28 ms·

Andy Rubin Puts Essential Up for Sale, Cancels Next Phone

386 points by coloneltcb 8y ago

bhouston 8y ago
This is sad but forseeable as Essential sold poorly. It was a nice phone but it can be hard to establish a new brand right now and differentiate oneself. The only new brand of smartphone in the last four years I can think of is OnePlus that has had success. OnePlus did this by buying their popularity. By offering a ton of value initially and then raising the price each generation.
- marrone12 8y ago
  Their ads were terrible. They talked so much about their lack of bezel but the shots of the phone would display apps or pictures with black bars so you couldn't even tell the screen was nice.
- kinsomo 8y ago
  > The only new brand of smartphone in the last four years I can think of is OnePlus that has had success. OnePlus did this by buying their popularity. By offering a ton of value initially and then raising the price each generation. Aren't they a major Chinese brand? Seems like the message here is that you'd better already be big with deep pockets to wade into the smartphone market.
  - xd1936 8y ago
    They're propped up by Oppo, but neither company will acknowledge it. Having weight like that behind you is definitely a competitive advantage when trying to enter this market as a new brand.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I'm actually really hoping that Light Phone 2 takes off. Seems that they're making a very smart move to specifically contrast themselves to the addictive functionality sets of other smartphones, and Light Phone 2 seems to be in a good sweet spot.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jMyles 8y ago
  I'm not sure how typical I am in this regard, but I was 100% prepared to buy an essential until I found out that it didn't have 3.5mm audio.
  - bronson 8y ago
    I was 100% prepared to buy an essential until I saw photos from its camera. What a disappointment.
    - mcny 8y ago
      As a Nexus owner (4, 5, 6, 7), I am 100% willing to compromise in camera quality. However, something has to give. If this phone debuted at $299 or even $349, I suspect we'd be seeing very different results. It is a shame too because I think the Amazon Fire phone failed for the very same reason. In hindsight, the ridiculous invite system that one plus had makes sense now. Maybe they were trying to limit the number of phones sold because each one sold at razor thin profits (possibly at a loss after warranty support).
  - realworldview 8y ago
    I was 100% prepared to buy an Essential until i found out it was just another mobile phone.
    - realworldview 8y ago
      Downvoted for stating the obvious? $100 bazillion needs to be put in perspective.
      - realworldview 8y ago
        Damn you, humourless down-voting Philistines.
        khedoros1 8y ago
        The Philistines thing worked with the David+Goliath comment tree...not as much here.
- aphextron 8y ago
  >This is sad but forseeable as Essential sold poorly. It was a nice phone but it can be hard to establish a new brand right now and differentiate oneself. I don't think it is, everyone is just too afraid of doing something radically different. Essential phone was just another generic midrange Android phablet at a top end flagship price. Until someone completely throws that paradigm away we will be stuck with the bloated nonsense that smartphones have become. I would give ANYTHING for a 5" phone with capacitive touch e-ink display, 3000mAh battery, and a barebones BSD based OS that did nothing but call, text, take pictures, gps, and text-based web browsing.
  - FractalLP 8y ago
    Glad to know others exist that just want a basic device that will last a week without charging without massive bloat and apps I don't care about.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      You can get one for <$30, they're called featurephones. The rebooted Nokia 3310 claims one month of (stand by) battery life.
      - FractalLP 8y ago
        Aggh, sorry...I meant to be agreeing more with the parent comment I replied to. I want all that plus an e-ink screen running freeBSD and some very basic browsing. I don't think old Nokia dumb phones had that.
    - IncRnd 8y ago
      Just buy a dumb phone. It does exactly what you described.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Feature Phones are still a thing. You can still get such a thing. https://www.verizonwireless.com/basic-phones/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/basic-phones/ There's a whole bunch of phones that do basically what you're looking for.
- celticninja 8y ago
  I bought the OnePlus One when it was released and it was and still is a great phone, however their price point now places their newer offerings with the Samsung S series and Nexus/Pixel devices. It doesn't have enough going for it to warrant paying those prices. If anything it taught me that phone brands I hadn't heard of could compete with the top line ranges. After my OnePlus I tried a bunch of Chinese brands and found Xiaomi to have the best combination of features and price in the market, plus due to their ubiquity they also get plenty of custom ROM options.
- kinkora 8y ago
  While OnePlus (i've owned all OnePlus phones since OP1) is a great example however there is a common misconception that it was "new" at that time. The OnePlus 1 was almost identical to the Oppo Find 7A in specs, price, etc [1]. Also not commonly known, OnePlus was started by an ex-Oppo executive and is actually (majority) owned by Oppo Electronics which is the parent company of Oppo Mobile [2]. Also while price was definitely a huge factor for it's popularity, the main reason IMHO was because it was the first phone that officially supported a popular AOSP at that time - CyanogenMod (now LineageOS [3]) and it even had the logo branded on the back. Almost everyone I knew with a OP1 phone bought it simply for cyanogenmod and how fast/smooth it ran it with no issues. Remember that when OnePlus 1 was first announced in 2014, android phones were well known to be filled with vendor bloatware (Samsung Galaxy S3,S4 anyone?), expensive, became really slow over time and for those of us that wanted custom ROMs, it was relatively painful to flash/root a stable AOSP on any device. OnePlus 1 was the first phone that I had absolutely no issues with having CyanogenMod on it such that I even turned on nightly updates knowing full well that it was tested at least on a OnePlus device. So yea, I think OnePlus became popular simply because of price and their official support for CyanogenMod which meant a phone with a fast & responsive running android and most importantly, no bloatware. [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=6214&idPhone2=6327 https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=6214&idPhone2... [2] https://www.gizchina.com/2014/04/28/oneplus-responds-oppo-controversy/ https://www.gizchina.com/2014/04/28/oneplus-responds-oppo-co... [3] https://www.androidauthority.com/cyanogenmod-lineageos-654810/ https://www.androidauthority.com/cyanogenmod-lineageos-65481...
  - zifnab06 8y ago
    It sold moderately well and had fantastic software (up until it was ruined by management decisions...)
  - distances 8y ago
    > Also while price was definitely a huge factor for it's popularity, the main reason IMHO was because it was the first phone that officially supported a popular AOSP at that time - CyanogenMod (now LineageOS [3]) and it even had the logo branded on the back. Maybe for the tinkering crowd, but I think you vastly overestimate it's importance in becoming a sales hit. I don't have the numbers for how many people flash their phones, but I'd guess less than one in a thousand. They do advance the sales via favorable reviews and recommendations though, I'm sure. As far as I see, it was simply just the price-quality ratio that made it a success.
Analemma_ 8y ago
I said this in another thread about the Essential Phone, but I'll say it again: their strategy was 100% bass-ackwards. You can't come in at the high end of the market: that's where the big dogs live with huge advertising budgets, carrier buy-in, and solid R&D for great cameras. You can't compete with that starting from scratch. You have to be like OnePlus and the other Chinese manufacturers: start by offering a good phone at a good price that undercuts Apple and Samsung's stupidly expensive flagships, then gradually work your way up-market. That kind of disruption strategy is the only way to break into smartphones.
- josh2600 8y ago
  This misunderstands the problem... Carriers are the main distribution channel for phones. You can’t compete with carrier distro.
  - Analemma_ 8y ago
    I said that in my comment? Carriers control visibility for big, flagship phones, but the Chinese manufacturers still manage to sell decently by marketing their cheaper phones directly to consumers. That's the kind of strategy Essential should have emulated, until they got big enough to start cutting deals with carriers.
    - unexpected 8y ago
      again, I don't see how you can draw a comparison between cheap Chinese manufacturers and an SV backed startup. Can you imagine the VC pitch for that? "We want to raise capital so we can make low-margin phones and that Chinese manufacturers can easily undercut". Chinese manufacturers have more capital and have easier ways to monetize than a small startup. For that matter, Name a Cheap Chinese manufacturer that has been able to break through in the US market? No chinese phone manufacturer has more than 8% of the market in the US. Essential took their shot at trying to make a value-chain leap. They failed. That's okay. Life moves on, their engineers will be okay, and they'll get more opportunities in the future - but at least they took their shot.
  - 8y ago
ajiang 8y ago
Making mass consumer flagship smartphones and going up against Samsung, Huawei, and Apple is a really tough game, but I'm sure Andy and the team at Essential knew that. I like that there are people who, in the face of giants, pick up the stone.
- syedkarim 8y ago
  >>I like that there are people who, in the face of giants, pick up the stone. Just upvoting this quote.
  - realworldview 8y ago
    David got there first, I believe.
    - realworldview 8y ago
      Damn you, down-voting Philistines.
    - joering2 8y ago
      I honestly dont get it. What kind of stone is Google listing? Sorry just genuinely confused and search returned nothing on google stones ;(
      - praneshp 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath#Modern_usage_of_%22David_and_Goliath%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath#Modern_usage_of_%22Dav...
      - darkkindness 8y ago
        I think it was a reference to David and Goliath.
      - realworldview 8y ago
        You fell for the “Google knows everything” mantra…
ggg9990 8y ago
If Microsoft couldn’t force their way into the phone market late, no way a startup was going to.
- wdn 8y ago
  Microsoft made a bad decision. The 950 was too expensive. They should have take a loss at the 950 and get the phone to customer's hand. No phone no developers.
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    Windows Phone was dead as a doornail long before the 950.
    - toast0 8y ago
      I really wanted Windows Phone to do better, so I may be somewhat biased, but WP 8.1 was reasonable, and they were making progress with market share at the low end. In my opinion Windows Mobile 10 fizzled out because of a few reasons; the most important reason was organizational changes meant nobody cared about Windows 10 on the phone, and the releases were pretty bad for the first year. The other important one was that for quite some time, the 950 was the only phone it was reasonable to buy that had it, and it was too expensive. The 650 was basically the same hardware as the 640, but shipped with WM 10, and was more expensive. Also, they had promised all WP8 devices would be upgradable to Windows 10, but then they pulled it back for low memory devices (which makes sense, because it was sloowwwwww, but still)
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      They were reaching 10% across Europe when Microsoft gave up on WP.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Microsoft cut-and-run, they could have just stuck to it like they did with the Xbox and in the long term it probably would have worked out for them. But their initial models were rushed to market and their Nokia strategy didn't make much sense.
zamland 8y ago
I think it's the cost structure. If they were based in China like Xiaomi, you could see it monetizing differently and have another type of product.
shmerl 8y ago
I'm more interested in Librem 5. They aren't trying to beat everyone, they are addressing specific market.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  Yeah, the strategy seems smarter to me. Make a niche product that offers something that no other product on the market currently does but that some people really want. The Essential didn't appear to do that to me: it looked like just another high end Android phone of which there are already plenty to choose from from more established brands and didn't have anything that made it stand out as better than those other options.
- flukus 8y ago
  I wonder if purism would have the cash to buy Essential? It would give them a nice head start on getting android apps working with their phone.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    How exactly would it benefit them though? They are working now on their hardware and their own Linux UI (for some reason they weren't satisfied with existing options like Plasma Mobile). Full supported OpenGL and Vulkan implementation for i.MX 8M would speed things up for them a lot. Another good thing would be someone implementing a browser based on Servo working on that GPU. But that again requires better OpenGL / Vulkan support for i.MX 8M (and possibly Vulkan for WebRender). I don't think Essential would help with any of that.
realworldview 8y ago
> and its Android software is nearly identical to the stock version running on Google’s Pixel phones, giving it another unique sales proposition. Is it just me?
- gomox 8y ago
  Very few Android phones are not full of crappy manufacturer apps. Nexus, Pixel, OnePlus and apparently, Essential are the few exceptions. So maybe not unique in the literal sense, but a differentiator anyway.
  - dejv 8y ago
    Also Nokia falls into this camp. Bought Nokia 6 for my wife and it seems to be working very nicely.
jiveturkey 8y ago
hate to say it, but yeah, saw that one coming. is it me, or does $100MM seem like too small an R&D budget for a halo phone?
heurist 8y ago
They launched around the same time as the Pixel 2, with similar price and slightly worse hardware. It was unfortunate timing.
efficax 8y ago
I had never even heard of this phone until now, and I think I would've bought it over the Pixel 2. Think I'm the target audience, but word never reached me. Maybe they just whiffed on marketing.
- miranda_rights 8y ago
  Same. It's a stunning phone and I would've absolutely bought it. It's too bad.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  That's interesting, why would you prefer this phone over the pixel 2 ?
  - gomox 8y ago
    Not the OP but the main con of the Pixel 2 is the price.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      This phone cost about the same when it first launched.
  - miranda_rights 8y ago
    Also not OP, but not having a headphone jack is a non-starter for me. In a tie-breaker, I'd prefer a smaller company over a larger company too.
    - wilsonnb 8y ago
      The essential phone didn't have a headphone jack either.
    - laurex 8y ago
      I ended up with a OnePlus 5, which was cheaper, and IMO more attractive than the Essential, which photographed well, but had a very 80s bling-y aesthetic IRL.
_bxg1 8y ago
:(
LarryDarrell 8y ago
Looks like I'll soon have a replacement for my Nextbit Robin I bought last year for $100.
martythemaniak 8y ago
Typing this from an Essential. I'm pretty sad. I've had four Nexuses, a Galaxy S and an iPhone and this is probably my favourite. It's camera-problems are well-known, but I really do think it's the best-designed phone on the market today. Some high notes: - the notch predates the iPhone X and looks even better because it's so small. The one on the X is so large, they may as well have not bothered. - The glass-ceramic-titanium is slippery, but a joy to behold. I love the heavy, blocky feel and love idly flipping it around in my hand (I guess I don't need a fidget spinner). The flat sides also have the advantage letting you leave it straight-up on it's sides (ie for camera shots) while simultaneously being rounded enough to be easy to hold. - flat, unbranded back and general layout is basically what every phone should have. - The module extension system is probably the best of all the ones that have been tried. I have the 360 camera and it works great. - speaking of the camera, I love 360 photos. I kickestarted a failed 360 Camera (Bubl) etc, I used to spend a ton of time making photospheres, their camera was fantastic. I love taking photos with it and people actually like looking at them. - If they had managed to get rid of the chin and shrank the notch a bit (the status bar is 2x as tall as regular Android because of it) on their second phone, it would have been a perfect. - Apart form the physical stuff, the updates came fast, the storage was generous (128GB) and the UI was uncluttered. I hope they get picked up by someone, they have a lot of good stuff going for them.
- dbbk 8y ago
  The notch is smaller because it's just a camera lens. The iPhone X basically has a Kinect in its notch. They're not really directly comparable.
  - yathern 8y ago
    Of course you can compare them! They're both phones with a notch! You can also separately compare their face detection capability. But that doesn't disallow you from saying one notch is smaller than the other.
    - huangc10 8y ago
      I think he meant given that the features are not the same, it's hard to compare the physical aspects (and more technically, product specifications) "fairly".
mihaela 8y ago
That was expected.
wootie512 8y ago
I really liked the Essential phone and it's message. It hit the sweet spot for me running vanilla Android and being at the mid tier price point. The no branding focus really went against the big brands and convinced me the company had the right goals in mind. Unfortunately I had no reason to buy a new phone, as mine is working fine. I planned on buying the next Essential phone.
staunch 8y ago
This company was founded on the myth that the original Android OS was an important part of the history of smartphones. And that Andy Rubin was somehow an important innovator. His arrogant rant on the Essential homepage explains why they failed better than anything else could. The version of Android that Google bought was just another crappy blackberry clone that would have likely gone no where. It became Google's cover story for their effort to clone the iPhone because its in their legal interest to claim that Android was an independent effort that just happened to become an iOS-like operating system over time. But history proves otherwise. The original Android was a crappy Blackberry clone: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg/800px-HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HT... And the Android phone they released over a year after the iPhone was was a half-Blackberry half-iPhone clone monstrosity: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/HTC_Dream_Orange_FR.jpeg/1920px-HTC_Dream_Orange_FR.jpeg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/HT... From Wikipedia: An early prototype had a close resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, but the arrival of 2007's Apple iPhone meant that Android "had to go back to the drawing board". Google later changed its Android specification documents to state that "Touchscreens will be supported", although "the Product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, therefore a touchscreen cannot completely replace physical buttons". By 2008, both Nokia and BlackBerry announced touch-based smartphones to rival the iPhone 3G, and Android's focus eventually switched to just touchscreens. The first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, also known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23, 2008.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  > His arrogant rant on the Essential homepage explains why they failed better than anything else could. Pretty sure it was the fact that Samsung is the primary supplier for the majority of parts so they always end up making money. But sure, the homepage is totally why millions of people didn't buy the phone.
  - staunch 8y ago
    This is just poor reading comprehension on your part. I claimed that his rant explains why they failed, not that the rant itself is why they failed. I think his rant says a lot about how he views his role, company, and product. He seems conflicted about starting the company at all, dismissive of his coworkers, delusional about his role in history, and confused about what makes people want products. And yes, the fact that the product's homepage features him above the product itself is also a very bad sign.
sqldba 8y ago
Predictable from Day 0.
scarface74 8y ago
You can't make money selling Android phones in today's market. Chinese phone makers eke out small profits and Samsung makes most of its money as a component manufacturer. The average selling cost of a Samsung phone is $227 (https://www.androidauthority.com/price-gap-samsung-apple-smartphones-769772/ https://www.androidauthority.com/price-gap-samsung-apple-sma...)
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Personally anything over $300 is a no-go for me, a phone is not worth more than a general purpose computer.
  - distances 8y ago
    For me the trick is to get the employer buy the phone. Never bought one myself, and yet get to use flagships.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Employer phones come with strings attached, I always turn mine off after work.
      - distances 8y ago
        Not necessarily. Most of my coworkers don't know my phone number, and they anyway know better than call after work hours. I also don't sync work e-mails to phone, my stuff isn't so important it can't wait until next morning.
  - wilsonnb 8y ago
    A phone is a general purpose computer, and most people pay more than $300 for their laptop or desktop anyways.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      A phone is a special purpose computer. For it to be general, I should be allowed to do everything I can do with a PC, without any kind of constraints or workarounds. Exactly because most people pay more than $300 for an unconstrained device, there is little value to pay more than that for a constrained device.
aviv 8y ago
This was built to be sold to Amazon. The plan didn't pan out.
- sebleon 8y ago
  What makes you think it was built to be sold to Amazon?
- john_moscow 8y ago
  I somehow got a hunch that the recent overfunding trend made startups as inefficient as large companies are, so there's not much incentive left for acquisitions if you can simply copy it in-house for much less.
  - dman 8y ago
    If a company prematurely captures their upside by raising an excessive amount of capital they create a scenario for new employees where they participate in the upside only after the desired (10x) multiple is realised on the prior raise.
    - john_moscow 8y ago
      Except if a company is inefficient, the founders may find a way to get what they want without waiting for that 10x to realize. I'm not sure though why the investors are seemingly OK with that.
thedonkeycometh 8y ago
Guess they didn't make it to exit strategy then
chejazi 8y ago
I bought this phone and the 360 camera and I can say that so far I have thoroughly enjoyed owning both and would do it again. I came from the Apple ecosystem, too.
owaislone 8y ago
I never got the hype around the Essential phone. Apart from the specs, what sets it apart from other flagship devices. I've been using a Pixel2 for last few months and it has been quite good so far. How does the Essential phone compare to Pixel/Pixel2?
- sebleon 8y ago
  Exactly, no clear differentiator. There's a number of online interviews where even the founders couldn't clearly articulate what was novel.
  - fabrice_d 8y ago
    I think their idea was to establish a consumer brand recognized as high quality, and then expand in other spaces. But entering the Home market these days will be hard, facing Google/Amazon/Apple.
    - dingo_bat 8y ago
      To establish a new brand, you must offer something new. Essential phone had nothing new and had a number of drawbacks compared to its peers. Oh and it was priced like Samsung's new flagships.
Shelnutt2 8y ago
I bought the PH-1, and have been very happy with it. Their commitment to releasing source code, supporting no bloat, and stock google android (not stock aosp but close enough) made it a real winner in my book. I was looking forward to the PH-2 so I could push my relatives toward it for their upgrade cycles. With Amazon going full force on the Alexa hardware (1st and 3rd party) but their only attempt at a phone a failure, I wonder if they will try to pickup Essential and go for a Essential Fire Phone-2?
- bspn 8y ago
  While I love my PH-1 and want the concept to continue, I can't help but feel that this would be a disaster. Amazon would almost surely ruin the stock Android experience by forcing its ugly bloatware on you to ensure that you consume Amazon content and services.
msmith10101 8y ago
Makes sense. Hardware/software overall is monopoly-determined. If you are looking for an exit or a business model in the startup world you have to do something unique. This whole scheme was dead in the water, IMO.
- prklmn 8y ago
  I think this company is very emblematic of the tech bubble. Someone with a name and not much more is able to raise a staggering $330m with nearly nothing to show for it down the line, and 95% of people paying attention could have predicted it was going to be a flop.
robot 8y ago
I don't think it was just me who thought this was a really bad idea from the start. Iphone launched at a time when there were no decent phones with capabilities it added. In presence of polished iphone 7s and other android phones what does this device really add?
uramoty 8y ago
be excited.
glemmaPaul 8y ago
What about Amazon picking this company ? Seems interesting for their Fire line
sengork 8y ago
From the mobile marketplace ecosystem point of view this isn't good for the consumer. That being said the entry barrier is quite high for anyone, even essential...
afterburner 8y ago
Wish the first one had had an OLED screen, but I guess that's impossible to get.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Is there a disconnect between the Silicon Valley elite and the population, when it comes to hardware and privacy? I feel, more and more, that my stance is anachronistic.
- thanatos_dem 8y ago
  In which direction? Apple is the “elite” or “luxury” brand and also one of the few to take privacy dead seriously. I think the general population is more happy to give up privacy for cool features built using their data than you may think (unless I’m reading your comment backwards. It is phrased rather ambiguously)
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  disconnect would be an understatement
dingo_bat 8y ago
Their phone was literally set up for failure. It had nothing new to offer over any of the established players, initial price was among the flagships, it had a broken camera, no headphone jack, buggy software. Basically inferior in every way and priced the same as Samsung's S8.
- trumped 8y ago
  It is directly unlockable for easy rooting and modding, unlike most phones... that's a big plus. (there's only the Pixel, OnePlus and maybe only 1 or 2 others like that)
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    Ok that does sound valuable. But maybe too much of a niche. Most people are fine with the OS apple/Samsung ship with the phone.
notatoad 8y ago
There has been one successful model for new entrants into the smartphone market, since the iPhone: start with a low-budget phone, and progressively raise your prices and move to more premium products as you build trust among consumers and retailers. It's what OnePlus did, it's what google did with nexus, it's what Xiaomi and Huawei have been doing. Andy Rubin thinking he could skip this process and just jump in at the top of the market was pure hubris, and as much as I was hoping to see them succeed, it's a little bit reassuring that they failed. Success takes hard work, and essential skipped a lot of that.
- hugs 8y ago
  Were the Google Nexus phones considered low-budget?
  - jimmies 8y ago
    I have owned 10+ phones during the last 10 years, and the Nexus phones were only ones I bought new. - Nexus 5 was low cost and amazing for the price. I was able to forgive every issue it had. And another international friend also asked me to buy it & ship it to her. - The 5X was not low cost, but then it could also be bought cheaply through the Google Fi "loophole." I know at least one other person IRL who bought it through the loophole.
    - sagethesagesage 8y ago
      What was that loophole, exactly?
      - jimmies 8y ago
        Normally the Nexus 5x was $400, but the cost of buying it through the Project Fi and cancel right away was $250. Now the loophole is with the Moto X4.
  - stirlo 8y ago
    Of course, the Nexus 4 cost $299 on launch
purism4thewin 8y ago
No headphone jack, no removable battery, no sd card. Any one of those is a deal-breaker for me.
- monetus 8y ago
  Mind if I get your opinion on the librem 5?
kirillzubovsky 8y ago
I wonder if Essential is just not a very popular smartphone, or if Samsung/Apple colluded to pressure suppliers in making it 100x hard for E to get anything done. Either is equally probable.
- sebleon 8y ago
  It was not popular, they had dismal number of orders when they launched. I’m curious what suggested that suppliers caused problems - one of their investors was actually Foxconn.
forkLding 8y ago
I think aside from the Essential product itself, the smartphone market is basically at a mature stage now just like the laptop market, so for a new product to successfully enter the market, it would need a lot more money to be wasted for marketing and production just to compete with the giants. Mature market, smartphone users still growing but not as fast as before: https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smart... Microsoft apparently had ~1 billion dollar loss in first year in North America region while promoting and selling the Windows Surface which illustrates the difficulty in selling in a competitive mature market with high stakes. Microsoft makes loss when selling Surfaces: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476544/tablets/with--1-7-billion-in-surface-losses--is-it-time-for-microsoft-to-pull-the-plug-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476544/tablets/with--... Also noteworthy, reputedly global smartphone sales in Q4-2017 sees downturn: https://www.ft.com/content/6ef7e850-17e6-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 https://www.ft.com/content/6ef7e850-17e6-11e8-9376-4a6390add...
kappi 8y ago
This is the problem when startups are founded based only on the founders name. Foolish idea shouldn't have got a penny of investment.
m3kw9 8y ago
What was he think man? Maybe he saw how easy XiaoMi made it look and wanted a piece
gwbas1c 8y ago
Is it just me, or how come I never heard of this phone?
abhiminator 8y ago
Really disappointing to hear. I was super excited last year when Essential announced their foray into the smartphone hardware business -- always exciting to see new entrants, especially one founded by Andy Rubin nonetheless. Also worth noting is that Essential phone (v1.0; 2017) was the first device to include a notch around the front camera -- a revolutionary feature and a head-turner at the time, with other big players following suite down the year. [0] I'd personally be pleased if Essential gets credit at least for making top centered notches on smartphone devices mainstream; would now be interesting to see how they approach their AOSP-based OS given the abrupt end to their 'hardware manufacturer' ambitions. As many others have already pointed out, Essential's (relative) failure shows how saturated and competitive smartphone hardware industry has become -- with barriers of entry being unimaginably high -- for even a multiple VC funded startup. [0] https://mashable.com/2017/05/30/essential-phone-android-andy-rubin/ https://mashable.com/2017/05/30/essential-phone-android-andy...
- telltruth 8y ago
  I'd personally be pleased if Essential gets credit at least for making top centered notches on smartphone devices mainstream What? Notch is a boneheaded design compromise, not an achievement!
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
"The startup, part of Rubin’s incubator Playground Global, has raised about $300 million from several investors [...]"
hardwaresofton 8y ago
After watching FirefoxOS fail I don't think I can put faith in another interesting-looking mobile OS/phone again.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  I actually think Firefox OS would be a lot more viable if they tried to make it today. A lot of things are webapps or JavaScript apps, so app support might have been less of an issue. There's also blockchain which exploded, leading to a lot more developers with good funding willing to work on and/or donate to efforts like FirefoxOS. Hardware support, on the other hand...
  - hardwaresofton 8y ago
    It's really too bad they didn't stick with it. Mozilla is exactly the company I most trust to guide the software that is going on my phone, and the browser I use. I'm not sure they would make it today even if they tried, the management and the goals of the project were what drove it into the ground IMO. They might have done better if they focused on the high margin cell phone market -- grab the blackberry and privacy conscious market who have money to blow. At least we got a faster/better FF out of it -- then again so many sites are chrome optimized (and don't necessarily even test FF) that I'm a little worried. Android is open source but doesn't feel like it in practice (especially if you buy a vendor build)... And it's surprisingly hard to find a vendor that will just give you a phone that can be easily wiped to put stock android on.
kkotak 8y ago
And yet again, the masses are infatuated with the royal wedding/funeral.
j0e1 8y ago
I was really looking forward to the PH-2. For me their USP was that the phone had no logo and that they sold them as being non-affiliated with any big corp software-though that may not be entirely true, it did raise my hopes of replacing the software with something more 'open' and just benefit from good hardware (easier said than done). I think this a sign I move to a dumb phone.
thelastidiot 8y ago
That was written all along. What a waste of time and money.
xHopen 8y ago
It was a piece of crap.
pavlov 8y ago
The company raised money at a $1.2 billion USD valuation in August 2017: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/14/16142772/andy-rubin-essential-phone-valuation-billion-dollars-unicorn-value https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/14/16142772/a... "Fail fast" seems to apply.
Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
Wonder if this has anything to do with it: "Former Android Head Left Due To Sexual Misconduct Claims" https://www.channelnews.com.au/former-android-head-left-due-to-harassment-claims/ https://www.channelnews.com.au/former-android-head-left-due-... "The woman who filed the complaint reportedly worked in the Android division run by Rubin, which would make any personal relationship between the two violate Google policy; the company requires employees to disclose such relationships so that one of them can be moved to another division. Rubin left the Android department in March 2013 to lead Google’s efforts in robotics, but the HR investigation is said to have taken place in 2014. That investigation, according to The Information, concluded that “Rubin’s behavior was improper and showed bad judgement.”" https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16714264/andy-rubin-leaves-essential-google-inappropriate-conduct https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16714264/andy-rubin-leav...
telltruth 8y ago
In my mind, Andy Rubin is likely be one of the most unfortunate tech personality I'm aware of. So here is a guy who grows up dreaming about robots. But instead of doing that he ends up doing startup to make money so he can eventually do robots. He spends best years of his life building phone OS by walking a fine line to clone a work of a genius. And a pretty shitty clone at that. But the guy is so in to robots that he ends up calling this thing "Android" even though its not android. Thing takes off despite being shitty clone because Microsoft had become incompetent to his enormous luck. He becomes rich, powerful and eventually able to demand to get off the shitty clone train to actually do robotics. He goes to GoogleX with essentially carte blank to make his dreams finally come true. The guy goes out and buys up every cool robotics startup out there, spends billions and surrounds himself with some of the best talent on planet. And then he leaves it all to rott. But still... he is ultra rich, can do whatever he wants and he still has some of his productive years left. What does he do? Another phone startup! And again just a clone with minor tweaks at that.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  The dude ended up with hundreds of million with -as you say- a shitty clone. How is he unfortunate?
  - alex_hitchins 8y ago
    You can still be stinking rich yet unfulfilled in life. Money isn't everything.
    - watty 8y ago
      Is Andy unfulfilled? He's wildly successful enough to do anything in the world. I'm kind of shocked how little credit he's getting here.
      - alex_hitchins 8y ago
        My comment wasn't necessarily about Andy, more that it's possible to be incredibly wealthy yet not have any feeling of satisfaction or achievement. Getting rich is nice (I'd assume) but I don't think many people feel many life goals are reached by having a big bank balance.
Nokinside 8y ago
You have to learn to walk before you run. You also need to make profits. HMD Global (Nokia smartphones) started with low-end phones and is slowly building better and better phones. They sold 10 million smartphones in 2017. Their first high-level model is promising but far from perfect. It does not matter because they are not going out of business if it flops. Next iteration will be better, one following that will be better yet.
whitepoplar 8y ago
If any prospective phone startup founders are reading, here's what I want: 1) A utility phone (i.e. maps, weather, camera, sms--leave all the extra features nobody uses out). 2) Good ergonomics, fits my hand, small. 3) Battery that lasts for at least 2-3 days. 4) No notifications possible apart from phone and sms. 5) Well-made and well-designed, like an iPhone. Assuming it's very well done, I'd pay as much for it as an iPhone.
laurex 8y ago
I tried to buy an Essential phone when it launched and it was probably the worst product rollout experience I've experienced. The company made promise after vaguely hedged promise and kept pushing back delivery, even after payment. Like, for months. People don't buy phones because they will need them in a few months, in my experience. Several top execs in the company left during the rollout. They breached data privacy by releasing very private user data (like people's driver's licences). Their customer service went offline for a while. And then when the phone finally arrived, it was super underwhelming. Poor camera and heavy as a brick. So lucky I was able to return it.

386 points by coloneltcb 8y ago

This is sad but forseeable as Essential sold poorly. It was a nice phone but it can be hard to establish a new brand right now and differentiate oneself. The only new brand of smartphone in the last four years I can think of is OnePlus that has had success. OnePlus did this by buying their popularity. By offering a ton of value initially and then raising the price each generation.

marrone12 8y ago
Their ads were terrible. They talked so much about their lack of bezel but the shots of the phone would display apps or pictures with black bars so you couldn't even tell the screen was nice.
kinsomo 8y ago
> The only new brand of smartphone in the last four years I can think of is OnePlus that has had success. OnePlus did this by buying their popularity. By offering a ton of value initially and then raising the price each generation. Aren't they a major Chinese brand? Seems like the message here is that you'd better already be big with deep pockets to wade into the smartphone market.
- xd1936 8y ago
  They're propped up by Oppo, but neither company will acknowledge it. Having weight like that behind you is definitely a competitive advantage when trying to enter this market as a new brand.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I'm actually really hoping that Light Phone 2 takes off. Seems that they're making a very smart move to specifically contrast themselves to the addictive functionality sets of other smartphones, and Light Phone 2 seems to be in a good sweet spot.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jMyles 8y ago
I'm not sure how typical I am in this regard, but I was 100% prepared to buy an essential until I found out that it didn't have 3.5mm audio.
- bronson 8y ago
  I was 100% prepared to buy an essential until I saw photos from its camera. What a disappointment.
  - mcny 8y ago
    As a Nexus owner (4, 5, 6, 7), I am 100% willing to compromise in camera quality. However, something has to give. If this phone debuted at $299 or even $349, I suspect we'd be seeing very different results. It is a shame too because I think the Amazon Fire phone failed for the very same reason. In hindsight, the ridiculous invite system that one plus had makes sense now. Maybe they were trying to limit the number of phones sold because each one sold at razor thin profits (possibly at a loss after warranty support).
- realworldview 8y ago
  I was 100% prepared to buy an Essential until i found out it was just another mobile phone.
  - realworldview 8y ago
    Downvoted for stating the obvious? $100 bazillion needs to be put in perspective.
    - realworldview 8y ago
      Damn you, humourless down-voting Philistines.
      - khedoros1 8y ago
        The Philistines thing worked with the David+Goliath comment tree...not as much here.
aphextron 8y ago
>This is sad but forseeable as Essential sold poorly. It was a nice phone but it can be hard to establish a new brand right now and differentiate oneself. I don't think it is, everyone is just too afraid of doing something radically different. Essential phone was just another generic midrange Android phablet at a top end flagship price. Until someone completely throws that paradigm away we will be stuck with the bloated nonsense that smartphones have become. I would give ANYTHING for a 5" phone with capacitive touch e-ink display, 3000mAh battery, and a barebones BSD based OS that did nothing but call, text, take pictures, gps, and text-based web browsing.
- FractalLP 8y ago
  Glad to know others exist that just want a basic device that will last a week without charging without massive bloat and apps I don't care about.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    You can get one for <$30, they're called featurephones. The rebooted Nokia 3310 claims one month of (stand by) battery life.
    - FractalLP 8y ago
      Aggh, sorry...I meant to be agreeing more with the parent comment I replied to. I want all that plus an e-ink screen running freeBSD and some very basic browsing. I don't think old Nokia dumb phones had that.
  - IncRnd 8y ago
    Just buy a dumb phone. It does exactly what you described.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Feature Phones are still a thing. You can still get such a thing. https://www.verizonwireless.com/basic-phones/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/basic-phones/ There's a whole bunch of phones that do basically what you're looking for.
celticninja 8y ago
I bought the OnePlus One when it was released and it was and still is a great phone, however their price point now places their newer offerings with the Samsung S series and Nexus/Pixel devices. It doesn't have enough going for it to warrant paying those prices. If anything it taught me that phone brands I hadn't heard of could compete with the top line ranges. After my OnePlus I tried a bunch of Chinese brands and found Xiaomi to have the best combination of features and price in the market, plus due to their ubiquity they also get plenty of custom ROM options.
kinkora 8y ago
While OnePlus (i've owned all OnePlus phones since OP1) is a great example however there is a common misconception that it was "new" at that time. The OnePlus 1 was almost identical to the Oppo Find 7A in specs, price, etc [1]. Also not commonly known, OnePlus was started by an ex-Oppo executive and is actually (majority) owned by Oppo Electronics which is the parent company of Oppo Mobile [2]. Also while price was definitely a huge factor for it's popularity, the main reason IMHO was because it was the first phone that officially supported a popular AOSP at that time - CyanogenMod (now LineageOS [3]) and it even had the logo branded on the back. Almost everyone I knew with a OP1 phone bought it simply for cyanogenmod and how fast/smooth it ran it with no issues. Remember that when OnePlus 1 was first announced in 2014, android phones were well known to be filled with vendor bloatware (Samsung Galaxy S3,S4 anyone?), expensive, became really slow over time and for those of us that wanted custom ROMs, it was relatively painful to flash/root a stable AOSP on any device. OnePlus 1 was the first phone that I had absolutely no issues with having CyanogenMod on it such that I even turned on nightly updates knowing full well that it was tested at least on a OnePlus device. So yea, I think OnePlus became popular simply because of price and their official support for CyanogenMod which meant a phone with a fast & responsive running android and most importantly, no bloatware. [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=6214&idPhone2=6327 https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=6214&idPhone2... [2] https://www.gizchina.com/2014/04/28/oneplus-responds-oppo-controversy/ https://www.gizchina.com/2014/04/28/oneplus-responds-oppo-co... [3] https://www.androidauthority.com/cyanogenmod-lineageos-654810/ https://www.androidauthority.com/cyanogenmod-lineageos-65481...
- zifnab06 8y ago
  It sold moderately well and had fantastic software (up until it was ruined by management decisions...)
- distances 8y ago
  > Also while price was definitely a huge factor for it's popularity, the main reason IMHO was because it was the first phone that officially supported a popular AOSP at that time - CyanogenMod (now LineageOS [3]) and it even had the logo branded on the back. Maybe for the tinkering crowd, but I think you vastly overestimate it's importance in becoming a sales hit. I don't have the numbers for how many people flash their phones, but I'd guess less than one in a thousand. They do advance the sales via favorable reviews and recommendations though, I'm sure. As far as I see, it was simply just the price-quality ratio that made it a success.

Analemma_ 8y ago

I said this in another thread about the Essential Phone, but I'll say it again: their strategy was 100% bass-ackwards. You can't come in at the high end of the market: that's where the big dogs live with huge advertising budgets, carrier buy-in, and solid R&D for great cameras. You can't compete with that starting from scratch. You have to be like OnePlus and the other Chinese manufacturers: start by offering a good phone at a good price that undercuts Apple and Samsung's stupidly expensive flagships, then gradually work your way up-market. That kind of disruption strategy is the only way to break into smartphones.

josh2600 8y ago
This misunderstands the problem... Carriers are the main distribution channel for phones. You can’t compete with carrier distro.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  I said that in my comment? Carriers control visibility for big, flagship phones, but the Chinese manufacturers still manage to sell decently by marketing their cheaper phones directly to consumers. That's the kind of strategy Essential should have emulated, until they got big enough to start cutting deals with carriers.
  - unexpected 8y ago
    again, I don't see how you can draw a comparison between cheap Chinese manufacturers and an SV backed startup. Can you imagine the VC pitch for that? "We want to raise capital so we can make low-margin phones and that Chinese manufacturers can easily undercut". Chinese manufacturers have more capital and have easier ways to monetize than a small startup. For that matter, Name a Cheap Chinese manufacturer that has been able to break through in the US market? No chinese phone manufacturer has more than 8% of the market in the US. Essential took their shot at trying to make a value-chain leap. They failed. That's okay. Life moves on, their engineers will be okay, and they'll get more opportunities in the future - but at least they took their shot.
- 8y ago

ajiang 8y ago

Making mass consumer flagship smartphones and going up against Samsung, Huawei, and Apple is a really tough game, but I'm sure Andy and the team at Essential knew that. I like that there are people who, in the face of giants, pick up the stone.

syedkarim 8y ago
>>I like that there are people who, in the face of giants, pick up the stone. Just upvoting this quote.
- realworldview 8y ago
  David got there first, I believe.
  - realworldview 8y ago
    Damn you, down-voting Philistines.
  - joering2 8y ago
    I honestly dont get it. What kind of stone is Google listing? Sorry just genuinely confused and search returned nothing on google stones ;(
    - praneshp 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath#Modern_usage_of_%22David_and_Goliath%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath#Modern_usage_of_%22Dav...
    - darkkindness 8y ago
      I think it was a reference to David and Goliath.
    - realworldview 8y ago
      You fell for the “Google knows everything” mantra…

ggg9990 8y ago

If Microsoft couldn’t force their way into the phone market late, no way a startup was going to.

wdn 8y ago
Microsoft made a bad decision. The 950 was too expensive. They should have take a loss at the 950 and get the phone to customer's hand. No phone no developers.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  Windows Phone was dead as a doornail long before the 950.
  - toast0 8y ago
    I really wanted Windows Phone to do better, so I may be somewhat biased, but WP 8.1 was reasonable, and they were making progress with market share at the low end. In my opinion Windows Mobile 10 fizzled out because of a few reasons; the most important reason was organizational changes meant nobody cared about Windows 10 on the phone, and the releases were pretty bad for the first year. The other important one was that for quite some time, the 950 was the only phone it was reasonable to buy that had it, and it was too expensive. The 650 was basically the same hardware as the 640, but shipped with WM 10, and was more expensive. Also, they had promised all WP8 devices would be upgradable to Windows 10, but then they pulled it back for low memory devices (which makes sense, because it was sloowwwwww, but still)
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    They were reaching 10% across Europe when Microsoft gave up on WP.
jacquesm 8y ago
Microsoft cut-and-run, they could have just stuck to it like they did with the Xbox and in the long term it probably would have worked out for them. But their initial models were rushed to market and their Nokia strategy didn't make much sense.

zamland 8y ago

I think it's the cost structure. If they were based in China like Xiaomi, you could see it monetizing differently and have another type of product.

shmerl 8y ago

I'm more interested in Librem 5. They aren't trying to beat everyone, they are addressing specific market.

mattnewport 8y ago
Yeah, the strategy seems smarter to me. Make a niche product that offers something that no other product on the market currently does but that some people really want. The Essential didn't appear to do that to me: it looked like just another high end Android phone of which there are already plenty to choose from from more established brands and didn't have anything that made it stand out as better than those other options.
flukus 8y ago
I wonder if purism would have the cash to buy Essential? It would give them a nice head start on getting android apps working with their phone.
- shmerl 8y ago
  How exactly would it benefit them though? They are working now on their hardware and their own Linux UI (for some reason they weren't satisfied with existing options like Plasma Mobile). Full supported OpenGL and Vulkan implementation for i.MX 8M would speed things up for them a lot. Another good thing would be someone implementing a browser based on Servo working on that GPU. But that again requires better OpenGL / Vulkan support for i.MX 8M (and possibly Vulkan for WebRender). I don't think Essential would help with any of that.

realworldview 8y ago

> and its Android software is nearly identical to the stock version running on Google’s Pixel phones, giving it another unique sales proposition. Is it just me?

gomox 8y ago
Very few Android phones are not full of crappy manufacturer apps. Nexus, Pixel, OnePlus and apparently, Essential are the few exceptions. So maybe not unique in the literal sense, but a differentiator anyway.
- dejv 8y ago
  Also Nokia falls into this camp. Bought Nokia 6 for my wife and it seems to be working very nicely.

jiveturkey 8y ago

hate to say it, but yeah, saw that one coming. is it me, or does $100MM seem like too small an R&D budget for a halo phone?

heurist 8y ago

They launched around the same time as the Pixel 2, with similar price and slightly worse hardware. It was unfortunate timing.

efficax 8y ago

I had never even heard of this phone until now, and I think I would've bought it over the Pixel 2. Think I'm the target audience, but word never reached me. Maybe they just whiffed on marketing.

miranda_rights 8y ago
Same. It's a stunning phone and I would've absolutely bought it. It's too bad.
on_and_off 8y ago
That's interesting, why would you prefer this phone over the pixel 2 ?
- gomox 8y ago
  Not the OP but the main con of the Pixel 2 is the price.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    This phone cost about the same when it first launched.
- miranda_rights 8y ago
  Also not OP, but not having a headphone jack is a non-starter for me. In a tie-breaker, I'd prefer a smaller company over a larger company too.
  - wilsonnb 8y ago
    The essential phone didn't have a headphone jack either.
  - laurex 8y ago
    I ended up with a OnePlus 5, which was cheaper, and IMO more attractive than the Essential, which photographed well, but had a very 80s bling-y aesthetic IRL.

_bxg1 8y ago

LarryDarrell 8y ago

Looks like I'll soon have a replacement for my Nextbit Robin I bought last year for $100.

martythemaniak 8y ago

Typing this from an Essential. I'm pretty sad. I've had four Nexuses, a Galaxy S and an iPhone and this is probably my favourite. It's camera-problems are well-known, but I really do think it's the best-designed phone on the market today. Some high notes: - the notch predates the iPhone X and looks even better because it's so small. The one on the X is so large, they may as well have not bothered. - The glass-ceramic-titanium is slippery, but a joy to behold. I love the heavy, blocky feel and love idly flipping it around in my hand (I guess I don't need a fidget spinner). The flat sides also have the advantage letting you leave it straight-up on it's sides (ie for camera shots) while simultaneously being rounded enough to be easy to hold. - flat, unbranded back and general layout is basically what every phone should have. - The module extension system is probably the best of all the ones that have been tried. I have the 360 camera and it works great. - speaking of the camera, I love 360 photos. I kickestarted a failed 360 Camera (Bubl) etc, I used to spend a ton of time making photospheres, their camera was fantastic. I love taking photos with it and people actually like looking at them. - If they had managed to get rid of the chin and shrank the notch a bit (the status bar is 2x as tall as regular Android because of it) on their second phone, it would have been a perfect. - Apart form the physical stuff, the updates came fast, the storage was generous (128GB) and the UI was uncluttered. I hope they get picked up by someone, they have a lot of good stuff going for them.

dbbk 8y ago
The notch is smaller because it's just a camera lens. The iPhone X basically has a Kinect in its notch. They're not really directly comparable.
- yathern 8y ago
  Of course you can compare them! They're both phones with a notch! You can also separately compare their face detection capability. But that doesn't disallow you from saying one notch is smaller than the other.
  - huangc10 8y ago
    I think he meant given that the features are not the same, it's hard to compare the physical aspects (and more technically, product specifications) "fairly".

mihaela 8y ago

That was expected.

wootie512 8y ago

I really liked the Essential phone and it's message. It hit the sweet spot for me running vanilla Android and being at the mid tier price point. The no branding focus really went against the big brands and convinced me the company had the right goals in mind. Unfortunately I had no reason to buy a new phone, as mine is working fine. I planned on buying the next Essential phone.

staunch 8y ago

This company was founded on the myth that the original Android OS was an important part of the history of smartphones. And that Andy Rubin was somehow an important innovator. His arrogant rant on the Essential homepage explains why they failed better than anything else could. The version of Android that Google bought was just another crappy blackberry clone that would have likely gone no where. It became Google's cover story for their effort to clone the iPhone because its in their legal interest to claim that Android was an independent effort that just happened to become an iOS-like operating system over time. But history proves otherwise. The original Android was a crappy Blackberry clone: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg/800px-HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HT... And the Android phone they released over a year after the iPhone was was a half-Blackberry half-iPhone clone monstrosity: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/HTC_Dream_Orange_FR.jpeg/1920px-HTC_Dream_Orange_FR.jpeg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/HT... From Wikipedia: An early prototype had a close resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard, but the arrival of 2007's Apple iPhone meant that Android "had to go back to the drawing board". Google later changed its Android specification documents to state that "Touchscreens will be supported", although "the Product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, therefore a touchscreen cannot completely replace physical buttons". By 2008, both Nokia and BlackBerry announced touch-based smartphones to rival the iPhone 3G, and Android's focus eventually switched to just touchscreens. The first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, also known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23, 2008.

jhall1468 8y ago
> His arrogant rant on the Essential homepage explains why they failed better than anything else could. Pretty sure it was the fact that Samsung is the primary supplier for the majority of parts so they always end up making money. But sure, the homepage is totally why millions of people didn't buy the phone.
- staunch 8y ago
  This is just poor reading comprehension on your part. I claimed that his rant explains why they failed, not that the rant itself is why they failed. I think his rant says a lot about how he views his role, company, and product. He seems conflicted about starting the company at all, dismissive of his coworkers, delusional about his role in history, and confused about what makes people want products. And yes, the fact that the product's homepage features him above the product itself is also a very bad sign.

sqldba 8y ago

Predictable from Day 0.

scarface74 8y ago

You can't make money selling Android phones in today's market. Chinese phone makers eke out small profits and Samsung makes most of its money as a component manufacturer. The average selling cost of a Samsung phone is $227 (https://www.androidauthority.com/price-gap-samsung-apple-smartphones-769772/ https://www.androidauthority.com/price-gap-samsung-apple-sma...)

pjmlp 8y ago
Personally anything over $300 is a no-go for me, a phone is not worth more than a general purpose computer.
- distances 8y ago
  For me the trick is to get the employer buy the phone. Never bought one myself, and yet get to use flagships.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Employer phones come with strings attached, I always turn mine off after work.
    - distances 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Most of my coworkers don't know my phone number, and they anyway know better than call after work hours. I also don't sync work e-mails to phone, my stuff isn't so important it can't wait until next morning.
- wilsonnb 8y ago
  A phone is a general purpose computer, and most people pay more than $300 for their laptop or desktop anyways.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    A phone is a special purpose computer. For it to be general, I should be allowed to do everything I can do with a PC, without any kind of constraints or workarounds. Exactly because most people pay more than $300 for an unconstrained device, there is little value to pay more than that for a constrained device.

aviv 8y ago

This was built to be sold to Amazon. The plan didn't pan out.

sebleon 8y ago
What makes you think it was built to be sold to Amazon?
john_moscow 8y ago
I somehow got a hunch that the recent overfunding trend made startups as inefficient as large companies are, so there's not much incentive left for acquisitions if you can simply copy it in-house for much less.
- dman 8y ago
  If a company prematurely captures their upside by raising an excessive amount of capital they create a scenario for new employees where they participate in the upside only after the desired (10x) multiple is realised on the prior raise.
  - john_moscow 8y ago
    Except if a company is inefficient, the founders may find a way to get what they want without waiting for that 10x to realize. I'm not sure though why the investors are seemingly OK with that.

thedonkeycometh 8y ago

Guess they didn't make it to exit strategy then

chejazi 8y ago

I bought this phone and the 360 camera and I can say that so far I have thoroughly enjoyed owning both and would do it again. I came from the Apple ecosystem, too.

owaislone 8y ago

I never got the hype around the Essential phone. Apart from the specs, what sets it apart from other flagship devices. I've been using a Pixel2 for last few months and it has been quite good so far. How does the Essential phone compare to Pixel/Pixel2?

sebleon 8y ago
Exactly, no clear differentiator. There's a number of online interviews where even the founders couldn't clearly articulate what was novel.
- fabrice_d 8y ago
  I think their idea was to establish a consumer brand recognized as high quality, and then expand in other spaces. But entering the Home market these days will be hard, facing Google/Amazon/Apple.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    To establish a new brand, you must offer something new. Essential phone had nothing new and had a number of drawbacks compared to its peers. Oh and it was priced like Samsung's new flagships.

Shelnutt2 8y ago

I bought the PH-1, and have been very happy with it. Their commitment to releasing source code, supporting no bloat, and stock google android (not stock aosp but close enough) made it a real winner in my book. I was looking forward to the PH-2 so I could push my relatives toward it for their upgrade cycles. With Amazon going full force on the Alexa hardware (1st and 3rd party) but their only attempt at a phone a failure, I wonder if they will try to pickup Essential and go for a Essential Fire Phone-2?

bspn 8y ago
While I love my PH-1 and want the concept to continue, I can't help but feel that this would be a disaster. Amazon would almost surely ruin the stock Android experience by forcing its ugly bloatware on you to ensure that you consume Amazon content and services.

msmith10101 8y ago

Makes sense. Hardware/software overall is monopoly-determined. If you are looking for an exit or a business model in the startup world you have to do something unique. This whole scheme was dead in the water, IMO.

prklmn 8y ago
I think this company is very emblematic of the tech bubble. Someone with a name and not much more is able to raise a staggering $330m with nearly nothing to show for it down the line, and 95% of people paying attention could have predicted it was going to be a flop.

robot 8y ago

I don't think it was just me who thought this was a really bad idea from the start. Iphone launched at a time when there were no decent phones with capabilities it added. In presence of polished iphone 7s and other android phones what does this device really add?

uramoty 8y ago

be excited.

glemmaPaul 8y ago

What about Amazon picking this company ? Seems interesting for their Fire line

sengork 8y ago

From the mobile marketplace ecosystem point of view this isn't good for the consumer. That being said the entry barrier is quite high for anyone, even essential...

afterburner 8y ago

Wish the first one had had an OLED screen, but I guess that's impossible to get.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

Is there a disconnect between the Silicon Valley elite and the population, when it comes to hardware and privacy? I feel, more and more, that my stance is anachronistic.

thanatos_dem 8y ago
In which direction? Apple is the “elite” or “luxury” brand and also one of the few to take privacy dead seriously. I think the general population is more happy to give up privacy for cool features built using their data than you may think (unless I’m reading your comment backwards. It is phrased rather ambiguously)
jstewartmobile 8y ago
disconnect would be an understatement

dingo_bat 8y ago

Their phone was literally set up for failure. It had nothing new to offer over any of the established players, initial price was among the flagships, it had a broken camera, no headphone jack, buggy software. Basically inferior in every way and priced the same as Samsung's S8.

trumped 8y ago
It is directly unlockable for easy rooting and modding, unlike most phones... that's a big plus. (there's only the Pixel, OnePlus and maybe only 1 or 2 others like that)
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  Ok that does sound valuable. But maybe too much of a niche. Most people are fine with the OS apple/Samsung ship with the phone.

notatoad 8y ago

There has been one successful model for new entrants into the smartphone market, since the iPhone: start with a low-budget phone, and progressively raise your prices and move to more premium products as you build trust among consumers and retailers. It's what OnePlus did, it's what google did with nexus, it's what Xiaomi and Huawei have been doing. Andy Rubin thinking he could skip this process and just jump in at the top of the market was pure hubris, and as much as I was hoping to see them succeed, it's a little bit reassuring that they failed. Success takes hard work, and essential skipped a lot of that.

hugs 8y ago
Were the Google Nexus phones considered low-budget?
- jimmies 8y ago
  I have owned 10+ phones during the last 10 years, and the Nexus phones were only ones I bought new. - Nexus 5 was low cost and amazing for the price. I was able to forgive every issue it had. And another international friend also asked me to buy it & ship it to her. - The 5X was not low cost, but then it could also be bought cheaply through the Google Fi "loophole." I know at least one other person IRL who bought it through the loophole.
  - sagethesagesage 8y ago
    What was that loophole, exactly?
    - jimmies 8y ago
      Normally the Nexus 5x was $400, but the cost of buying it through the Project Fi and cancel right away was $250. Now the loophole is with the Moto X4.
- stirlo 8y ago
  Of course, the Nexus 4 cost $299 on launch

purism4thewin 8y ago

No headphone jack, no removable battery, no sd card. Any one of those is a deal-breaker for me.

monetus 8y ago
Mind if I get your opinion on the librem 5?

kirillzubovsky 8y ago

I wonder if Essential is just not a very popular smartphone, or if Samsung/Apple colluded to pressure suppliers in making it 100x hard for E to get anything done. Either is equally probable.

sebleon 8y ago
It was not popular, they had dismal number of orders when they launched. I’m curious what suggested that suppliers caused problems - one of their investors was actually Foxconn.

forkLding 8y ago

I think aside from the Essential product itself, the smartphone market is basically at a mature stage now just like the laptop market, so for a new product to successfully enter the market, it would need a lot more money to be wasted for marketing and production just to compete with the giants. Mature market, smartphone users still growing but not as fast as before: https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smart... Microsoft apparently had ~1 billion dollar loss in first year in North America region while promoting and selling the Windows Surface which illustrates the difficulty in selling in a competitive mature market with high stakes. Microsoft makes loss when selling Surfaces: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476544/tablets/with--1-7-billion-in-surface-losses--is-it-time-for-microsoft-to-pull-the-plug-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476544/tablets/with--... Also noteworthy, reputedly global smartphone sales in Q4-2017 sees downturn: https://www.ft.com/content/6ef7e850-17e6-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 https://www.ft.com/content/6ef7e850-17e6-11e8-9376-4a6390add...

kappi 8y ago

This is the problem when startups are founded based only on the founders name. Foolish idea shouldn't have got a penny of investment.

m3kw9 8y ago

What was he think man? Maybe he saw how easy XiaoMi made it look and wanted a piece

gwbas1c 8y ago

Is it just me, or how come I never heard of this phone?

abhiminator 8y ago

Really disappointing to hear. I was super excited last year when Essential announced their foray into the smartphone hardware business -- always exciting to see new entrants, especially one founded by Andy Rubin nonetheless. Also worth noting is that Essential phone (v1.0; 2017) was the first device to include a notch around the front camera -- a revolutionary feature and a head-turner at the time, with other big players following suite down the year. [0] I'd personally be pleased if Essential gets credit at least for making top centered notches on smartphone devices mainstream; would now be interesting to see how they approach their AOSP-based OS given the abrupt end to their 'hardware manufacturer' ambitions. As many others have already pointed out, Essential's (relative) failure shows how saturated and competitive smartphone hardware industry has become -- with barriers of entry being unimaginably high -- for even a multiple VC funded startup. [0] https://mashable.com/2017/05/30/essential-phone-android-andy-rubin/ https://mashable.com/2017/05/30/essential-phone-android-andy...

telltruth 8y ago
I'd personally be pleased if Essential gets credit at least for making top centered notches on smartphone devices mainstream What? Notch is a boneheaded design compromise, not an achievement!

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

"The startup, part of Rubin’s incubator Playground Global, has raised about $300 million from several investors [...]"

hardwaresofton 8y ago

After watching FirefoxOS fail I don't think I can put faith in another interesting-looking mobile OS/phone again.

ReverseCold 8y ago
I actually think Firefox OS would be a lot more viable if they tried to make it today. A lot of things are webapps or JavaScript apps, so app support might have been less of an issue. There's also blockchain which exploded, leading to a lot more developers with good funding willing to work on and/or donate to efforts like FirefoxOS. Hardware support, on the other hand...
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  It's really too bad they didn't stick with it. Mozilla is exactly the company I most trust to guide the software that is going on my phone, and the browser I use. I'm not sure they would make it today even if they tried, the management and the goals of the project were what drove it into the ground IMO. They might have done better if they focused on the high margin cell phone market -- grab the blackberry and privacy conscious market who have money to blow. At least we got a faster/better FF out of it -- then again so many sites are chrome optimized (and don't necessarily even test FF) that I'm a little worried. Android is open source but doesn't feel like it in practice (especially if you buy a vendor build)... And it's surprisingly hard to find a vendor that will just give you a phone that can be easily wiped to put stock android on.

kkotak 8y ago

And yet again, the masses are infatuated with the royal wedding/funeral.

j0e1 8y ago

I was really looking forward to the PH-2. For me their USP was that the phone had no logo and that they sold them as being non-affiliated with any big corp software-though that may not be entirely true, it did raise my hopes of replacing the software with something more 'open' and just benefit from good hardware (easier said than done). I think this a sign I move to a dumb phone.

thelastidiot 8y ago

That was written all along. What a waste of time and money.

xHopen 8y ago

It was a piece of crap.

pavlov 8y ago

The company raised money at a $1.2 billion USD valuation in August 2017: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/14/16142772/andy-rubin-essential-phone-valuation-billion-dollars-unicorn-value https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/14/16142772/a... "Fail fast" seems to apply.

Ice_cream_suit 8y ago

Wonder if this has anything to do with it: "Former Android Head Left Due To Sexual Misconduct Claims" https://www.channelnews.com.au/former-android-head-left-due-to-harassment-claims/ https://www.channelnews.com.au/former-android-head-left-due-... "The woman who filed the complaint reportedly worked in the Android division run by Rubin, which would make any personal relationship between the two violate Google policy; the company requires employees to disclose such relationships so that one of them can be moved to another division. Rubin left the Android department in March 2013 to lead Google’s efforts in robotics, but the HR investigation is said to have taken place in 2014. That investigation, according to The Information, concluded that “Rubin’s behavior was improper and showed bad judgement.”" https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16714264/andy-rubin-leaves-essential-google-inappropriate-conduct https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16714264/andy-rubin-leav...

telltruth 8y ago

In my mind, Andy Rubin is likely be one of the most unfortunate tech personality I'm aware of. So here is a guy who grows up dreaming about robots. But instead of doing that he ends up doing startup to make money so he can eventually do robots. He spends best years of his life building phone OS by walking a fine line to clone a work of a genius. And a pretty shitty clone at that. But the guy is so in to robots that he ends up calling this thing "Android" even though its not android. Thing takes off despite being shitty clone because Microsoft had become incompetent to his enormous luck. He becomes rich, powerful and eventually able to demand to get off the shitty clone train to actually do robotics. He goes to GoogleX with essentially carte blank to make his dreams finally come true. The guy goes out and buys up every cool robotics startup out there, spends billions and surrounds himself with some of the best talent on planet. And then he leaves it all to rott. But still... he is ultra rich, can do whatever he wants and he still has some of his productive years left. What does he do? Another phone startup! And again just a clone with minor tweaks at that.

Jyaif 8y ago
The dude ended up with hundreds of million with -as you say- a shitty clone. How is he unfortunate?
- alex_hitchins 8y ago
  You can still be stinking rich yet unfulfilled in life. Money isn't everything.
  - watty 8y ago
    Is Andy unfulfilled? He's wildly successful enough to do anything in the world. I'm kind of shocked how little credit he's getting here.
    - alex_hitchins 8y ago
      My comment wasn't necessarily about Andy, more that it's possible to be incredibly wealthy yet not have any feeling of satisfaction or achievement. Getting rich is nice (I'd assume) but I don't think many people feel many life goals are reached by having a big bank balance.

Nokinside 8y ago

You have to learn to walk before you run. You also need to make profits. HMD Global (Nokia smartphones) started with low-end phones and is slowly building better and better phones. They sold 10 million smartphones in 2017. Their first high-level model is promising but far from perfect. It does not matter because they are not going out of business if it flops. Next iteration will be better, one following that will be better yet.

whitepoplar 8y ago

If any prospective phone startup founders are reading, here's what I want: 1) A utility phone (i.e. maps, weather, camera, sms--leave all the extra features nobody uses out). 2) Good ergonomics, fits my hand, small. 3) Battery that lasts for at least 2-3 days. 4) No notifications possible apart from phone and sms. 5) Well-made and well-designed, like an iPhone. Assuming it's very well done, I'd pay as much for it as an iPhone.

laurex 8y ago

I tried to buy an Essential phone when it launched and it was probably the worst product rollout experience I've experienced. The company made promise after vaguely hedged promise and kept pushing back delivery, even after payment. Like, for months. People don't buy phones because they will need them in a few months, in my experience. Several top execs in the company left during the rollout. They breached data privacy by releasing very private user data (like people's driver's licences). Their customer service went offline for a while. And then when the phone finally arrived, it was super underwhelming. Poor camera and heavy as a brick. So lucky I was able to return it.