[Essential Phone Guides, News, & Discussion] cb474:
Yes, but all that is made up PR crap. They are lying.

I don't really know what to say to you. As I said above. This exact same dual camera setup has already been done in other phones, with the exact same Sony IMX258 sensors. The Xiamoi Mi 5s Plus, which came out a year ago, has it; Nokia 8 which is already out has it; and the announced Moto G5S Plus has it.

The Mi 5s Plus and the Nokia 8 have already been reviewed and they have the exact same problems with the second sensor. It does nothing to help low light performance and creates terrible shutter lag. In reviews, the Nokia 8, which has OIS on the primary sensor (unlike the Mi 5s Plus) works better when the secondary monochrome sensor is disabled.

So Essential can make up what ever they want aobut magic software, but it's just PR and dishonesty. And Nokia is a company that invented the modern high quality phone camera, in their great N series phones (which had specs ten years ago that most phones today still don't have). Nokia knows more about software and image post-processing than any company. Essential doesn't know something they don't know.

The problem is that the extra sensor doesn't really work the way Essential says. It's still a lower quality 1/3 sensor. It can't capture as much light and information as a larger 1/2.3 sensor. Two subpar 1/3 sensors do not add up to something better. Garbage information in, garbage information out.

Further, back at the beginning of June the president of Essential posted images on Twitter that showed the same bad low light performance now being reported on in reviews of the phone. They took those images down to hide them, but Droid Life reported on it and you can still see the images there: http://www.droid-life.com/2017/06/05/essential-phone-camera-sample/. That was on June 5. So Essential knew about the problem for three months before the phone was sent to reviewers and was unable to do their made up software magic to fix it.

So if you want to believe that the indentical dual camera with the identical sensors, which two other phones have already and that have the same problems, doesn't demonstrate that the problem is fundamental to the hardware components and that Essential is going to pull off special software alchemy black magic that better companies can't do. Go ahead. But it's just being naive.

Essential lied about what their camera could do. They pretended they invented something that they didn't and is already in other phones. They are pretending they haven't know about the poor camera performance all along. And they are being dishonest and just doing PR when the say software will fix subpar hardware that is incapable of better performance.

It is disappointing. I really wanted to believe their claims about the camera before the phone came out, every reviewer criticized the camera in the same way, and the information about the subpar sensors was revealed. I wanted to believe Essential's claims they would be some kind of different consumer friendly company. But when it's just patently obvious they made a mediocre camera and knew it, then made up PR lies about what they did to justify their perfectly flat back obsession, there is nothing to be gained by continuing to believe their PR spin. One only has oneself to blame if one believes them now.