Essential Phone gains portrait mode, 2nd gen model in the works, and more
The Essential team tells all in its latest Reddit AMA. Every other Wednesday, the Essential team takes to Reddit to hold an AMA to answer any and all burning questions that people have about the company and its products. The most recent one was held on November 29, and as per usual, there's a lot to talk about. For starters, Essential confirmed that a portrait mode is now available for its phone as an update for the camera app through the Play Store. In addition to this highly-requested feature, the update also includes better compression of JPEG shots and other general bug fixes and stability tweaks. Speaking of software, an update to the existing 8.0 Oreo beta should be rolling out next week with improvements to Bluetooth performance, battery, and touch latency/choppy scrolling through the UI. Android 8.1 is also in the works, but Essential says it'll likely just push this out as a regular update without first running it through a beta. Moving on to the hardware sid...