I've had an Essential Phone for the past couple of weeks, and I really like it. Camera is great (It's received a couple of updates just in the past couple of weeks) and it's performance is snappy. Only complaints are the Oreo beta is a little buggy (after all, it's a beta) and the battery life has been a little disappointing, but I'm a heavy user and I'm coming from an Asus ZenPhone 3 Zoom which had a 5000 MaH battery and would last over two days of heavy use on a full charge.

Plus I got the Essential Phone for $320 CAD ($250 USD) with screen protectors and a case.

My only concern about Essential is with the poor sales, will they be around to support it much longer?

How about the fact but you can't get it anywhere in Europe or UK unless you want  to buy it from resellers which brings the price up from 500usd to about 700-800? No surprise it doesn't sell if you can't buy it

An Essential Phone without 3.5 mm jack is not an Essential Phone. The usb-c headphone is fragmented now, the sony headset cannot be used with the samsung phone, i wonder why they can make them compatible, even their dongles can not be used with each others  >:(  >:(

The deal breaker for me wasn't the camera, which I could have lived with. Lack of AMOLED screen killed it for me. I understand the technical, engineering and sourcing obstacles Essential faced here, resulting in the choice of IPS. But the Samsung S8 just kills it, and is only slightly more expensive now.
This is a shame, as I wanted to support the Essential project.