Essential Phone Was Not After One Week, This Will Be



** Note - This post was first published on Medium back in September of 2017. I'm adding it here as I try out using Blogger to share some thoughts.

 Well, my time with the Essential Phone ended up being very brief. I decided to return it to Amazon after just a week — and replaced it with a phone from one of my long-time favorites, the OnePlus 5 from OnePlus.
The OnePlus is still my joint favorite phone I’ve ever used, alongside the Nexus 6P — and I still have it around as my backup phone and always enjoy using it when it’s in service. I also enjoyed the OnePlus 3T, and I’m loving the OnePlus 5 after getting it just a couple days ago.
Here’s a quick rundown on why I got rid of the Essential Phone:
Poor Performance: Apart from the one big, bizarre bug I mentioned in my quick initial thoughts on the Essential Phone, the phone also frequently required 2–3 screen taps to get response as well as some slowness on switching between apps.
Premium Materials: An odd complaint here. I’m not a fan, at all, of the ceramic back of the Essential. It felt nice initially, but I ended up feeling like it was too slippery to hold securely and just not for me.
Display: The display struck me as smaller than I expected out of the box, but I thought it might grow one me (no bad pun intended). It didn’t — I much prefer a screen that is more square and large rather than the tall, skinny feel of the Essential.
I’m glad that I tried out the Essential, even just because it helped me see I don’t enjoy the glass/ceramic backs and tall skinny displays very much. I imagine it will soon update and get past the performance issues I saw — but I’m still very happy to be back with a OnePlus device.

 The Essential was pretty fast to work with, but the OnePlus 5 is just at another level. I don’t know if it’s the 6GB of RAM, its Oxygen OS, or a combination of those and other specs/features — but it is just blazing fast at everything. In launching apps, switching between apps, refreshing the screen — and even in using the fingerprint scanner.
I’m happy with the quick change-up.

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