This is exactly what the Essential phone needs. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/11/13/18092620/essential-phone-magnetic-headphone-jack-adapter
$150…for a headphone jack…that I can’t use in my case. When the phone comes with a USB-C headphone jack adapter.
Sigh, I love this phone, but the company is so… questionable.
So, I’m tempted into an upgrade before the Essential PH-1 falls apart. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet but seriously considering it.
Two main factors pushing in that direction. First, I’ve found that resale value is still pretty good here (about $200!) as the phone is considered exotic, having never sold locally. That means I could get about half back, and pay only half the price of an upgrade. Second, there are a few new bezel-less designs that look very good. While some are totally ridiculous (motorized pop-up selfie camera), I think the Mi Mix 3 and Nubia X both have pretty slick solutions. Maybe they’ll never become mainstream solutions, but they are very nifty. The Mi Mix 3 also apparently has amazing battery life, despite a smaller battery, for reasons. Bonus issues: sometimes the Essential hard freezes in the camera app, or randomly boots into the bootloader and will be stuck there for a few consecutive reboots. Neither is a deal breaker but both are very annoying, especially at the wrong time, and I think are emblematic of how threadbare the team has become in the last year.
What’s holding me back. Android - unfortunately those new phones use skins that approximate iOS, which I’m not a fan of. Not sure how well I’d adapt to a non vanilla Android. Second, both are a bit bigger than the Essential, which pushes me back in a direction I was running away from after a few years on the Nexus 6P. And, they probably will have much worse resale value, so wondering if I should wait for a more reputable company to push out a bezel less design in the next 6-12 months.
The joys of consumerism…
Falls apart? What the heck are you doing to it? Mine is still kicking ass.
I mean it hasn’t fallen apart - and thus still has some resale value. But, I’ll probably stay on the fence until I forget about the new shineys…
Oh I gotcha. I’m gonna use my Essential for quite some time, as it’s really an exceptional phone. Once it gets too slow/old, I’ll likely get a Pixel. Love that vanilla Android.
Absolutely - probably the biggest reservation I have about switching. And yes, the phone is still quite capable, less the occasional issues noted above and merely average camera that is already widely known. The size is awesome.
5X died on Monday. Crashed during a call and launched into boot-loop of death.
Picked up a Moto G6 Plus, since the X4 seemed absent from any local stockists.
Has the Hangouts app become nearly unusable for anyone else? Mother of God, it takes sixteen years for it to load on my phone if it ever gets kicked out of memory.
Then again, everything takes forever on this old N5X these days. 10+ seconds just now to open Chrome (Qt3) from Hangouts.
Cmon, black Friday phone deals!
Crossed that threshold about six months ago when I was down to my wife and I (everyone else had moved on), and I started getting more and more messages from attractive ladies in my city looking for a good time. Switched back to good old Android messages and SMS.
Hah. I don’t get the spam to my Hangouts, but I did like using it for cross-device unified messaging. It’s just s l o w now, to the point that it takes 10-20 seconds for the app to become responsive whenever I open it.
I’ve used Hangouts on my Android devices for years now, never had any slowdown issues. Or spam, although that may be more a function of the Google Voice number that I use than the app. Voice is pretty aggressive in blocking spam calls.
Yeah it’s really weird, it’s like out of the blue it just started to take the app 10-100x the time to start up, like it’s trying to parse some crazy amount of data or waiting for some super-slow network call or something.
Could be there’s some piece of bad memory on my device causing problems, but I cleared cache and app data to no avail and the exact same thing started happening at the same time to my wife’s N5X. Maybe some bad Android update? Who knows. We’re both annoyed enough in general with the phones that we’re upgrading within the month anyway. My Bluetooth controller has also gotten fuuuuunky over time as well, which drives me nuts.
Just not been super happy with this phone in general. Probably avoid LG for my next device, which is looking likely to be the Moto X4.
That’s what I have, and it’s been great. Had it almost a year now.
With black friday coming up, I’m looking to upgrade my Honor 6x with something in the 250.00 or less price range.
Any ideas? I really would like something that allows for SD card Expansion and around a 5.5 inch screen, and there are a lot of options right now.
Asus Zoom, Nokia 6.1, Honor 7x, Motor 6x all seem to fit the bill.
Oh dang, the Nokia 6.1 is $199 on Amazon. That doesn’t suck. Though I think Google is still offering $50 trade-in on our stupid N5Xes so that’s equivalent.
Thanks for the update! I don’t know why my phone didn’t just tell me an update was available. I figured it would check once a day at least. Christ did it ever take forever for them to do this update! I hope it doesn’t screw things up too badly. Fingers crossed.
I’m in the same boat- aging N5X his being slower and slower. I’m on Project Fi, and don’t have a lot of money for an upgrade, so looking at the Moto X4. If you see any deals be sure to tip us off!
Plans are so much cheaper here in France. I just bought a sim card to stick in my old Moto G5+ for my son since he takes the tram to school by himself. Unlimited calls, texts + 100 GB data for 20 Euros. US mobile plans suck.
Oh wow, that is ridiculously crazy. I do pay as you go and I buy my data in one Gb chunks for $30 CDN.