Essential has just finished up another AMA on the Essential subreddit, continuing their strong community involvement. In this week’s AMA there were a few notable topics covered including the release date for the second Android Oreo beta as well as a few upcoming software features. Although this AMA didn’t have as many goodies as the last AMA, a full recap is below.
First off, the second Android Oreo beta for the PH-1 was originally scheduled for a release this week, but had to be pushed back due to some bugs. The next beta will drop sometime next week and will be available to update OTA to existing beta testers.
Is there an ETA on the release of Oreo Beta 2 and OTA Oreo?
Hi There, we had an Oreo Beta 2 candidate build ready on Monday we had planned on releasing this week. However, we encountered a few regressions we caught last minute that requires us to spin another candidate. Good news is this gave us the opportunity to push in a few more fixes and if all goes well with testing Beta 2 will drop early next week. We apologize for the delay.
Also note: Beta 1 users will be able to OTA to Beta 2!
Essential has acknowledged that both double tap to wake and EIS (electronic image stabilization) are on their software roadmap. Although they did not give us a definitive ETA, it is good to see they are still working on software features that will improve the user experience.
Will you implement EIS?
We do have EIS video stabilization on the feature roadmap but haven’t locked down the ETA on when we will deliver. Good to hear though that you are asking about it, I’ll make sure to pass on to our marketing team that redditers are asking for it so we can prioritize in line with our other camera features.
When is double tap to wake / sleep coming, if ever?
Double tap is in our backlog of future SW features. We don’t have an ETA on the release but will keep you posted in these AMAs about our progress.
Are you aware of the issues with Miracast / wireless display on the Oreo beta build?
Yes we do know about it and are working on collecting logs to help fix the issue.
Are you aware of an echo / users hearing themselves on speakerphone?
We are also aware of these new echo related issues are working on fixes as we speak.
Will the final Android Oreo release pass Google CTS for Treble and be fully compliant?
We are aiming for full treble support on our 8.1 release and we are getting pretty close.
Stuttering scrolling, what’s the deal and when will it be fixed?
We are working diligently on it. As we mentioned in our previous AMAs Its a challenging issue to resolve given our touch panel HW 60hz sample rate. Because of this, there are trade offs in software we are investigating to improve latency without affecting overall touch performance. We want to make sure we get this right and not introduce new touch problems with a hasty fix but I can assure you its an issues our engineering and touch partners are working with us daily to resolve.
Will the essential phone get full screen video support from YouTube and other video applications?
I don’t have any timeline to give you however an immersive mode is something we are currently looking in to.
Is mono portrait mode in the works?
Yeah, we started looking into this internally as part of a future release. We will keep you posted on our socials around ETA.
The lowest media volume (one press from mute) is too high, can the range we increased?
Yeah, we have discussed this internally and are making adjustments. Our own QA has complained about this too.
Is the camera team aware of the lag in portrait mode when moving the phone to focus?
This is an issue our camera team has seen and we’re working on improving this experience.
AptX update?
No update yet but we are getting very close — I’m not ready to commit on dates quite yet, but I feel pretty confident that it will happen.
The entire AMA can be found here.
