You won't find any of that on the Essential Phone.
I hastened to add though that this isn't
a mark against the phone.
Because you can just install another launcher,
you can do anything you want,
you're starting from a base code of stock Android.
In fact, Essential only built one app for this thing.
The camera view finder.
I've seen a lot of tip toeing and equivocating
in other reviews when it comes to this camera,
so let me be clear about my impression.
It is not good, at least in its current form.
HDR mode does so little to enhance the dynamic range
of a shot that it seems almost broken.
But turning it on also enables the flash, for some reason.
Despite having both face detect and IR focusing,
my device regularly fails to lock on to a subject.
There's no optical stabilization,
and poor electronic stabilization,
which means videos are jumpy in even ideal circumstances.
And low-light photos are, well, just look.
Given enough light, the phone is certainly
capable of pleasant pictures,
and it's fun to enable the monochrome mode
so you can use the secondary camera for some
artsy black and whites.
But put the Essential's camera up against
a really capable one, like the Pixel's,
which, if you ask me is the closest thing
to a sibling this phone has,
and the results speak for themselves.
(light pop music)
Now, some of you are already down in the comments
accusing me of beating up on this
poor, billion dollar company, so just hang on a sec.
This camera app, which is currently so buggy
it's barely usable, is going to get fixes.
The phone has already received one update
in the time that I've had it,
and I have no doubt that another one will fix
the stability and focus problems.
I've also read that the company plans
to add a portrait mode.
I'm sure it can even improve the image quality somewhat.
I mean, Motorola did that with the first MotoX,
making what was then a terrible camera
at least serviceable.
But crucially, it didn't make that camera great.
In fact, I've never heard of a software update
transforming a mediocre camera into a terrific one.
And when you're charging this much money
for your smartphone,
camera just isn't something you can skimp on.
Factor in the lack of water-proofing
and the absence of a headphone jack,
and who's gonna buy this thing for $699?
In part, it's people who can overlook those shortcomings,
and appreciate the details.
So, let's take 60 seconds for the small stuff.
The phone ships with a very fast 27 watt charger,
and a beautiful fabric insulated USB cable
with a nice strap for coiling.
It's also got a fabric covered dongle
in the box for your headphones,
and if you'd rather bother people around you
than bother with those,
the single speaker is quite loud.
- I'm just trying to keep to the essentials, Major.
- [Michael Voiceover] Despite how high up on the edge
the ear piece is, phone calls are quite clear,
and I love that there's a notification LED
squirreled away in there too.
At a max of 500 nit, the display doesn't get quite bright
enough to be easily read on very sunny days.
I haven't gotten to try out the stick-on 360 camera yet,
which is so far the only mod in a promised
portfolio of accessories,
but I like the minimal connectors
compared to Motorola's solution.
Oh, and PSA, when you're putting your SIM in this thing,
don't stick your SIM tool in the microphone hole like I did.
Why Essential put these so close together,
I'll never know.
Finally, let's talk battery life.
3,040 milliamp hours is just a medium size these days,
but during my four day test period
the phone never died before bedtime.
Maybe the slim software load has something to do with that,
and hopefully that same svelteness will allow Essential
to deliver on it's goal of timely software updates.
As with the true battery endurance,
only time will tell.
Essential set out to make a better smartphone,
and it some ways it has.
But it seems to me that that phone
was pushed out the door before it was fully baked.
And my early encounters with customer service,
trying to get my retail unit delivered,
have evoked more memories of successful
Kickstarter campaigns trying to keep up
than world class outfits running a smooth ship.
- [Voiceover] Currently there are no agents available.
Please press one to leave a voicemail.
- [Michael Voiceover] Now, look,
I respect Essential's ambition
and it's engineering accomplishments.
And any company founded by the father of Android
is to be taken seriously.
But that company's first product,
the Essential Phone,
feels to me more like a startup's
better than expected freshman offering,
than it does the first salvo
in a coming techno revolution.
As you my have seen, it also gets fingerprinty AF.
So, D-brand sent me a bunch of vinyl skins
to stamp out the smudges and change up the look.
I tried out mahogany, marble, black carbon fiber, and dragon
but my personal favorite is the matte black,
which preserves Essential's minimalist intention.
Get your D-brand skin at the link in the description below,
and remember subscribers are essential to making
more videos just like this.
Hit that subscribe button when you visit
TheMrMobile on YouTube,
and follow me on Facebook,
where I'll share shots from that 360 camera
just as soon as it comes in.
Until next time, thanks for watching,
and stay mobile my friends.