Hi everyone,

My work is buying an Android phone for me, so that I can do accessibility testing on the platform. We have just about decided to choose the Essential Phone, however, I do have two questions I'm hoping someone can help me answer.

My main question is, does the option to remap TalkBack gestures to the fingerprint scanner gestures work on this phone? Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the new TalkBack feature that allows you to swipe left and right on the fingerprint scanner to toggle through different screen reader options, speed, voice, etc. The feature I am asking about allows you to go into Talkback settings, choose one of the actions, such as open global context menu, go back, go home, click, etc. and map that function to one of the four fingerprint gestures, swipe left, right, up, or down on the fingerprint scanner. The reason I am asking this question is that this feature does not work on many Android phones for some strange reason. I'm really hoping to get a phone that does allow me to use the fingerprint gestures because I believe I can use the option to avoid dealing with the angle gestures, which I really don't want to have to use.

My second question is, I have heard that in the past, when you first setup the Essential Phone, people had trouble accessibly turning on TalkBack as you would on most newer Android phones. does anyone know if this has been fixed? After TalkBack has been turned on for the first time, it is my understanding that it worked normally, it was just that people were unable to switch it on during the phone's setup process.

I would really appreciate any info about either of my questions. We may be making a final decision soon.