yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] silverh20:
SUPER smooth for me (vs my AT&T Galaxy S7 Edge on Oreo).

Prime Day person here. Before my S7 I had the Nexus 5 so I am plenty familiar with flashing and the different ways the same hardware performs with varying software. Maybe AT&T bloated the crap out of Oreo so that my S7's poor little Snapdragon 820 couldn't handle life anymore but this new Essential is lightning fast and smooth for me.

Scrolling in any direction or while in an app like Chrome has been near perfect. I'm running stock, out of box upgraded to the latest Oreo and patches.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
FOR ANYONE HAVING SCROLLING ISSUES!!!!!

Enable developer options and just swipe touch sensitivity ( I think default is 7,set it to 9 for example).. Reboot your phone and VOILA!!!!!!! Enjoy your phone !!!!!!! ;):good::cool: :cool:

I am on android p beta3 with no scrolling or touch responsiveness issues at all!!!!
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] mostrapotski:
I'm afraid you misunderstood the setting.

Having a higher value makes the scroll more powerful, for example, with touch sensitivity set to 1, you have to do a 1 cm touch gesture to scroll 5 lines of text, while with a sensitivity set to the maximum, the same gesture will scroll 40 lines.

That is why they put a text on top of the setting, so you can test it.

It has nothing to do with the actual smoothness
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
I really understand what that setting is..but I had scrolling issues and that just did the trick for me...!!! No hurt if someone tries it and see some sweet scrolling... That's all I'm saying!! :)
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
Is this a hardware issue that affect all units or do some people get good ones? I got the phone from Amazon Prime Day and immediately noticed a scrolling and touch differences.

My current LG G6 with Oreo 8.0 is noticeably smoother and touch responsive than this Essential on 8.1. Everything else on the EPH is so much faster with no lag. I am trying to get used to the scrolling and touches. The light touches on buttons are not recognized as well as the G6. It misses my same light touches that the G6 never missed.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] crixley:
Hardware issue on all of them unfortunately.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
That's unfortunate. I have a tough time adjusting to the scrolling. I have two problems with the EPH right now even with the latest Oreo 8.1. How is it that folks on LineageOS says it's working smoothly? Does P solve the scrolling issues?

1. The slow scrolling is jerky. It's absolutely very noticeable compared to my current LG G6 with Oreo 8.0. The G6 follows my finger perfectly smooth scrolling without any jerkiness. It also has almost perfect flick momentum. The EPH scrolling feels slow and jerky.

2. I have had more accidental clicks in two days than my 6 months with the G6 even though I just wanted to scroll. I rarely ever have accidental clicks when my intention is to scroll.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] crixley:
I lucked out and won a pixel 2 so I won't have to deal with it much longer, it is being delivered in a couple days. The design is a lot uglier and screen smaller but with the performance difference I am definitely going to sell the essential. Debated it, but it is the scrolling and camera that made the decision for me.

I have had all the issues you mention above. P fixes the accidental touches for the most part, but the slow scrolling and sensitivity still sucks.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] :
I have a white PH-1 from prime day sale. Took a week to get it.... So maybe newer build.

Anyways, I've played with the touch sensitivity settings, through the whole range. The higher the setting the more jitter I have. The lower the setting the smoother the scrolling but also the slower. I've finally landed on 4 as my preference and I can't see any jitter and the scrolling speed is good.

I guess I got one with less hardware issues maybe.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
Maybe anyone turns on the phone for the very 1st time ,sets it up while charging,the phone reaches temperatures as high as 102 F (that happened to my phone) and the phone appeared to have responsiveness issues and felt laggy..I played with the sensititvity though, and let it rest for a while and no touching issues at all!! :) I guess the phone needs a while to set the optimum touch sensitivity ...I have read a lot about this issue and that's my final cocnlusion!! :P
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
I think it has an issue with detecting the initial touches that are lightly pressured. Once the screen is moving then it's more responsive. I could live with the camera issue but scrolling is so fundamental it seems hard to believe this phone was sold for $700. It's an awesome phone marred by fundamental problems especially impossible to fix if it's hardware. I think $250 is definitely palatable but my $300 G6 so far is flawless with the touchscreen and decent cameras. I will probably return mine and get something with the SD845 down the road.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
My previous phone was LG G6 too!!! :) I see your point, but in my case, touch responsieveness on Essential Ph-1 is 95% accurate. So, i will give it a shot! i see your point about Snapadragon 845 but any device on the round with that processor will lack stock android experience and monthly updates..unless you wait for google pixel 3. I read these days, it's about to be released on the market in about 2-3 months!!

P.S. What i have read of, many users who have flashed LineageOS on their Essentials, face butter sweet scrolling experience!! :)

So, if you don't mind being on a custom Rom, i think you should give it a try!
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
I agreed the best feature of the EPH is the constant and quick updates. I used to flash a lot with my previous phones, but I gradually just want stock and root and not deal with the dev roms. I have read LineageOS makes it buttery smooth without the jitter, so it's absolutely puzzling why Essential hasn't incorporate LOS fixes (if true). I have until August 16 to return the EPH. Crossing my fingers for a miracle.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] GroovyBear:
Bought mine for $250 just recently to replace my iPhone SE so no buyers remorse. But I did notice some scrolling chops as I install more apps. So glad I did not pay 700 bucks for it.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Toyeboy:
I have an iPhone 8 plus and this phone feels snappier as I have the animations turned down to .5 but this phone definitely has a choppiness to it that makes the iPhone a better, more fluid experience. Also Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is much more fluid than this phone
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] JBlaze05:
So i have finally received my phone, and have used it for a few days now. I believe that this phone could very well be one of the smoothest phones next to the pixels, iphone's, and oneplus' of the world if they would have used a better screen. Perhaps at the time of making the phone, the only thing they could get was LCD. but another thing i ask is why did it have to be QHD. Why not a 1080p OLED? it would probably cost the same at the end of the day. I would imagine an OLED panel from samsung on this phone would solve the jitter issue. its odd to say that this phone is smoother and yet not smoother than my previous zuk z2 but thats just the way it is.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] mookiexl:
Have a z2 force I must say the scrolling is lacking in comparison but still better than my s8.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
I don't know why slow scrolling is so much smoother in Chrome than any other apps or system panels. Scrolling in Chrome is almost on par with my buttery smooth LG G6. I now have Android 9 official with Touch Sensitivity set to 5. Anyway I have lost hope Essential can fix this hardware problem with software.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
You can use another browser..I use kiwi browser...also, I have set sensitivity to 9..enjoy smooth scrolling.. :)
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
Chrome is very smooth except everywhere else is jerky. I simply don't understand why. I have an old Sony Z3 compact and it's still silky smooth without any of the jitter.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
Yes,I read in a hurry your previous post and I misunderstood..just set touch sensitivity level to 9 ,and reboot your phone...I guess it needs a while to settle down..
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] coconutxyz:
Try lineage os with neutrino kernel, gpu governor set to cpufreq and touch sensitivity to 6
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
Does this really work? I have read claims this doesn't do much but others say it's buttery smooth. I am running Pie right now. Why do you suppose Essential hasn't done these changes with the official ROM? I am trying to avoid custom ROM if possible since I still have 7 more days return it to Amazon.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] coconutxyz:
I just moved to pie now and I do feel the difference between the two. It has the smoothness but still retain the jittery imo though.

Edited. It still has little jittery
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] 7eregrine:
Am I the only one that doesn't even notice this AT ALL. Coming from a Z2Force and I just do not get the complaints about smoothness or jitter?!? Cannot be just me?!?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] liquor:
Your not alone I don't detect any smoothness or jitter issues either (stock Oreo) - coming from LG G3...
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] guuus:
May I ask, what cpu freq you are using, userspace, powersave, performance or schedutil?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] coconutxyz:
cpufreq
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] guuus:
Somewhow it wont let me pick cpufreq as an option for cpu governor...any ideas?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] coconutxyz:
thats odd, are you using neutrino kernel?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] guuus:
Yeah, latest Neutrino Kernel. Also I use Kernel Adiutor to manage kernel parameters. Still it only gives me the four options to choose from. See attachment...
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] mookiexl:
I still use my Z2Force and the stutters are very evident. Just scroll the same page on both devices up and down and you will definitely see a difference in smoothness. The people who don't notice it undoubtedly undoubtedly don't own or haven't own another Snapdragon 835. I have 3 and as far as performance this phone is in last place.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] JBlaze05:
There was a thread made before the official oreo update came out, so all the points were made based on Nougat. So i do think it is mostly agreed from everyone that Oreo was alot smoother than Nougat (feel free to comment if you feel otherwise). However that thread also did bring up a good point regarding sampling rate (not to be confused with frame rate). The scroll jitter to me at least doesnt look like frame drops, but rather slower sampling compared to other phones. To me it is most evident when doing slow scrolling as its harder to be smooth and precise when your sampling rate is lower than the competition. Fast scrolling it more or less not affected since its harder for me to find jitter in fast scrolling since as i said at least for me its not dropping frames. The jitter i find is only in slow precise scrolling

Now, i could be completely wrong and i welcome any different ideas.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] coconutxyz:
haha i am talking about gpu governor not cpu, you misread that
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] guuus:
Oops..my bad. Appreciate the help!!

I can really tell a difference in scrolling smoothness by Lineage/Neutrino Kernel/changing Kernel settings!! Compared to stock 8.1 and Stock 9.0 that is...
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] coconutxyz:
Good to hear. But battery life might take a hit
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] panossd:
FOR ANYONE FACING JIGGLING SCREEN ISSUES

When that happens ,( when zooming in, for example), just press the screen a little harder..the jiggling will stop at a glance.. ??✌️✌️??
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Str0ntium:
I have a Pixel 2 XL and this phone is just as, if not more, smooth. It's certainly got a better panel than my 2 XL. Love that phone, but the phantom scrolls kill the experience. Will never buy another LG panel again. I've also got an S8 and that one is a jank fest at times.

Obviously, ymmv....
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KurioHonoo:
If you have root, go into the build.prop and change the VM heapsize from 32 to 256 or 512. The vendor build.prop has 512, but the main was doesn't. Changing it allows more ram to be used and scrolling gets WAY better.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] sruel3216:
hmmm my pixel 2 xl is def smoother than essential phone. i just got the essential last week and i immediately could tell it was choppy
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] JBlaze05:
make sure you update to the latest build they have. but yes P2 is smoother. Keep an eye on the upcoming EAS kernel that will work on stock rom. smoothness is damn close to that of the P2 with it
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] sruel3216:
i am on sept rooted with EX kernel and it is def better. did a build.prop tweak that has helped too. just wish essential can fix it themselves. Nice il def check EAS out.

edit: is the EAS kernel youre talking about this Neutrino Kernel?

edit2: my pixel 2 xl had a usb hardware failure so its getting an RMA done. I got the essential last week off amazon to use in the meantime. the hardware is amazing! just trying to get the scrolling to comapre to pixel and then i may end up selling the pixel
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] KevinN206:
I don't understand why Essential can't fix this scrolling issue natively. I got the phone twice and was disappointed with the scrolling both times. It has been 12 months, and nothing much in fix or communication of the fix.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] ceelos218:
They already stated that they exhausted all their options software wise and to adjust the touch sensitivity to your liking under developer options.

If that doesn't help there is a few tweaks here for rooted users that deal with build.prop
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] SpectraFun:
Which build tweaks?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] ceelos218:
Pg 7 on this thread ?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] SirDigitalKnight:
OK after further examination it does seem that the PH-1 has more "jitter" then my LG G5. On my iPad mini what happens is everything gets blurred when you "slow scroll". That is when you can notice the problem on my PH-1... during slow scrolling... good app to show it is Messenger... bring up your message list and scroll up and down through them and you can notice it... on my G5 it is very smooth and also it is very clear and readable... on the iPad mini is is not smooth and gets blurry... on the PH-1 it's "jittery" but it is still readable. Will retest against iPad mini when iOS 12 finishes downloading and installing.

I feel bad for the folks out there that bought this phone when it first came out for full price. :(

For $250 I am not complaining as I paid $400 for the G5 which I still like very much.

Very strange that they can not fix this problem. If it can be fixed on other ROM's you would think it could be fixed on stock.... strange indeed....

Will update as I explore more on this new toy...

---------- Post added at 08:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:54 PM ----------

When is this EAS kernal coming out?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] JBlaze05:
Its out now but only fully works on LOS and LOS based roms. as for stock. octobot is hard at work making it fully work on stock soon. patience is the key. but you can test it on stock without wifi. scrolling is godly though
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] ceelos218:
Where can I find the thread for the kernel
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] JBlaze05:
Here https://xdaforums.com/essential-phone/development/kernel-lineageos-15-1-upstream-builds-t3754202
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Bobbaloo:
For the scroll jitter I just set gpu gov to cpufreq. This is in addition to "force gpu rendering" in Dev options and touch sensitivity high. Now, I have no complaints about the responsiveness and smoothness of the screen.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] SirDigitalKnight:
I do not find a "gpu gov" option anywhere in settings? Found the "force gpu rendering" option and touch sensitivity, but not the first one you mention.... :confused:
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Bobbaloo:
Custom kernel with kernel modifying app like exkm. https://xdaforums.com/essential-phone/development/kernel-elementalx-ph1-1-00-android-7-1-1-t3736061
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Toyeboy:
This disabled my touchscreen. Can't use fastboot anymore to allow USB to trust my PC now either.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Bobbaloo:
Ex didn't disable your touch screen. There was a time last month when September Pie update was doing that to some people. You can search around for that. Ex is trusted with a long-standing reputation and built across multiple devices... I was recently able to get TWRP working and now Ex has overclock settings. I wish you luck in solving your issue
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Toyeboy:
Yeah sorry I figured it out. A side load OTA reset everything back fixed my touch screen.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] XDA_RealLifeReview:
Some phones are great to take camping because if you play Asphalt 8 long enough, the back warms up to the ideal temperature that can bake bread. Rate this thread to express the extent to which the Essential Phone stays cool under extended heavy use. A higher rating indicates that even when playing strenuous games for long periods of time, the phone doesn't get uncomfortably warm.

Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] xdadevelopers54:
Have not experienced any heating at all
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Ksehwail:
I am experiencing heating issues, I would like to know if it's just me and hopefully I just have a defective device. The battery Temp stays around 49 Celsius
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] 808phoneaddict:
My phone does get a little hot... Altho I was jus using Google duo which uses a lot of resources I believe... Not 100% if that's the case tho, and it cooled rather quickly after I ended the phone call...
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] parusia:
I'm not experiencing any heat on the phone at all.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] flakko86:
It gets pretty warm when I quick charge and use the phone at the same time but I think that goes for most of the phones out there
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] tech_head:
It won't get very hot. If the internal temp gets to 44C (112F) it aggressively throttles the big cluster down to about 1.2GHz, which is about half the maximum speed.

At 41C its down to 1.8GHz

At 40C its down to 2.1GHz

So in the span from 39C-43C (102F-109F) The performance drops by 50%.

A 4 degree C temperature span. This is the most aggressive throttling I've seen in any device I've owned.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Ellises:
I noticed this morning during charging the phone is getting too hot to touch around the upper right corner where the 360 camera attaches (which I don't have.)
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] jgracz01:
no heat issues here yet.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] thehappydinoa:
Ya I am having some issues when I charge my phone and watch YouTube at the same time
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] maltydog:
Mine is hot at times as well. How can you tell the temperature of the battery?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Craz_Raven:
Same here I feel it at times of heavy usage and charging

Accu battery says I'm around 107.4 F when I'm charging and using heavy. But that's the hottest it gets. I generally sit it next to a fan whenever I experience this. But it does nothing for internal temp which stays at 107.4 but the outside is cool to touch. And now that I think about it I may be wing about the temp. Not sure if it was 104.7 or 107.4. But that's besides the point.

Yes this phone does get hot at time of heavy gaming/ usage/ etc
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] tokuzumi:
I use Ampere, and put a 1x1 widget on the home screen. The widget shows the mA (+/-), battery status (charging/discharging), battery %, and battery temp.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] elkay:
No heat issues, not even playing Pokemon Go.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] jfoj:
I ran my phone on battery with Waze on for 2 hours and the display turned off, made a few long phone calls along the way, the phone was very cool IMHO based on other phones I had that I would run Waze on. Only used about 25% of the battery in this 2 hour timeframe with Waze, phone calls, emails coming in and news alerts popping up occasionally. Then connect the phone to a cheap USB-C phone charger that is probably low current and drove another hour and the phone was still cool.

I have not checked temperatures, but from the handling of the phone, it clearly did not feel warm.

So far, so good IMHO.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] sixtysdaze:
heating issues with essential phone

having heat issues when I'm using as a hotspot for video. nothing of concern.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] seabro01:
Never had any heat issues on 7.1 or 8.1
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] XDA_RealLifeReview:
At the club, at the bar, or just in your mom's basement, nighttime is when you come out to play. Rate this thread to express how the Essential Phone's camera performs when no or low light is present. A higher rating indicates that the camera sensor "sees" lots of light in dim conditions, and that the resulting photos have minimal noise. A higher rating also indicates that when the flash fires, the resulting photo is evenly-lit without any bright spots.

Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] BonkersTheClown:
Disappointing.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] benjmiester:
Even after all of the updates? Tried the google camera apk?
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] resident0915:
Yea, it's pretty bad compared to all other flagships or "flagship killers"
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] benjmiester:
That's a bummer. I'm not surprised though, it's mostly been knocked for it's sub par camera.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Rai02x:
It's weird cause some people seem to post some decent low light pics and others are pretty bad. Must just boil down to individual users.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] twcook:
The last camera update seems to have helped considerably with low light performance although the result isn't yet nearly as good as my Xperia Z5. This shot was taken just now in a room with a single 60w bulb - pretty good detail on a black dog on black comforter, not an easy subject. https://photos.app.goo.gl/VcVE3TbFmJm4DCCJ3
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Jmar72:
The camera during the day is fine and is equal to the pixel ported app. The camera at night is hit or miss. A dark room or darker room it will struggle bad. If it's a night shot out side and there are street lights or business signs there seems to be enough light for the camera to take a decent pic. I compared it to the honor 8. What I think the camera needs is a manual mode or something that allows you to control the lighting like the pixel camera. If it had that feature the camera would be good. It could also have a bit more sharpening too.

The video needs more light. Even with the pixel ported app the video is dark if you don't have good lighting, very grainy. Again a manual mode to control the light and more sharpening would do wonders for this camera.
[Essential Phone Real Life Review] Procrustinator:
I'm not saying it's great, but this was with the stock camera app taken from inside a car...