- Hey, guys, this is Austin.
A few short months ago, one of the most
hyped phones in years was announced.
The Essential Phone promised top notch build quality,
a clean build of Android and some seriously great cameras.
However, things weren't all that they were cracked up to be.
When it went on sale, there were some serious issues.
The camera was a borderline deal breaker.
It was lacking both water resistance
as well as a headphone jack, and with a $700 price tag,
the phone really just didn't get off the ground.
Nothing shows this off better than the sales figures,
which were reportedly less than 90,000
over the first year of the Essential Phone's life.
That my friends, that's not good, however, it's 2018
and the Essential Phone has actually gotten a lot better.
The first and biggest change is the price.
You can pick up the Essential Phone
on Amazon right now for only $450.
And that includes some other colors
that weren't available at launch, including this pure white.
Now, sure, when you look at this as a $700 phone,
there are some issues, but at less than $500,
nothing even comes close to touching the build quality here.
I'll even go farther than that.
This is one of the nicest builds on any phone, period.
So with that ceramic back, especially when you put it
side by side with a glass-backed phone like the iPhone X,
it really makes it look dull in comparison.
You do lose wireless charging, but in return,
you're getting not only that look and feel
but you're also going to be getting
the extra durability of having that ceramic.
It's not going to be for everyone, but personally,
I absolutely love the way this looks and feels.
Come around to side of the phone
and you'll see that it is made of titanium.
Now that's also something that
you don't really exactly see on phones these days,
and it gives it a nice feel in the hand.
Now what's interesting is, is that while a lot of flagships
these days are going for a very rounded,
sort of curved design, this is much more chunky,
which I kind of like, you're making
the best use of space inside the phone.
That same solid feel comes around to the buttons,
which have a nice tactile click,
as well as the machining on things
like the USB-C port, as well as the speaker grill.
No, it does not have stereo speakers, and no,
it doesn't have the headphone jack,
but there's a lot to really like about the hardware
of this phone, and that's not even getting into the screen.
Come around front, and you'll find that 5.7 inch display
with some of the thinnest bezels that we've seen yet.
Now, keep in mind, this phone has been out for a while.
Even phones like the iPhone X, as well as the Galaxy S9,
can't quite match that super thin bezel,
but they also can't match the notch.
Yes, my friends, the Essential Phone was actually first
when it comes to the notch, and personally,
I actually like the way they do it here
better than on the iPhone X.
It's just barely big enough to fit that front-facing camera,
and everything else has been crammed
into the tiny little bar above it, including the status LED,
as well as your earpiece.
To be fair, the IPS panel on the Essential Phone
can't quite match up to the awesome AMOLED displays
on both the Galaxy S9 as well as the S8 and the iPhone X.
However, I'm really nitpicking at this point.
This is a very, very good display,
especially when you consider the price.
Sure, there's some minor things that I can nitpick.
So the plastic that surrounds the front glass
on my unit is slightly imperfect.
There are a couple little places
where it's not totally smoothed,
and on the actual pixels themselves they come around
not only the notch but as well as
the rounded edges on the top of the display.
You can actually see that there are individual pixels
that you can barely make out.
But this is really nitpicking,
when you consider that this is a $450 phone,
there's nothing to complain about.
Unless of course, you want a headphone jack,
in which case, sorry?
Inside, you're getting pretty standard flagship specs.
The Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM,
as well as 128GB of storage, which is definitely helpful,
considering that there's no microSD card slot.
I should expect everything is super snappy.
Now, a lot of this is thanks to Essential
constantly updating their phone.
So I was pretty good with it first came out,
they've consistently added updates to be able
to smooth out things like the touch response in this,
as well as the scrolling speed.
But as you would expect, it's just as fast
as pretty much any Android flagship at this point.
Now as far as the software side of things go,
it's good but not perfect.
The biggest issue is that it is
still running Android 7.1 Nougat.
Now, yes, Essential has said that
they're working on an Oreo update,
and hopefully that comes out soon, but as of right now,
it's a very clean build,
they slightly older version of Android.
The good thing though is that when I say
a clean build of Android, I mean it.
There's exactly zero bloatware of any kind.
Now there are some minor tweaks that Essential has done,
mostly to actually support the notch,
which is actually one of the more impressive parts.
It actually kind of works pretty well here.
Supported apps like Google Maps will flow
around the front-facing camera, essentially,
giving you that full screen experience,
and even other apps that aren't fully supported by the notch
are still going to give you access to your notifications,
as well the system info, without really getting in the way.
It's kind of like using a normal phone like that.
It's not an OLED display, so while the blacks are good,
it doesn't quite fully blend in,
although she does a pretty good job,
but it's not that far off from something like the iPhone X,
as far as using an app that is not supported.
Now one thing that's actually been very impressive
that Essential has done is update the camera.
This thing is so much better than it used to be.
With a pair of 12 megapixel cameras around back,
the hardware seems to be there, but it launched,
the Essential camera was straight garbage town.
Now, don't get me wrong, it's not exactly going
to rival the Pixel, but it has gotten
so much better than before.
Now, pretty much all that is thanks to Essential
constantly releasing updates to improve the camera.
In fact, literally the day we're shooting this,
it got another update, which not only improved
a little bit of the performance, but also added
some additional options in the camera app.
Provided that you had some decent light,
the photos really aren't too bad.
Now the auto focus is still a little bit on the slow side,
and one of the things I did notice is that while
the image might not look that great on the preview,
once you actually take a shot in this process,
it typically does look a lot better,
which is nice except that it'd be better
to know exactly what your shots going to look like
before you hit the shutter button.
The portrait mode is also pretty decent now.
I will say that the blur can be a little strong sometimes,
and like all the systems, it's not going to be perfect
at cutting you out from the background,
but it's not that far behind something
like the Galaxy S9 or the iPhone X, and again,
it is going to be much, much less expensive.
And that's really where I come down on the Essential Phone.
When it first launched at $700, there were
some legitimately really big problems.
The lack of waterproofing, the battery life,
which is only okay, and the camera were big problems.
But now that a lot of these things have been addressed,
and it's got a huge price cut, I think a lot of people would
be really happy with the Essential Phone.
So, if you want to join 90,000 other people
who have a phone that no one else has ever heard of,
the Essential Phone really is worth a look.
So I'm curious, what do you guys think about the phone?
Especially in 2018, I think it's gotten a lot better,
but let me know what you think in the comments below,
and I will catch you in the next one.