Gadgetory

hey guys doston a few short months ago one of the most hyped phones and 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 we 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 our price tag the foam really just didn't get off the ground nothing shows this off better than these sales figures which were reportedly less than ninety thousand 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 all for only $450 and then include some other colors that weren't available at launch including this pure white no sure when you look at this as a $700 phone there are some issues but at less than $500 and I think 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 back to phone like the iPhone 10 it really makes it look dull in comparison you do 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 the side of the phone and you'll see that it is made out of titanium now that's also something 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 grille 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 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 if this phone has been out for a while even phones like the iPhone 10 as well as the Galaxy S 9 can't quite match that super thin bezel but they also can't match the naj yes my friends the essential phone was actually first when it comes to the knotch and personally I actually like the way they do it here better than on the iPhone 10 it's just barely big enough to fit that front-facing camera and everything else has been cramped 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 s 9 as well as the s 8 and the iPhone 10 however I'm really nitpicking at this point this is a very very good display especially when you consider the price sure there are some minor things I can nitpick so the plastic that surrounds the front glass on my unit is slightly imperfect there are a couple places where it's not totally smooth and on the actual pixels themselves that come around not only the knotch 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 this is really nitpicking when you consider that this is a 4 in 50 dollar 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 a snapdragon 835 processor 4 gigabytes of RAM as well as 128 gigs of storage which is definitely helpful considering that there's no micro SD card slot as you'd expect everything is super snappy now a lot of this is thanks to essential constantly updating the phone so I was pretty good when it first came out they've consistently added updates to be able to smooth out things like the touch responsiveness as well as the scrolling speed but as you would expect it's just as fast as pretty much any other 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 newgate now yes essential has said they're working on an Oreo update and hopefully that comes out soon as of right now is a very clean build of a slightly older version of Android the good thing though is that when I say a clean build of Android I mean it there is exactly zero bloatware of any kind now there are some minor tweaks the essential is done mostly to actually support the knotch 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 knotch are still going to give you access to your notifications as well as the system info without really getting in the way kind of like using a normal phone like that it's not an oled display so while the blacks are good it isn't quite blendin over there she does a pretty good job and it's not that far off from something like the iPhone 10 as far as using an app that is not supported now one thing that's actually been very impressive the essential is 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 with straight garbage towel 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 have some decent light the photos really aren't too bad now the autofocus 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 its process it typically does look a lot better which is nice except that will 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 bit strong sometimes and like all these systems it's not going to be perfectly cutting you out from the background but it's not that far behind something like the galaxy s 9 or the iPhone 10 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 its $700 there are some legitimately really big problems the lack of waterproofing the battery life which is only okay in the camera or 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 some curious what do you guys think about the phone especially in 2018 he's gotten a lot better but let me know what you think in the comments below and I will catch you on the next one