Every year, the multi-million worth tech giants, in Samsung, Apple, and Huawei, introduce the world to their latest fleet of flagship smartphones, boasting about the hardware and some of the features their phones have on board. And while these phones gain a lot of traction among the average Jacks and Joes of people, these tech marvels don’t necessarily float the boat of the geeky critiques—it’s a natural progression that newer models will continue to improve and fill the voids of their predecessors. Apart from the eye-watering price tag these phones have, their manufacturers don’t really care about those who love to tweak their phones and develop interesting projects for them. And when Google wielded an ax in the Nexus lineup, there weren’t many choices left for these people other than OnePlus, a (sort of) fresh start-up company at that time. However, I think there is one brand that escaped through the nets that many have unfairly given their cold shoulders: Essential.
In all fairness, Essential didn’t do well enough to convince their customers to shell out $700 of their own surely hard-earned dollars while trying to appeal to the average consumer. You might be thinking, what makes me consider the Essential PH-1 a good deal to the tech-enthusiasts. Well, in my opinion, three things single-handedly saved this phone from being buried away into the grounds: it got better, it got cheaper and it’s got one of the most active developer communities covering its back.
It’s got better, much better
Let’s get straight to the main reasons this phone didn’t justify its price at launch. The camera at first was mediocre at best. Daylight photos were fine, like pretty much on any modern flagship smartphone these days. But once the clouds fill the skies, things start to become a bit underwhelming. Photos came out lacking dynamic range (though shooting in monochrome mode didn’t suffer from that issue). And once the sun goes down, the camera performance takes a nosedive. Not only that, the default camera app was laughable and lacked core features like Auto HDR mode.
Software updates are usually the light at the end of the tunnel that people look forward to, especially when the hardware is not lacking. This phone has two 13MP sensors onboard—one is a conventional RGB sensor and the other is a monochrome one—with a wider aperture of f/1.85 and both phase-detection and laser-assisted autofocus. It’s true, we have never heard a software update transforming a mediocre camera into a great one. But in this case, software updates have indeed massively improved the experience. The camera app has been polished and the post-processing has got much better. It’s not like the Essential’s camera can rival the latest Pixel or Samsung’s camera (more on that later), but now you can take decent photos with the stock camera app.
Next on the list is the touch sensitivity. Unfortunately, this issue was related to the screen hardware the company decided to use. Surprisingly, this didn’t stop the company from trying its best at solving this problem through software updates. Android Pie on this phone has made things much smoother and significantly improved the touch issues. I wouldn’t say it is as good as the touch sensitivity of my previous OnePlus 6. But, in my opinion, at least, it is much more comparable now. I would put it slightly ahead of the OnePlus 3 and 3T.
It’s got cheaper
A few months down the road, Essential decided to slash the price of its offering from $700 to $500 permanently. And if you were on the lookout for a new Essential phone on Amazon, you could get one for even less than that. Well, this changes everything in the equation. And it’s not like you are buying a phone with an uninspiring design either. This phone has got a ceramic back with a titanium frame all around its sides. Apple could take some notes here.
On the front, it has got an LCD screen with (almost) QHD resolution. Despite not being an OLED display, it has a very good contrast ratio with decent viewing angles. It’s not the brightest display under sunlight, but it gets the job done. I definitely appreciate the resolution bump over the screen of the OnePlus 6 I used to have. Apart from the cyclops-looking notch, it has some of the slimmest top and side bezels. And while it has a chin at the bottom, it actually helps with the ergonomics, especially when reaching the very bottom end of the display with your thumb. It also features one of the most tactile buttons on its sides while not being too thin and stiff. It just boggles the mind that you could get that craftsmanship marvel for a shy of $500 brand new. And if you are on the lookout on eBay or Amazon, you can get one for half of that in mint condition.
It’s got one of the best developer communities
While the company may have not been around for that long, it has gained the attention of many developers already. Custom ROM enthusiasts will be spoilt for choice after unlocking their device’s bootloader. Also, Gcam now fully supports the Essential phone too, thanks to this super active developer community. This means that you can take photos like these on the Essential phone and not settle for the default camera app. Thanks to the HDR+ processing, photos come out sharp with plenty of detail and excellent dynamic range. And if shooting in low light is your cup of tea, Night Sight will never fail you.
Another hallmark of having an active developer community is the sheer number of ROMs available to choose from. It’s often argued that custom ROMs can only bring marginal improvements to the table in terms of battery life and performance. With the Essential phone, however, this seems far from the case. To put things into perspective, I used to average around 4 to 6 hours of screen-on time over my usual 16-18 hour work day before getting back home. That battery life is very consistent on the stock ROM the phone shipped with. The performance was quite decent as well, save for a few occasional frame drops here and there. These stats don’t put me out of the comfort zone, though this can be attributed in part to the fast charging brick that’s shipped with the device (cough, cough… Apple… cough, cough). However, if I was to hit the road to the pub at the end of the day I can never take the phone out with without topping it up for half an hour first. To be quite honest, this is what I expected from a measly 3040 mAh juicer powering a 5.7” QHD screen.
After taking a quick look through the XDA forum, I decided to flash one of the custom ROMs—LiquidRemix was my choice—and see how my experience would differ. From the get-go, the difference was night and day. There was a massive, jaw-dropping boost in both battery life and performance. Over my usual workday, I am averaging around 6 to 7 hours of screen-on time consistently. Sometimes, I would reach 8 hours of screen-on time too. To say battery life has been improved is a massive understatement. This ROM has transformed the phone’s battery from barely making it to the midnight to sparing enough juice to pull through a night shift.
Such massive battery life gains often come at the cost of the performance, where some developers choose to cap the CPU to a lower frequency than its rated maximum frequency. Others may take more elaborate measures by influencing the way the CPU manages the tasks at hand. And I am glad to report that this couldn’t be more wrong. Not only did the ROM retain the decent performance of the default software the phone ships with, it actually managed to eliminate most of the performance hiccups, if not all of them. Gone are the occasional frame drops and the slightly stuttering scrolling in the social media apps. Not to mention the tons of customization you can get on this ROM. The Essential phone is one of the few phones that are substantially more enjoyable to use with a custom ROM installed. I would dare to say it carries some of the Nexus DNA in this regard.
There are however a few quirks…
My experience with the Essential phone has been quite enjoyable, to say the least, more so than my experience with the OnePlus 6. In fact, there are some areas where the Essential phone had the edge over the OnePlus 6. Ironically, RAM management has been one of these areas where the OnePlus 6 fell short, despite having twice the RAM at its disposal. There are, however, a few niggles that are worth mentioning.
Let’s start with one of the most annoying design decisions the company has made, and that is ditching the headphone jack. To me, this seems like a big contradiction to the company’s main slogan of sticking to the essentials. Fortunately, the phone ships with a dongle in the box (cough cough…Apple…cough cough) to make things easier. But still, there is no getting away from the fact that this thing is incredibly easy to lose if you use a lot of wired headphones and other accessories. I might have made the transition and hopped onto the bandwagon of wireless headphones and speakers for the most part. I still have a modest speaker system around though and, unfortunately, losing the dongle would pretty much deem it useless unless I buy another one. On the upside of things, music sounds quite clean and is loud enough to fill the room without any significant distortion when plugged into the sub-woofer via that dongle.
Next up on the list is the earpiece. To their credit, Essential has done some very clever engineering to tuck the earpiece in that thin slit along the top edge above the camera notch, along with the usual array of sensors and an RGB notification LED. This allowed the company to minimize the screen bezels to the absolute minimum on the top of the phone. Unfortunately, that design choice seems to have compromised on the quality of the sound coming from that earpiece; it sounds loud enough but lacks detail and fidelity, which makes the caller’s sound a bit less discernible. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to be the case for the caller. In fact, everyone I have called reported that they can hear me much better now. It’s not what I would call totally unbearable, but it is significant enough to mention it.
Last but not least, what may have annoyed me the most while using the phone is the ordeal of unlocking the bootloader I had to go through. For starters, I had a very hard time getting the laptop to properly recognize the phone when connected, even after installing the appropriate drivers on Essential’s website. And after setting up Minimal ADB & Fastboot from the scratch (for some reason, Google’s official package didn’t work), I discovered that the usual “fastboot oem unlock” doesn’t work. Instead, I had to type “fastboot flashing unlock” to commence the bootloader unlocking procedure. Afterward, I was greeted with a grim dialogue that said “no command” on the screen.
I was forced to format the phone via fastboot manually, after force rebooting into the bootloader mode, before eventually flashing TWRP recovery and formatting my phone via TWRP. Long story short, unlocking the bootloader of this phone was not smooth sailing, unlike unlocking the bootloader of the OnePlus devices.
The Verdict
Apart from the few annoyances that I mentioned above, I still think this phone has been unfairly overlooked by the reviewers. My transition from the OnePlus 6 to the Essential phone was more of an unexpected turn of events than a planned switch. Nonetheless, I can comfortably say that this is a switch I can never regret, even if the spec sheet suggests otherwise. Speaking as a custom ROM enthusiast and even so as an average user, the Essential phone might be one of the underrated smartphones in the past couple of years. And if the incredibly quick update policy is anything to go by, it can only suggest that the company hasn’t thrown the towel just yet.
