Now, this is shitty news to go into the holiday weekend with. The Essential Phone PH1 might be the only phone to come out from the company.
According to a report from Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg, the planned Essential Phone 2 will be canceled and they’re looking to put the company up for sale. This sucks as I was looking forward to the 2nd iteration of the device to see if they learned from their mistakes. The company’s CEO Andy Rubin addressed the report by acknowledging that they are canceling some projects in favor of focusing on game-changing home & mobile products.
The Essential Phone launched at $699 back in August and has dropped by $200 since then as well as got some updates for the camera & software. Reports have the company only selling around 150,000 phones which would have put them in the negative. Add that w/ high-level executives, as well as hardware/software engineers, leaving at an alarming rate for a company that is about a year old.
I think Essential had the potential to be similar to OnePlus as they had a nice little following that could’ve grown into something bigger. It seems like the public never got past the initial price point and not so great reviews at launch.
We’ll track the situation and update you all as more info becomes official. Is anyone else pissed off at the possible end of Essential?
