The Essential Phone: A Hands-On Review

Hello everyone, it's Josh Megara here, and welcome to our video review of the Essential Phone. We've had the opportunity to spend some time with this highly anticipated device, and we're excited to share our thoughts on its features and design.

One of the first things that caught our attention when handling the phone was its build quality. The Moon Black version comes with a glossy back that's prone to fingerprints, but upon closer inspection, you'll notice that the design language is reminiscent of Xiaomi's Mi Mix series. This bezel-less design, which features a camera on the bottom, is a bold move by Essential. While it may not be perfect – we did find that the phone feels slightly too large in our hands – the build quality more than makes up for it. The titanium body provides a solid feel, and the ceramic backing adds an extra layer of quality to the device. We particularly appreciated the flat sides, which make the phone easy to handle.

Speaking of design, the 19:10 aspect ratio screen is undoubtedly one of the standout features of this phone. With a quad HD resolution, it offers excellent display quality, but there are a couple of quirks that might affect its overall usability. The lack of bezels around the sides is certainly appealing, and the contour at the top makes room for the front-facing camera. However, the tiny lip just above the screen's edge can be slightly distracting – although we're sure updates will address this issue in the future. One thing that does set this phone apart from its competitors is its unique notification area design. The combination of a small notch and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera creates a distinctive look that will likely appeal to fans of modern design.

The dual camera setup on the Essential Phone is another notable feature. The RGB and monochrome sensor combo offers excellent detail, especially in black-and-white photos. We were particularly impressed by the level of sharpness and definition in these images – it's clear that Essential has put a lot of thought into creating a camera system that can produce high-quality results. However, we did find the camera app to be somewhat simplistic, which might make it difficult for general users to access all its features. We would have loved to see a manual mode included, but overall, the camera is off to a promising start.

Modularity is another area where the Essential Phone excels. The connector pins on the back of the phone allow for easy connectivity with accessories, such as wireless charging docks and 360-degree cameras. While we didn't get to test the latter feature in this review, it's reassuring to know that there are so many ways to customize and enhance the user experience. And speaking of customization, the software experience on the Essential Phone is one of its biggest selling points. As a stock Android device, users will be treated to a clean and intuitive interface, with only a few extras added in.

In terms of performance, we were pleased to find that the phone felt very speedy and responsive, even when using the Sprint SIM card. The experience was smooth and hassle-free, with no lag or delays – a testament to Essential's commitment to delivering a high-quality user interface. For Android purists, this is especially noteworthy, as it provides a fresh alternative to the more heavily customized interfaces found on other flagship devices.

Overall, the Essential Phone is an intriguing device that's sure to generate interest among tech enthusiasts and fans of modern design. With its bold bezel-less design, high-quality display, and impressive camera system, there's no denying that this phone has a lot to offer. Whether it will live up to its promise and redefine what "essential" means in the world of smartphones remains to be seen – but for now, we're excited to see how it develops and whether it can deliver on its lofty ambitions. Stay tuned for our full review, which will include camera testing and a comprehensive analysis of this exciting new device.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's Josh Megara what's going on everybody and hopefully by now you have seen our video our hands-on with this the essential phone now the essential is a very hotly anticipated device and we have had our hands on it for the last few days so make sure you check out the full hands-on now well you can get some of our opinions regarding this phone and what it was like to use for the last few days however in this video I wanted to bring you some of my favorite features of the phone itself after using it for the time that I have and we have a five of them in particular that we want to go through in this list the first top feature that we want to talk about right now is the build quality now we do have this moon black version of the phone which has a glossy bag that is pretty fingerprint prone however if you take a look a closer look at the phone you might recognize its design language it does harken back to a design that we saw from Xiaomi the Xiaomi me mix was one of the first phones to try and go completely bezel-less and in their case they put the camera on the bottom in order to make room for all of that screen unfortunately that one was just a little bit too big and like I said in my review if we had a smaller version of this phone it would probably be one of the best devices that we've seen at least in terms of design and with the essential foam that is essentially what we get the build also greatly benefits from a titanium body but the backing especially on this unit that I'm using right now is a ceramic backing much like the Xiaomi me mix and we love ceramic backings on phones because it just gives the phone a different level of quality with the flat sides as well it is very easy to handle and it definitely feels like it's not going to slip about especially with this size that I can grip really easily but of course we have to talk about that screen it is a 19 by 10 aspect ratio screen that is a quad HD resolution however there are a couple of quarks about the screen that make it really eye-catching of course we talked about the lack of bezel on this phone and indeed there is a bit of a chin on the bottom but everywhere else around the phone you're basically holding what is all screen all the time and there's a little bit of a contour at the top that makes room for the front-facing camera this 8 megapixel shooter on the front gets a little bit of a lip just a little bit of a dip into what is essentially the notification area and it's a really nice look that differentiates the design of this phone from pretty much any other device out there but that little u-shaped lip at the top that just sort of cuts into the full screen just that tiny bit is incredibly eye-catching it's very crowd pleasing and with that notification area at the top blending in with basically any application there are a few where it doesn't really blend in that well but I'm sure that updates are going to come later it's just really a wonderful look which leads us to our next feature that we really love and that is the dual camera setup now essential has gone for the RGB and monochrome sensor combo in order to get the most detail out of the shot and the monochrome pictures that we've seen if you go to the mono mode in the camera app are incredibly detailed we actually really love taking black and white photos because all of the lines are so detailed and there's a lot of sharpness inside of those photos the color pictures are pretty fine still however we are going to do our full testing as the time goes on the camera app is also a little bit simplistic so for a lot of general users out there it's not going to be hard to pick it up and be able to get some good shots however we do wish that there was a bit of a manual mode involved and right next to those cameras our connector pins that give this phone some modularity now we don't really have a whole lot of time because we don't have the 360 camera to talk about the 360 camera but they do connect to those two connector pins over in the corner on the back of the phone and it does pass through data so you'll be able to take 360 photos and videos and they will communicate straight through those connector pins that are going to be more accessories made available for the essential including a wireless charging dock that you can connect to those pins but we're sure that there are going to be even more accessories that will add to the expandability of the essential line and they have also promised that future essential devices are going to have backwards compatibility with all of the accessories they plan on releasing and finally it would be hard to talk about a phone called essential if you didn't talk about well the essentials there are a lot of specifications that should please everyone out there looking for a high end device but we want to highlight the software experience essentially this is a stock Android built if you get an unlocked version of this device you basically only have a dozen applications including the ones that are already built into Android in the stock build and you only get a few extras maybe five or six as we were told during our Q&A session with essential and over the last few days I've had a very happy and very smooth experience with this version of Android and we're sure that with some updates to the software it's going to continue to get better even after I put the Sprint SIM card into the phone and it downloaded a couple of sprint applications right off the bat it didn't bog down what has continued to be a very speedy experience so for all of you Android purists out there it's kind of interesting that we have the phone like the essential that provides a stock Android experience aside from the pixels and the Nexus devices of the world so that might be a big feather in the cap of essential that is going to get a lot of you to really consider this brand new device this brand new phone that has just come out on the market and is available for pre-order right now you can head over to retailers like Amazon and Best Buy or central.com themselves to find unlocked versions of the phone or if you happen to be on the Sprint network you can see when they are going to have it available as it is available for pre-order across all of these different networks the essential phone is incredibly interesting not only because of what it's trying to introduce into the flagship game but also because it feels like they're really trying to redefine what the word essential means to general users and that is exactly the question we will explore in our full review so keep it tuned to Android authority for even more about the essential phone we'll probably do some comparisons but we'll definitely give you our full review that will include camera testing and pretty much all of the bells and whistles you would expect from us here at Android authority stay tuned for even more about this exciting device and remember to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already so you can keep up with us all over the place because we are your source for all things Android\n"