Essential lets go of 30 per cent of its staff

A year ago, Essential was the most exciting new entrant in the smartphone space. Their innovative yet undercooked Essential PH-1 brought a new level of luxury and design thinking to the market plus it had the smallest notch on a edge-to-edge display, something that's easy to overlook in today's notch riddled smartphone market.

Essential reportedly let go of 30 per cent of its staff as it continues to wrap up operations. The cuts were mostly to its sales and hardware divisions after the company was unable to find a buyer. Essential cancelled its follow up to the PH-1 and said it would focus on smart home product although nothing has materialized.

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Looks like Essential has a patent for a no-notch screen with a pop-up camera

If you’ve been following the news from MWC 2018, you’ve probably heard of the Vivo Apex, an almost bezel-less concept phone with a pop-up front camera. It seems they aren’t the first ones to think of the idea. A Twitter exchange between an Essential fan named Rafael and Essential CEO Andy Rubin shows off that the company has a patent for the technology. Rafael sent over a Gizmodo article about the Apex and Rubin responded with a link to a Google Patents page that showed Essential filing a US patent back in May 2016 entitled "Apparatus and method to maximize the display area of a mobile device." A follow-up patent is currently pending.

It shows basically the exact thing Vivo showed off and the patent was granted in August 2017. Another implementation shown has the camera placed on the top-left corner of the screen and acts as a permanent camera icon. But, of course, we must remember that even if a patent has been filed it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll come to a device soon. But if Rubin was willing to talk about it, perhaps our odds of seeing one in the future might be more likely than we think.

Source: Android Police

Andy Rubin takes leave from Essential for ‘personal reasons’ as investigation over ‘inappropriate’ Google relationship surfaces

The latest sexual harassment/misconduct to allegations hits a prominent name in the tech scene. Essential founder and CEO Andy Rubin is subject to a new report from The Information that claims Rubin left Google shortly after an internal investigation found he had an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman who worked under him in the Android division. While relationships are allowed within Google, they needed to disclose their relationship so one of them can be transferred out to another division or department. It isn’t clear what the relationship was like but during the duration of it the unidentified woman filed a complaint with Google’s human resources department. And shortly after this, Rubin left the company.

Rubin’s official spokesperson Mike Sitrick refutes The Information’s story saying, “Any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual. Mr. Rubin was never told by Google that he engaged in any misconduct while at Google and he did not, either while at Google or since.” However, after this story broke, it’s been announced that Essential’s founder and CEO is taking a leave of absence for “personal reasons” and Essential’s President Niccolo de Masi will be in charge.

Source: The Verge + Android Central

The father of Android stages a comeback with the Essential Phone

Andy Rubin is considered the father of Android, being the originator what is now the leading mobile platform. Well, after some years in the wilderness, Rubin is back with the Essential Phone. Basically a QHD 5.7-inch edge-to-edge display wrapped around a titanium and ceramic back, powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage plus a 3040 mAh battery.

This device will cost $700, is available in the US for now and is out to challenge the top tier smartphones of 2017. How will the Essential Phone fare against present and upcoming competition? That depends on various things like availability, its ability to differentiate itself in the market and whether or not consumers will find it an attractive option.