When I last blogged about my Essential Phone experience I didn’t really tell the whole story.
I bought a Sprint version of the Essential on Swappa for $250. I worked some magic and got it carrier unlocked. It worked fine for about 24 hours and then the cellular radio died.
I worked with Essential and they replaced the Sprint version with an refurbished unlocked version. That one worked fine but… I put it back on Swappa and it sold for $350. Unbelievably I made $100 on my experiment. Then…
Amazon put them on sale for $399.99. Amazon has an exclusive color of Halo Gray. It has a dark gray ceramic back and polished titanium frame.
So I bought my 3rd Essential Phone.
And I found a spring-clip belt holster by Encased.
I like the look of carbon fiber and the back of an Essential Phone is as slick as … So I added a carbon fiber skin on the back.
I found a set of various length USB A to USB C cables.
I came across an Android app similar to the iOS app Air Transfer with the unusual name of Sweech. In a later post I’ll describe how I use it.
Battery life has been excellent. My battery remaining at 10:00 PM has been 68%. A similar period on the iPhone 6s was 51%, Obviously the iPhone had a smaller, older battery though. The vibration is still just so so.
My Bluetooth headphones still occasionally (but rarely) seem to switch from ear to ear. I found a reddit post that speculated that this is due to the Wi-Fi radio connecting to a new access point. There seems to be some merit to that as mine exhibits this switching in the same place on my morning walk, perhaps where there is a strong access point.
The Essential Phone’s camera has gotten some really bad press but my experience shows that this is mostly resolved. Again a later post will discuss this.
Originally published at blog.benmoore.info on June 11, 2018.
