[Essential Phone Guides, News, & Discussion] bL1X:
Edit at end of post.

This all goes back to before I even ordered the phone. I wanted the grey one. I emailed twice about it. They kept telling me it will be released soon and to watch their social media accounts to find out when it will be released knowing full well they weren't releasing those. This was months ago and those additional colors are still not out. So that was deceit #1. My last phone was an S6. Its connector was so loose a charging cable wouldn't stay in. Coupled with a diminished battery capacity, I needed a phone and I didn't want another Samsung.

I decided to go ahead and order the black one. As soon as I completed the order, I got a message asking if I wanted to know when the phone is certified by Verizon. Wait, what? At no point was that knowledge made public before my purchase. Android Authority put something out the next day or so. That was deceit #2.

About that time, the bandwagon of bad reviews based solely on what the PH-1 didn't have as well as the crappy camera app hit the media. I don't consider any of those things essential to a phone. I actually thought it was good to omit them and I didn't really care about the camera app. I'll admit, I defended Essential...a lot. I'm eating crow right now.

It arrived and the first thing I noticed was how freaking slippery this thing was. Unless it was on a perfectly horizontal surface, this thing was sliding off.

The second thing was the rough, fine sandpaper like plastic around the screen. I don't like the feel, at all, of that plastic. More importantly, why wasn't the entire side titanium? That's what was advertised. All I heard about is how durable the ceramic and titanium combination was. The drop test animation on their website show there phone hitting at a perfectly perpendicular angle to the surface. That was deceit #3. More on that later.

I put in the Verizon sim from my S6 and saw that my phone now had half the reception of my S6...half. Sitting next to my wife with her S6, she's pulling 4G and in out of 3G and 1X. All the settings were correct according to Verizon. I am in a weak cell area, yes, but never dropped calls. Calling now is virtually impossible without calling over WiFi...which brings me to the next issue. I'm with Verizon, so natively I have no WiFi calling or visual voicemail and whatever other features Verizon has limited me from using. There's even less signal in my area with AT&T so I'm stuck with Verizon. Wonderful. With some help from an XDA member, I was able to get Hangouts set up for WiFi calling but now I'm using two dialers.

Why is the charger USB C? Why not USB to USB C like every charger I've had in the past? Are other companies doing this, too? I have only one cord that works with that charger and that's the one that came with the phone.

After one week, rub marks began to appear on the ceramic back of the phone. I ordered a skin to cover it up.

After 3 weeks, rub marks appeared on the screen! Listen, I am extremely anal about the care of my phones. No keys, no coins. The only thing that goes in my left front pants pocket, ever, is my phone. So, apparently cloth takes it's toll on this phone.

My phone was one of the ones with the cheap paper mesh over the ear speaker (really?). That thing is pretty much non-existent at this point. They wouldn't replace my phone for that like they did for everyone else before me but that's fine, they offered to repair it for free which I declined. I didn't want the hassle of being separated from the phone that long.

My phone freezes occasionally, like completely freezes, unable to even turn off the phone until it restarts itself after about 30 seconds or so.

The screen off wake up or whatever it's called never works when I pull my phone out of my pocket. I have to shake it to see the time - pointless, since, at that point, it's easier to just fingerprint unlock than to shake it.

Many screen touches don't register, this is probably the most annoying thing overall about this phone.

The camera is really laggy, but everybody knows that.

And then the thing happened, I dropped it. From pocket height, I dropped it and it hit on the Achilles heel of the phone, the edge of the screen. Remember that plastic? Well, that thin plastic curves up to the edge of the phone. It gets thinner and thinner towards that top corner of the screen and it doesn't protect anything, especially the weakest part of gorilla glass, the edge. It cracked the corner of the screen. If that edge is not protected that will be a deal breaker on all future phones. That edge was supposed to be covered with titanium, damnit.

It still works but it's an eyesore and every time I look at this phone, I feel taken. I feel like a fool for buying this phone. It is a very aesthetic but poorly designed cheap ass phone sold at a premium price. They literally cut corners on this build. They owe me some titanium and whole slew of accessories, btw, but they can keep it all. I'm not even going to buy another one for $450 which I think is the going price now.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. I was thinking maybe the Pixel 2, but it appears they have issues of their own....maybe a flip phone.

Edit 12/28/2017:

In order to get data working after being connected to any WiFi, a restart is required. After a restart, I'm connected to LTE+ or whatever is actually available. This is true every time after being connected to WiFi. Credit to another user in these forums.