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Businesses The Almighty Buck

Andy Rubin's Essential is Shutting Down (engadget.com) 64

Essential, Android creator Andy Rubin's high-profile phone startup, is shutting down. From a report: As a result of the shutdown, Essential says it will no longer support the Essential Phone with further security updates or customer support. Additionally, Newton Mail, which Essential acquired when it purchased developer CloudMagic in 2018, will stop working on May 1st. On its blog, Essential cites Project Gem, the tallish concept phone the company teased late last year, and its inability to find a "clear path" to get the device to consumers as the main reason for the shutdown. The startup had raised about $330 million.
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Andy Rubin's Essential is Shutting Down

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  • by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:39PM (#59720454)

    This is like the third company Andy Rubin is ruining.
    Kin
    Microsoft Phone
    Now Essential

    he is the Kryptonite of Phone companies and yet VCs keep giving him money

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Oh, yeah. And Android. This guy's batting average is terrible.

      • Agreed. This guy just shouldn't touch phones. I can see if it were somewhat successfully and then later flopped due to competition.. but to flop on all fronts is just bad business all around.
        • by ghoul ( 157158 )

          All the success of Android does not get close to balancing even 10% of the damage done to the phone ecosystems by Kin wasting 2 years of crucial time for Microsoft.

          In 2006 I had a decent 3 in 1 (As smartphones were called then) running Windows Mobile 5. The only thing it did not have was a capacitive touch screen where you could use fingers and had a resistive touch screen where you used a stylus

          In 2007 iPhone came out with not even half the functionality of Windows phone but it had a capacitive touch scr

          • Do you even math, Bro?

            Zero times zero is zero, wasting years on windows phones sells the same number as doing whatever nonsense Internet Guy assumes they do at those work places.

            • by ghoul ( 157158 )

              Take an English class or dont type when drunk

              • I'm a native English speaker who tests to within the 99th percentile in language comprehension.

                If you were unable to understand my words, or you disliked the stylistic flair that I applied, that does not in any way imply that I would benefit from taking English classes.

                Perhaps you thought you learned English, but you actually learned Continental Pidgin.

                • by ghoul ( 157158 )

                  No of people sPeaking English

                  India 350 million
                  US 300 million (the rest are monolingual in Spanish or German)
                  UK 50 million

                  and it goes down.

                  Any Language's standard form is defined by its most commonly spoken dialect which for English is Indian.
                  Unless you speak English with an Indian accent you basically speak a dialect of English or as you like to call it Pidgin..

                  • If you've already peaked, I recommend drinking a glass of warm milk. It sounds silly, but it will help. A lot. Also, detach the coax from your modem until you've come all the way down. You'll thank me tomorrow.

          • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            And now we have an ecosystem where 30% of all software sales goes to Apple (Even Microsoft never took 30% of your sales just to run on Windows and use Visual Studio for development)

            No, because you had to sell your Windows Mobile program yourself on your own website. You could use a store that sold your app for you, but they generally acted like retail stores that took 50% of the price. Or you could try to roll it yourself and hopefully have people use Paypal to avoid having to open a merchant account.

            You st

            • by ghoul ( 157158 )

              Some of what you say is true. But the problem with Apple's appstore model is that its not a choice. Even developers with the tech savvy to run their own distribution system have to pay the Apple Tax. If Apple had done what they did for Mac Desktop Apps - an appstore which takes care of everything you mentioned for a 30% cut or you are free to roll your own distribution , than I would not complain about Apple taking 30% but they did not give that choice to iOS devs. They were able to make this draconian deci

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Oh, yeah. And Android. This guy's batting average is terrible.

        Well, with the non-Android projects he didn't have the benefit of Eric Schmidt handing him the pre-release iPhone to mimic, so his failure is totally understandable.

      • Except that his Android was a shitty copy of a Blackberry until the iPhone launched, then his Android was a shitty copy of an iPhone. He left, and Android then turned into what it is today.

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Your view of Android is only skin deep. Internally, it was a huge step forward for mobile development.

      • Rather indicates that Android succeeded in spite of Rubin.

    • This is like the third company Andy Rubin is ruining: Kin, Microsoft Phone, Now Essential
      He is the Kryptonite of Phone companies and yet VCs keep giving him money

      Probably not ruining his bank account though: "The startup had raised about $330 million."

      (Yes, I know he doesn't get all that, but I imagine he gets paid pretty well by his failures ...)

      • by afidel ( 530433 )

        Hell, he got paid $90M to GTFO by Google even though they had clear reason to fire him for cause, he's clearly set for life.

        • by ghoul ( 157158 )

          He is probably the only guy who got paid 90 Million for getting a blowjob. Generally guys end up paying for them.

    • by _merlin ( 160982 )

      Kin

      You can't blame Rubin for that. Kin was the mess Microsoft made after buying Danger Incorporated and completely failing to understand why people bought their products. You can blame Andy Lees for alienating the existing developers with his insistence that they drop Java and run a full Microsoft stack on Windows CE. Roz Ho also had a major role in that screw-up after requesting to be transferred there. She'd been pretty successful running MacBU and getting MS Office for Mac to a state where people act

      • by ghoul ( 157158 )

        Damn I think you are right . I did confuse them. Probably owe Rubin an apology.

        So just to be clear Andy Rubin is the one who fucks colleagues and Andy Lee is the one who fucked Microsoft?

    • How do I find VCs like this? I guarantee it would only take me 10 million dollars to prove I don't know how to run a phone company.

      • by ghoul ( 157158 )

        Thats your first mistake. VCs are not like people playing the lottery, they are the gamblers at the high stakes tables. If you ask for 10 million they are not interested. Ask for 10 billion or rather 1 billion for 10% of the company and they would be interested.

  • by Ken_g6 ( 775014 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:44PM (#59720478)

    "Essential" always sounded like a name for a very simple, very cheap product. Nothing flashy, just the essentials. Certainly not the premium phone they made.

    Maybe now some Chinese company can buy the name and produce stuff like that.

  • so newton mail will quit working again when Essential close up shop. Sure glad I did not renew my yearly subscription last week. I got burned when cloudmagic bit the dust but was glad when Essential bought them. Going to miss alexa reading my emails using their skill. I wonder how many did renew their subscription since newton only restarted last February.

  • by Faw ( 33935 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:55PM (#59720548)

    .. not that weird abomination they tried for their second attempt. The PH-1 is beautiful, Make it as big as the S10+, add a better camera (I found id good enough). I would have bought it. I bought the first one and loved it, I guess I have a collectors edition now.

    • Agreed. The only thing I wanted from a PH2 would have been 5G wireless. And I never came CLOSE to using all 128GB of RAM on my PH1.

  • Newton mail (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:57PM (#59720566)

    Gotta love email middleware. Oh, and given that Newton was consolidating your email onto their own servers, your email messages and various email passwords will probably end up with whichever entity buys the husk of Essential.

  • The February update did something bizarre to the boot image so lots of Essential community tooling doesn't work for it. This has the Bluetooth RCE fix which is important.

    Since they promised everybody updates through August 2020 as a condition of purchase, it sounds like there will be plenty of creditors in the bankruptcy deal.

    They need to at least open their proprietary blobs and QAM repair keys - they have no value to anybody except the community of users.

    LineageOS has mediocre support which could get bet

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Since they promised everybody updates through August 2020 as a condition of purchase, it sounds like there will be plenty of creditors in the bankruptcy deal.

      Thanks for the laugh. If you think they'll get anything at all from owed promises, I got a bridge to sell you...

  • "and its inability to find a "clear path" to get the device to consumers"

    Did these fucks not figure out what "exclusive" fucking means?

    And they did the exclusive with Sprint too. This should be a master class in how to fuck yourself over as a business man!

  • Whats the point of the Essential again? Its just another overpriced form over function iphone wannabe android slab in a sea of iphone wannabe android slabs. What does it bring to the table that others don't? Now if it did something special, like maybe be a bit more ruggedized than others or perhaps even bring modularity to the mainstream without having ADHD like Google or being as hippydippy and needlessly expensive as the FairPhone I'd be listening.
  • I'm very sorry to read this, because I _REALLY_ love my Essential PH1 phone. After 2 1/2 years, it still works perfectly; even the battery is even still pretty good.

    Frankly, the only thing I ever wanted from a PH2 model phone would have been 5G wireless.

  • Apple, Samsung, Google and LG
    Have really made the Premium fancy phone market rather saturated.

    Now there is still markets, but not for these Premium Fancy Phones, but for more utilitarian phones. Phones that are more affordable, Phones that offer more connectors, phones that are more rugged, phones for gaming, phones for phone calls (nah).

  • Essentially, they are shutting down.
  • I'm an independent app developer (not affiliated with Google or Essential). I go through a lot of phones and have a ton of test devices. I used one for about 8 months, which is a very long time for me. This phone was actually pretty good in my opinion.

    Pros:
    * First notch design with edge-to-edge screen (3 sides + traditional bottom bezel). Still higher screen-body-ratio than any iPhone today.
    * Same bloat-free Android OS as Google Pixels, minus Google's additional bloat added to Pixels. No additional s

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