Essential has had a rocky start, there is no doubt about that. The company that was much hyped due to the involvement of Android co-creator Andy Rubin, stumbled during its launch by offering a release date it couldn"t adhere to, coupled with a few other major missteps along the way. But, with its PH-1 out to retail in Black Moon and Pure White variants, and priced lower than ever, the firm is trying to change things for the better.
Part of this movement to be better comes in the form of Essential"s bi-weekly AMAs on Reddit, where its loyalists and those that are curious, can pitch questions to members of the team, and get a better understanding of what"s going on with the company and its handset. After all, this is a company that"s valued at over a billion dollars, so it isn"t going anywhere soon.
The latest AMA session was hosted by Rebecca (VP of Software), Marcus (Software Program Manager) and Sean (Quality Engineer) and one of the first things that were brought up was the phone"s issue with connectivity and radios.
Rebecca fielded this question and responded with:
"We"re doing the best we can to continue to improve RF/service issues. The data we"ve collected so far shows a lot of issues coming from having advanced network features enabled on accounts that don"t support them, so we are working on switching around how we handle that. We have done a bunch of work verifying our settings match what the operators expect for your device. We are working on issues related to handover between wifi and mobile data. We are working on some improvements to the time it takes to camp on your network coming in and out of service".
It also appears that firm is working on a different kind of compression for photos taken with the handset as there have been complaints that the PH-1 is too aggressive when it comes to file sizes. There is a fix that is currently being tested and should be out soon. There is also a portrait mode in the works, which should arrive in time for the holidays.
While there are still little issues here and there like touchscreen sensitivity, a majority of the feedback seems to have the company working on it, with updates to come soon. If you want to check out the thread, be sure to head to the source below.
Source: Reddit via GSMArena | Image via Essential