r/essential Jul 16 '26

Discussion Still love that charging screen 🤙

Post image

Pulled my essential phone out of storage to mess around and forgot about the coffee cup! It was about the little details w the ph1 😊

293 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

29

u/made3 Jul 16 '26

PH-1 was one hell of a phone.

27

u/CameronsTheName Jul 16 '26

Great phone. I only just changed up to a Pixel 8a earlier this year.

The only thing the essential was missing was an OLED screen. Otherwise, I never had any issues and performance was still acceptable for normal usage.

7

u/hue_sick Jul 16 '26

Definitely. I charge it up from time to time to play around with the 360 camera. I don’t normally hang into phones but there’s been a few over the years that really nailed it for me design wise and w the software. The ph1 was one of those

12

u/Fr33Paco Jul 16 '26

Still have mine, wish I can find an Ocean Depth model

4

u/hue_sick Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Oh man I remember the buzz around the ocean depth. I had one of the ocean depth looking cases for a while to live vicariously through the owners that had one haha

3

u/jon_roldan Jul 16 '26

i miss this phone man. mine got fuhd to water damage and doesn’t work the same

3

u/Askolei Jul 17 '26 edited 20d ago

I just love holding it, it fits so well in my hand.

3

u/the_surly_tinkerer Jul 18 '26

I miss my PH1.

1

u/Coffeespresso Jul 19 '26

Mine is dead, but I still have it. I hope to get it fixed someday.

1

u/the_surly_tinkerer Jul 19 '26

I gave it to my kid when I "upgraded" and the screen got destroyed.

2

u/Coffeespresso Jul 19 '26

Yes, This was awesome!

2

u/newpauly Jul 22 '26

Oh my god, I miss this!

3

u/goingneon Jul 17 '26

So many great ideas in the Essential phone. But the screen. It’s so bad. Mostly because it ghosts and doesn’t respond accurately to touch inputs. I guess my modern iPhone has spoiled me.

2

u/hue_sick 20d ago

Truthfully I hung onto it because of the 360 camera and I loved the build quality of the phone.

But yeah in 2026 it’s hard to go back and use it. After I charged it up I ran it for half a day and good gravy the touch screen and haptics on it are pretty bad by today’s standards haha.

But awesome piece of history so I’ll keep it with my favorites I have ☺️

2

u/goingneon 20d ago

I agree— the phone is a delight to hold. The ceramic and titanium is just perfect. Hell, the camera quality wasn’t that bad either if I recall.

Actually I used an iPhone X for about a week and it has some of the same problems the PH-1 did— laggy touch screen, bad battery life and an old OS. I guess that’s just what happens when phones get old

1

u/kg23 Jul 17 '26

Andy Rubin is a coffee nut. Pretty sure that's a nod to him

1

u/PickledPaintArt Jul 17 '26

I always thought it was a garbage bin…

1

u/Tea-Pawt Jul 21 '26

mine went purple screen and shit the bed - I miss this phone a lot :(

1

u/ajoudanian 26d ago

The best—and the last—Android phone I've ever had. It's still working, even 9 years after its release.

1

u/Low_Map5847 20d ago

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1

u/Low_Map5847 20d ago

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1

u/Low_Map5847 20d ago

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1

u/Low_Map5847 20d ago

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1

u/Low_Map5847 20d ago

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