Needless to say, the sales and discounts have helped the makers of Essential Phone boost the sales. Now one might dispute the numbers and cast their doubt on how accurate is the 50,000 numbers and how would one arrive at the same. As explained by the folks at Android Police the Essential Camera app can be downloaded only by Essential Phone users and thus the deductions. Moreover, the Play Store usually counts the unique number of downloads. Even if a single user downloads the app several times, the counter is incremented by only one.
That being said, there are a couple of caveats that hint at inflated numbers. To begin with, developers usually sign in with multiple accounts to test their app. Some of the devices may have been resold, and when the new user downloads the camera app, the number increases yet again. Add to this the modders who actually trick the Play Store to recognize their device as the Essential in order to download the camera app. Quite a few Essential PH 1 users have expressed their angst for the device. The glaring WiFi bugs, frequent reboots, fingerprint sensor failure and most importantly the touchscreen failures. Perhaps all these bugs make the Essential phone a deal breaker, but hey the $499 is pretty attractive. I personally feel that the current gen Essential is more of work in progress and I am ready to bet big on the next gen Essential phone (that is if it exists.)
