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Essential PH-1

ShawnC13
Oracle
Oracle

More to follow!!!  It just arrived and doing some updates.  So excited first Android phone so will be asking for tips and tricks from the Android users

 


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44 REPLIES 44

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Some updates:

 

February security patches in the form of OTA update NMK24B is out for Telus.

 

Android Oreo 8.1 beta is out for those of you who are on Oreo 8.0 Beta 3. Should show up as an OTA update. Sideloading of 8.1 beta not out yet.

 

Essential Camera app has been updated with some useful features such as grid, auto HDR, etc. Best update to the camera app I've seen since I bought the phone.

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@stonechucker

 

One other thing I forgot to mention is that if you order the phone online from Telus, they ship via Canada Post. So that being said, make sure when they deliver it at around noon you are home or have somebody sign for it. Otherwise, you will have to wait another 24 hours before you can pick it up.

 

Yes, I have no patience... especially when getting new tech toys...

Thanks for the tips!  I'm  not concerned about the camera, as I have DSLR from Nikon that I love - simple phone camera I picked up before I went to Mexico .. but very easy to use 🙂

 

It's a value phone for me, because it meets or exceeds the specs I'm looking for, and it's now reasonably priced at $460+taxes.

 

The 4 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage are both huge, compared to my Nexus 5. 

 

I saw a review where someone said the 5.7" screen is massive, and they compared it to the Nexus 5.  It's halarious when I hear that, because people were tellnig me my N5 was a phablet, when everyone else was carrying the iPhone4s and iPhone5.

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@ckl good tip about the firmware updates.  Thanks for sharing that, and your impressions.  

 

About the phone being slippery:  just about every phone these days is somewhere between quite slippery and extremely slippery, since they all seem to have glass or smooth metal backs--I guess the Titanium backing of the ph-one falls into that category as well.  It's pretty hard to buy a phone these days that doens't need a skin or case to avoid repeated hand dropping or sliding off of surfaces.


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ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@stonechucker

 

I've been playing around with this phone for about a week or so. It's a good phone for $460. What determines value depends on what you want in a smartphone. I will tell you that if you want your smartphone to take SLR level professional photos, skip this one. The stock camera app doesn't even have a panorama mode. But, the photos that it produces are pretty decent for a smartphone. You can install the Google Camera app from xda to alleviate some of these problems tho.

 

I've noticed that the top grill, which has a recessed edge, collects a lot of lint in your pocket. This is where the notification LED, proximity sensor, and speaker are. So I find you have to blow it out once in a while. Also, prior to putting on my dbrand skin, the phone is super slippery.

 

I love the reversible ucb type c port. No more orienting the plug before plugging it in.

 

Other than that, you can't find a better priced phone that gives you 128GB storage, 4GB ram and a no bezel QHD display.

 

One tip is that if you get your phone, do not install the PM sim until ALL updates are done. The initial setup will ask you to put it in, but skip it. If you put it in when it tells you, you will not get all the updates. I made this mistake and it would not update with January's release so somebody said to put in another carrier's sim (for me I just put the knowroaming sim in there), and within a second the update showed up. (You can put in the sim without turning off or rebooting).

 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@stonechucker yeah when the PH-1 is so affordable, there's no point in sticking with a failing device--it's definitely a no-brainer.  Unfortunately a price drop for the 5T is unlikely, based on OnePlus' past behaviour.  Instead of using LG's MO and bringing the phone out at a very high price and gradually decreasing it due to slow sales, they tend to price their models "right" from the start and hold steady.  

 

I still *prefer* the 5T, but had the PH-1 been $460 when I ordered my 5T, it would have been a much tougher decision.  I really don't think you're going to be disappointed.


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@srlawren, you're right, I do still like the OnePlus 5T, however, cost of the device is still out of my reach at this time, and seeing the now new price on the Essential ... it's almost a no brainer.

 

It's gotten to the point with my current device that I'm very worried it's going to fail to the point I can't recover it.  I've already setup my call forwarding to get around the calls / messages not being recieved.  But my power button still flakes out, and forces boot loops 😞

 

Grrrr..... if only the OnePlus 5T price would drop LOL!!!!

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@stonechucker yeah great value eh?  I know you were considering a OnePlus 5T, but in all honest, I don't know that it's $200 (6/64 config) to $270 (8/128 config) better than the PH-1!  The PH-1, at $460 outright, is an amazing value for the $ for sure.  


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Got back to reading this thread as Telus has dropped the price again on the Essential.  $460 no term pricing, or $0 on a 2 year $75 monthly.

 

I am seriously  considering this device.  Friday might see a new phone in my hands (payday).

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@srlawrenYes. Very happy! Also, this is my first phone with a non-removable battery and no expandable storage (although 128GB is a lot). We'll see how this works out in the future...

 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

Nice review, @ckl!  Thanks for sharing!  Sounds like you're fairly happy overall with the PH-ONE?  Software-wise, it's pretty much the polar opposite to your G3--99% stock Android vs. much more customized LG flavour.  Also being so much newer, it should be noticably zippier.  

 

You're right that the battery life improvement could be partly due to the decreased capacity on the G3 battery over the years.  That said, the Snapdragon 835 in your PH-1 is a 10nm SoC vs the 28nm Snapdragon 801 in your G3, and it's leaps and bounds better in terms of efficiency.  Likely many of the other components are more power efficient than their predecssors too, and the much lighter skin should take less horsepower to drive than LG's, again leading to bettery battery life overall.


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ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

My phone just arrived from Telus.

 

My initial impressions of the PH-1 is that it is smaller than my previous phone, but the screen size is pretty much the same. It feels different in my hands when compared to the G3... solid and heavier would be an accurate description. It's also narrower but longer and just a bit thinner.

 

After a few updates, I downloaded the google & essential camera apps with portait modes. I can say without a doubt that although there has been complaints about the camera quality, it is still better at taking pictures than the G3. Sometimes with the G3, I would get slightly out of focus pictures only noticeable when you zoom in 100%. With the PH-1, I have not yet gotten one that is as bad. In terms of quality, I can't really say anything about that except it's good enough for my purposes. Portait mode pictures are a neat trick and a good addition to any smartphone camera app.

 

Since I've never had a phone with a fingerprint sensor on it (except for the Life One X2 which is my wife's), I found that the one on the PH-1 is fast and accurate. Personally, having the sensor on the back, as opposed to the front, makes more sense to me because I've found with the One X2, after you unlock the phone, you have to readjust your grip to use it. Having it at the back, you're in your normal grip already, you just need to move a finger. By the time I've taken the phone out of my pocket and put my finger on the sensor, it's already unlocked when I see it.

 

I read some things in this thread about MS Launcher, so I tried it. Eventually, I went back to Nova Launcher simply because MS Launcher doesn't support the Essential screen's odd resolution. You will notice it because there is a permanent black bar going across the top exactly the height of the camera notch. Nova and Essential's own launcher does not have this issue.

 

Anyway, after a day of use, I noticed a few things. This phone has LTE-A. The notification bar shows LTE+. A speedtest confirmed 160Mbps download and 46Mbps upload. G3 maxed out at around 80Mbps download and 60Mbps upload. Speedtest also confirms that on average, wifi speeds are faster. My G3, at home with 150Mbps Internet service, would max out at around 118Mbps on a good day but average about 100Mbps. The Essential phone would sometimes max out at 170Mbps but then slow down to around 120Mbps average. Not sure why this happens. For reference, my wired desktop computer would get 170Mbps everytime.

 

Signal strength on the PM/Telus network is about the same as the G3. Doesn't seem to me like it has reception issues as some have observed on the Internet.

 

Even though the Essential phone has the same size battery as the G3 (3000mAh), I already notice it has way better battery life. Maybe the G3 battery is old and on it's way out, but it is simply amazing at this point.

 

One of the biggest annoyances with my G3 has been resolved with the PH-1. I used Android Auto daily, and evertime I plug in the G3, it pops up an annoying permissions message asking me to allow access for which I have to unlock the phone and allow. Maybe this was a feature of Android in version 6 or something that LG added, but now with the PH-1, I just plug it in and launches AA immediately without any fuss.

 

There is one utility from LG that the Essential phone does not have though. It is the Smart Screen function where the screen will stay on as long as it detects that you're looking at it. Samsung has something similar as well and I think this is a great feature that should be baked into Android itself.

 

 

 

 

McLaren
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

FYI - if you have a telus/koodo/public sim, then you willl not get the latest updates from Essential.   You have to put in a non-telus etc sim in order to get them.  Was puzzled why i didn't receive the Jan or Dec updates when my friend got them quickly. 

 

Very annoying, I sideloaded the Oreo 3 beta so hopefully the updates aren't sim locked. 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@ShawnC13 wrote:

I like your screen how you have multiple apps in one circle I will have to play around with the MS launcher and see what I can get done

 


@ShawnC13 I'm not sure if MS launcher has equivalent or not, but in Nova, that's a combination of these two folder option settings:

 

Screenshot_20171130-194039.jpgScreenshot_20171130-194046.jpg


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How does it compare to previous phone?

will13am
Oracle
Oracle

@ShawnC13, how many security updates have you installed so far?  I wish I have time to do more than just open the box to check phone functionality before canceling the service plan.  I won't be able to officially unbox the phone until the holidays.  In the mean time, let's keep the discussion alive.

McLaren
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire
I just setup my essential phone on public mobile, and it's fantastic. Was worried about reception but theres no change with my old phone. The new camera update with portrait mode is really nice!

That was  a good vid.  I like your screen how you have multiple apps in one circle I will have to play around with the MS launcher and see what I can get done

 

 


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srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@ShawnC13 wrote:

Wow so much stuff lol  I have a lot of those loaded already.  Nova Launcher hmmm I went with the Microsoft Launcher because microsoft is what I know and saw it there

 


@ShawnC13 after watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gfl_PH2gYg out of curiosity, I have to say, the MS launcher looks pretty sweet now!  It looks like it may have most or even all of the features I love about Nova.  May have to try it out!


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pakmode
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@srlawren wrote:

@pakmode if there's one feature I could steal from the Android-based BlackBerry devices, it's their verison of the recents screen (multi-tasking apps list):

 

blackberry-keyone-recents.jpg

 

(Image borrow from https://9to5google.com/2017/05/04/how-to-change-blackberry-keyone-recents-app-layout-android-basics/...)

 

I find that really cool.  


Agreed. That's an awesome feature. 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@pakmode if there's one feature I could steal from the Android-based BlackBerry devices, it's their verison of the recents screen (multi-tasking apps list):

 

blackberry-keyone-recents.jpg

 

(Image borrow from https://9to5google.com/2017/05/04/how-to-change-blackberry-keyone-recents-app-layout-android-basics/...)

 

I find that really cool.  


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srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@pakmode yeah I missed the hub when I first moved from my Z10 to Moto X back in...  I believe it was end of 2014.  I dabbled with the Android verison of the hub when it came out, but I didn't like it for a few reasons, that may or may not still be issues today (I'm sure they've improved it).  For one, it didn't support all the apps I frequently get notifications from, only some.  I forget which ones were excluded, but it was annoying.  Also, I seem to recall I'd get double notifications for the services it did support, I'd get one from the service, and one from the app.  Most annoyingly though was that I couldn't action most/all of them in the hub, I'd have to go into the actual source app itself to reply or whatever.  So, I came to the realization that I was better just to go there in the first place and ditch the hub, which I uninstalled after a couple of weeks of trying to love it like I did in BB10.  But it's just not the same.  Even getting into the hub wasn't a seemless gesture like on BB10, but rather you either had to bring it up manually or bring it up via it's notification in the notificaiton shade...so if I"m already there, why not just go to the source app instead and cut out the middle man?  

 

I'm sure it's better now than it was when it first came out.  And your mileage of course may vary.  But honestly, once you get used to how the Android notification shade works, it's actually pretty efficient.  It stacks notifications from the same app (unlike iPhone X!), but you can still expand those and action each one individually, and you can action almost everything right from that notification shade!  (Exception:  the Outlook android app doesn't let you delete from there, only reply or archive.  Please up-vote making this configurable if you're like me and that drives you nuts!  Gmail client lets me delete from notifications! grrr!~)


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pakmode
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

Great thread. 

Downloaded alot of the apps mentioned here to try out.

 

Admittedly I've been a bit reticent to download alot of apps after switching from BB10 a few months back - the one thing I found a total PITA was there was no central messaging hub - so I had to download Blackberry Hub.  It works pretty well on Android. 

A few I had that I do not see listed in thread

 

AccuWeather
Earth
Ecobee
GasBuddy
Google Sky Map

will13am
Oracle
Oracle

I have been out of town all week, just got home a few hours ago.  So, I am a little behind here.  @ShawnC13, get with the program, ditch the windows stuff.  Nova launcher is tops on the list of apps to get, it is like the face of android.  I like hdwidgets for weather and clock.  I can't live with my list of root apps like greenify, amplify, flashify, adway, afwall+, titanium backup, root explorer, xprivacy, kernel adiutor (no mispelling here).  Get the paid/donate version, support the devs. 

 

Essential is working hard to fix their own camera.  A new edition just came out.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.essential.klik&hl=en

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@NDesai Weather Underground does that too:

 

Screenshot_20171129-221756.jpg

 

I just find that with my aging eyes, the black background is easier to read usually.  🙂


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@srlawren Try the Yahoo Weather app widget. I love how you can have it with minimal transparency. 

 

abc.jpg

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srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

Thanks @NDesai!

 

Oh, I forgot to mention Weather Underground, my favourite weather app.

 

I keep a couple of it's widgets on my 2nd page, along with an LTE discovery widget and a Data Witness widget:

 

Screenshot_20171129-214824.jpg

 

Just to round outmy remaining two pages of home screens, I've got some additional apps I access slightly less frequently on page 3:

 

Screenshot_20171129-214828.jpg

 

And on page 4, I have my Google calendar widget on the left and my Todoist dashboard on the right:

 

Screenshot_20171129-214831.jpg


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@srlawren That's dope home page you got there!

 

One other best feature Nova Launcher offers is the Gestures. For example, double tapping on home screen can be assigned to anything like Lock the screen or swiping down on home screen would drop down the notifications. This is really helpful for big screen phone as it eliminates you from moving your thumb to the top of the screen. For the essential phone having power and volume keys on the same side or if you are lefty like me, double tapping to lock the screen is a lot helpful. 

 

cc: @ShawnC13

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