Essential Phone 2 reportedly cancelled as company pivots to smart home products

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Some disconcerting news for fans of the Essential Phone. A report by Bloomberg states that the Andy Rubin backed  startup is scrapping plans for a successor to the Essential Phone and is also looking for a buyer to offload the company and assets.

The Essential Phone was one of the first devices to showcase a near bezel-less design and still has the most miniscule 'notch' housing the front-facing camera.

Made of high-grade Titanium and gorilla glass, Essential built-in a modular capability to attach accessories (it also created the smallest 360' camera as one of those accessories). Created because Android originator Andy Rubin didn't see much differentiation in the Android marketplace, Essential Phone was supposed to be the linchpin for various products including smart home accessories.

We always have multiple products in development at the same time and we embrace canceling some in favor of the ones we think will be bigger hits. We are putting all of our efforts towards our future, game-changing products, which include mobile and home products.

— Andy Rubin (@Arubin) May 24, 2018

The Essential Phone PH-1 came off a shaky start with poor camera performance and buggy software. The product was also overpriced and also sold through limited channels (Here in Canada, TELUS was the exclusive seller, TELUS discontinued selling the the PH-1 early this month, signaling poor sales).

Essential has been one of the better Android smartphone makers and have, to their credit, pushed out lots of software updates to improve the user experience as well as fix camera issues. Essential Phone is one of the first devices ro receive Android Oreo and is also on the short list of devices that received the Android P beta.

As per Bloomberg and Andy Rubin via Twitter, Essential is shifting its focus on a smart home product. I hope this doesn't mean they will abandon the Essential Phone PH-1 (150,000 units have apparently been sold) and the users who have taken a risk with the company and invested in their vision of an alternative Android experience.

Source: Bloomberg