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Andy Rubin's Essential Shutting Down, Newton Mail Service Ending Too

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Back in 2015, Andy Rubin, the co-founder of the Android operating system, started up a company called Essential, focusing on smartphones. Essential launched its Essential Phone PH-1 in 2017, debuting a 5.71-inch device made from titanium and ceramic with an edge-to-edge QHD display.

The Essential Phone was praised for its design, but reviews found faults with the camera, the display, and other features, and it was never popular enough to compete with flagship smartphones from other companies.

ph_1_color_black_moon_copy_1000x1000.jpg
The Essential Phone​

Essential in October 2019 announced the Gem, a replacement for the Essential Phone, but the Gem is never going to see a release because Essential today announced that it is shutting down.
Our vision was to invent a mobile computing paradigm that more seamlessly integrated with people's lifestyle needs. Despite our best efforts, we've now taken Gem as far as we can and regrettably have no clear path to deliver it to customers. Given this, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations and shutdown Essential.
Click to expand...
Essential last year acquired the CloudMagic team and its cross-platform Newton Mail app, which is also affected by the shuttering of the company.

Essential will no longer be providing updates for the Essential Phone, and while it will continue to work, there will be no future software refreshes or customer support available. Newton Mail will be available through April 30, 2020.

essentialgem.jpg
The unreleased Essential Gem​

Essential says that it offers its "deepest thanks" to the Essential and Newton Mail communities for their "support and passion for our vision."

When it launched, Essential secured over $330 million in funding and at one point, the company had a $1 billion valuation. Essential was impacted by poor sales of its phone and its inability to put out another product.

Article Link: Andy Rubin's Essential Shutting Down, Newton Mail Service Ending Too
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/02/12/andy-rubin-essential-shutting-down/
  • Angry
Reactions: Vanilla35
my PH-1 is my go to backup phone. it's of very solid quality with only minor tweaking needed to make it awesome. we knew this was coming and frankly took a lot longer than i thought.
 
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Reactions: jdogg836
You know, I had well wishes for the dude when he was starting up with this Essential phone, but during the announcement or interviews near launch, he was with Walt Mossberg, and certain questions he responded to with some very unnecessary and odd criticisms of Apple. Wish I can recall what exactly it was, but in my books he lost a lot of credibility with how he was speaking at that time.

Not surprising anyway that Essential is done.
 
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Reactions: dabotsonline and haruhiko
profets said:
You know, I had well wishes for the dude when he was starting up with this Essential phone, but during the announcement or interviews near launch, he was with Walt Mossberg, and certain questions he responded to with some very unnecessary and odd criticisms of Apple. Wish I can recall what exactly it was, but in my books he lost a lot of credibility with how he was speaking at that time.

Not surprising anyway that Essential is done.
Click to expand...

Well, there was also this stuff: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/andy-rubin-court-complaint-lawsuit-rie-divorce-google
 
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  • Wow
Reactions: psac, dabotsonline, Santiago and 1 other person
The smartphone industry has matured to the point that disrupting it or even getting a meaningful slice of the pie is essentially impossible now. I don't care what innovations a startup thinks it can bring, that is until someone figures out how to have holograms project into the air above your device or something at that level.
 
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Reactions: MisterMillz, Oblivious.Robot, jimthing and 6 others
Bummer. There's literally an Ocean Depths version sitting on my desk at home. Literally the only robotphone I'd liked, since Google can't seem to do anything right regarding the Pixels.

I guess I gotta look into throwing a custom ROM on it if I hope to get any kind of updates.

Edit, from Android Authority:

If you are keen on smartphone tinkering, Essential will be posting a pre-build of its vendor image as well as anything else needed to hack the Essential Phone to GitHub. This should help the PH-1 live on in an unofficial capacity.
 
  • Like
Reactions: compwiz1202, dabotsonline, 69Mustang and 1 other person
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