Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 30% of Staff | Hacker News Reader

Android Creator’s Startup Essential Products Cuts About 30% of Staff

bloomberg.com

81 pointsminimaxir104 comments

I'm super interested in the rumors that Essential is working on "an anti-smartphone with a small screen that relies primarily on voice commands."[1] The world needs more sub-5" phones now that Sony isn't making the Compact phones, and Apple isn't making a successor to the iPhone SE.

1. https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/10/10/essential-ai-phone-...

Palm has been resurrected as a brand for tiny phones:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-the-...

Well, there's small phone and then there's a too small phone. From the pics it looks like the latter. But I can still try it as long as it

- has an excellent battery life (with decent mobile and GPS usage)

- and it doesn't track the life out of me like Google's Android.

Ah, Just checked it's Android and the company is from China. I think I will just stick to my SE and after that I hope an iPhone 8 (4.7") will last me couple more years. Then we'll see.

Which is cool until you find out that it's $350.

Can you explain what you mean? Are you saying you think the size of the display is a primary cost center for phones, so small screen phones would have a substantially cheaper bill of materials?

> Are you saying you think the size of the display is a primary cost center for phones, so small screen phones would have a substantially cheaper bill of materials?

Not exactly. The way this phone is being marketed is very strange - this phone is designed as an "add-on phone", it can only be used as an add-on to an existing line.

As a standalone phone $350 isn't too bad, but asking people to pay $350 in addition to whatever they want to pay for their "main" phone is a little much.

They're in Apple Watch territory with this pricing and I don't think they have the ecosystem to demand that kind of price.

I've had it explained to me that one of the reasons that phones have gotten so large is so that manufacturers can push an increase in the battery size. While the display is the primary user of the battery, it is not a linear relationship and by increasing the surface area for the display the battery volume is increased and thus the battery charge capacity.

That little "Palm" phone only has an 800mAh battery. Smaller display and GPU would help conserve battery but not enough -- it won't last long between charges.

Which is too bad as I really like small phones.

If it's good, it's worth it. I have a phone about this size and it doesn't do anything other than SMS, phone calls, and Snake; and while I would lose the tactile feel of real buttons, if TCL's "Palm" had even one twelfth the standby time of my current phone, and competent enough as a standalone device, it would be worth considering at $350.

I don't get why people (including TCL and Verizon, it seems!) are calling it a "second phone", as though everyone in their right mind is reading novels on their telephones. At least half of the people I know are considering switching, or already have switched, to a feature phone because new phones have awful, unpredictable battery life and are unwieldy in size (and recently, because most of the things they thought they gained from smartphones seem to come with massive privacy strings attached).

The biggest problem with the TCL Palm, to me (if the standby time is okay, on the order of four days, and it probably isn't with the size of the battery), is that it is locked to Verizon, and only available as a secondary phone; this means I just can't buy or use it right now.

Yep I keep watching reviews of it and getting infuriated that I can't get it as a regular unlocked phone. I was happy with the size of my Palm Pre/Pre2/Pre3. I'd pay decent money for a phone like that w/ upgraded specs and a good camera. Don't need a big screen.

I think it’s possible that apple and others are still working on a small phone. Demand for small phones has increased in the past year or two and the lead time for development of new phones afaik is 2+ years. It’ll take time for other phone makers to respond to the demand.

I also have a faint hope that they might update SE finally and that they might do that with a longer update cycle because obviously SE users are not the people who will buy a shiny iPhone every year spending $1000 and going for all the bells and whistles. But then I think this is just hope and Apple has really moved on to phones that "most" of the people want to buy.

Two things I want in a smartphone, that seem to be mutually exclusive (at least in terms of what is being manufactured): small size and an excellent camera. There are plenty of small phones, but they're all budget devices and thus have a half-baked camera. I would be happy if these rumours were true

How about also 5 years of security updates like Apple's products?

The Sony compacts are pretty good camera-wise, but the most recent compacts are bigger than the old ones. The old ones had 4.6" screens, now they are growing to over 5".

it's pointless to compare size by screen size, Sony phones are infamous for large bezels, so my 5" phone had same body as 4.6" Sony and it's still same, Sony always two years behind in design, you can add there also HTC, one of the reasons both of these brands (smartphone divisions) are on the edge of bankruptcy

A smartwatch?

Impractical to many, you still look like an idiot talking to your rist, just a 3.5" android from a major OEM (good battery and build, no spyware) will suffice.

> Impractical to many, you still look like an idiot talking to your rist

No more or less than you look like an idiot talking to a device in your hand (of course, if he function can be served with voice response, and you have earbuds/headset, you don't have to talk “to” either device in a visually apparently the way, so it's moot.)

Yes, talking to your device in hand the same, perhaps it's more normal in some places in the world than others?

Agreed. I feel like they are all trying to hard to invent something new instead of just listening and talking to users. Small format phone practically doesn't exist. Palm concept is nice for example but way to expensive for second phone. Also, not nearly as much focused on essential services you would use this phone for.

I’d love a square phone; the iPhone Xs Max feels to me too tall but not wide enough.

what is this, a phone for ants?

I'm a bit sad to see this, but it wasn't hard to predict.

Essential launched its PH1, which was design-wise ahead of the curve. But, they didn't really seem to listen to or predict the market.

First, there was no headphone jack. That's controversial, but you've probably lost what I'd guess at least 10% of your potential market by doing so(potentially as high as 40%).

Second, the camera at launch was not good. That's probably what is most important to most people. I've heard it's gotten better, but a bit late.

Last, and most importantly, it was absolutely overpriced. It brought nothing to the table to warrant its price, and probably should have been sub $500 at launch.

Each of these points can be nitpicked by saying "well Samsung/Apple/LG/Oneplus did it", but Essential is not that. They are an unknown startup company with no consumer trust. You cannot expect people to give up features and pay Samsung prices before they know who you are.

/rant

I doubt the headphone jack had much of an impact on the market, but the go-to-market strategy just wasn't there (Sprint isn't a tier 1 carrier), the camera got poor reviews, and their first accessory, the 360 camera, just wasn't compelling enough, even for the enthusiast market.

There is no reasonable medium to top end phone that is almost pure android and has a headphone jack. it's just stupid to drop it, those who want the headphone jack would buy such a unicorn phone that would lead to it being a real competitive advantage.

Bought the phone and sold it at a loss more than a few months later for less than half. Camera is terrible and it did not at all improve with time. Screen to phone ratio was amazing but another drawback nobody mentions was the weight. for a 5 inch phone it weighed more than my previous Nexus 6p. Carrying it in my pocket made it heavy.

FWIW, yes.

The camera is awful, and it is a dense brick to carry around.

I am using a PH-1 as my phone, a clearance sale item promoted by Amazon this past summer. I believe Amazon is a major investor in Essential. Looks like another fail for them, in terms of Amazon becoming a smartphone creator with a viable mass-market product.

I still believe there's room for another premium US smartphone besides Pixel, Apple. China has Xiaomi and Europe has totally lost the smartphone race. Open source software, hardware initiatives have also failed to attract attention (Ubuntu, Firefoxos, ..)

Essential or anyone needs some innovative new features or 'feel' to it.

I don't think there's much room for another player. Not at this stage. Even Google with the Pixel is a drop in the ocean in terms of hardware sales.

Truth is, Essential simply had no chance. The segment of users caring about build materials and craftsmanship is also the one who care about stuff like camera quality, software quality and features and when the PH-1 launched, its camera sucked, it had less features than other flagships and it was riddled with cellular reception issues. Price wasn't cheap either.

If it wasn't for Andy Rubin, there's no way this startup would have received the investment they did.

There's definitely room for a premium smartphone beyond Google and Apple! Samsung devices running Android seems to own that space pretty effectively.

>room for a premium _US_ smartphone

Samsung has a strong US market position, running mostly US-made software on hardware fabricated and assembled elsewhere.

At this point Samsung's phones are about as American as Google's or Apple's.

The OS on ph1 is ideal. I want zero crapware, and security updates, and for gods sake give me a headphone. That's going to be so rare it's going to be an actual competitive advantage. But at least no crapware is a big advantage.

I understand where you're coming from. Headphones are common! Let me use them, you assholes! And for love of fsck, no shitty vendor replacement for apps that are actually decent.

With all that said, it might be worth considering that recent events at Essential suggest that this might not be the significant competitive edge that might be hoped for. It's abstractly possible that our tastes in phones might not be an accurate reflection of the wider market.

Except for the fact that, you know, it's a Korean company... but sure.

How smartphones do Google and Apple actually produce in US?

So, I think I was misunderstood here... I only piped up because the GP explicitly said "US" in relation to a failing US based company. Saying that Samsung fills that gap makes no sense, regardless of where the phones are manufactured.

In one sense, you're absolutely right. It's a Korean-owned company and therefore obviously in no way American.

In another sense, the ownership of Samsung is irrelevant. The actual phones have roughly the same level of US-origin content and US-local labor as those phones famously labeled "Designed by Apple in California".

How was it design-wise ahead of the curve? All I see is yet another flat rectangle. With a notch. Ugh.

It's a shame that no one really tries to innovate on mobile device design any more in order to target niche markets. But perhaps the economics of mass production mean that's no longer a viable strategy.

I miss all the different shapes. Nokia alone had so many different shapes in the early 2000s, different layouts, wide ranges of colour ect.

It's just rectangles now

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bryanthui/3881160306/

> With a notch

I believe it was one of (if not) the first with a notch.

The notch isn't really a design feature though... assuming you're being sarcastic.

One man's notch is another's "edge to edge display". The cutout allows a higher display to body ratio, which some people value.

In other words, an unfortunate trade-off which exists due to a technical limitation. No one _wants_ a notch.

And the software ecosystem. If the millions of 3rd party apps only support rectangles, it’s hard to do something different.

What is there to innovate on, design wise? I'm not saying there's nothing, but a lot of people bemoan the "lack of innovation" in mobile device design, but never say what they'd like to see, design wise.

Still can't figure out what space they are looking to occupy.

The Pixel phones have staked out the expensive-but-good market for "pure" Android snobs.

Samsung has staked out the best-hardware-early market with deep ties to cell providers.

OnePlus has staked out the cheaper-but-surprisingly-good market previously held by the Nexus line.

Where does Essential fit? Rubin never answered this question. Outside of a few tech people, no one knows Essential exists...even OnePlus runs ads.

I suspect Rubin thought he could just build some brand buzz and flip the whole company?

The Essential phone handily beats OnePlus at $500 or $450. It was priced at $750 I believe on launch and failed completely there.

Essential also seemingly spent a lot of time, money, and internal phone volume on their add on feature. A complete waste as anybody with an ounce of sense could have told you. Drop that work, add in an audio jack or a second USBC port, sell at $500 and they would have done reasonably well for a first product.

I'd get the OnePlus even at that price range; it may not be as nice looking, but it's at least sort of repairable. If you break your essential they make you buy a new one at a slight discount. ifixit gave the essential a 1/10 for repair ability.

Completely agree that the lack of easy repair is a valid criticism of the Essential phone.

Yeah, headphone jack and wireless charging are the only things missing from making ph1 the top. If they'd had a headphone jack and wireless charging and sold at 400 originally they would have killed the market

> I suspect Rubin thought he could just build some brand buzz and flip the whole company?

That's what happened last time (Android Inc was sold in less than 2 years, and hadn't even launched a phone yet)

Only because Google decided to go shopping.

Which was probably triggered by Apple (see Android prototypes pre- and post-acquisition and this becomes clear). Like many, he thought he could replicate previous success, but he may have hit one home run by being in the right place at the right time.

And even then it wasn't really that innovative, I holded off to Symbian until Nokia lost it.

> The Pixel phones have staked out the expensive-but-good market for "pure" Android snobs.

Is anyone making phones for pure Android snobs that don't brainlessly copy all of Apple's attention-grab ideas? I really want an easily-rootable pure-Android device, but I need it to have a goddamn headphone jack. No ugly notch would be nice, too, and maybe a user-replaceable battery (yes, I realize the ship has sailed on that one).

Well if you want to put lineage on than go OnePlus. If you want pure android go with Android One phones.

Its funny everybody talking about 500usd phones. If you go android there are so many great sub 200usd phones from xiaomi and huawei.

I have Xiaomi m1a1 that is android one phone meaning its stock android with regular updates. After some time i put linageos on it. I payed 170usd for it. Iam not sure why would anyone need better phone. I mean it is great. It even has two lenses so you can do depth of field photos.

https://www.android.com/one/

I’m not sure the Pixel phones are expensive but good. They have been notorious for hardware problems, and the hardware quality has been ok, but not quite like a Samsung or Apple device.

I’d say that Google don’t know how to make a fantastic Android phone, they know how to make a Googly phone, and I’m not convinced that’s what hardcore Android users want. Historically that meant “stock Android”, but now it means it’s more and more Googly.

I think it may no longer be possible for a new entrant into the market to compete on quality. Samsung and Apple are operating at such a high economies of scale that no one else can match them at a price point anywhere near.

Essential is a great reasonably priced phone ($350, not $699) with an excellent battery life, very quick updates and no bloatware.

It definitely beats OnePlus. The problem is that instead of re-iterating, Essential started chasing the new gimmick - connected home and it has no money or install base to compete with Google/Amazon/Apple.

> It definitely beats OnePlus.

Vs. a OnePlus 6 it has a smaller screen, worse camera, one fewer sim slot, lacks a headphone jack, half the RAM, a slower processor, no face recognition, and a smaller battery.

In what way is it superior? Just screen resolution?

OnePlus 6 is a year newer. Essential was launched in August 2017, not 2018. Its competitor was OnePlus 5.

I had the original one plus, and liked it. But they blew up their os deal and since then it hasn't been as compelling.

I want pure android without monitoring my behavior - I"m paying for the phone, damnit. I know it's an almost lost cause - that's one reason I like the ph-1.

With the one plus I was always worried about them copying my actions since they are not a pure android, and the danger of a company that is in china. There were some incorrect stories about them sending data to china, but there was at least a legitimate story about sending data there: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/oneplus-data-leak-fix,news-2596...

/r/titlegore

Took me a while to decypher that it meant "Android creator's startup Essential Products cuts about 30% of staff"

It's so easy to fix:

Android Creator's Startup, Essential Products, Cuts About 30% of Staff

Essential Products, founded by Android creator, cuts about 30% of staff.

The differentiator is not clear enough. If you're up against massive entities who can produce on the cheap, the value prop in consumerland has to be obvious and poignant, i.e. it should be easy to create a narrative that 'this phone is the best for X' and a lot of people want X. It can be aspirational or functional or both or whatever but it has to pop.

Or maybe their phone sucked. Which, apparently, it did. Especially the camera.

I have a PH1, I got it new for 400$. It is by far the most premium experience you can have out of all Android phones for that price. 128GB, excellent screen resolution & contrasts, good perf, very nice looking, clean Android, etc...

The camera has been improved. It is not the best camera on the market but still quite good. They are 2 camera so you can have depth of field.

I don't have any complain except the lack of jack and Wireless Charging

Looks like the phone launched at $699, but slashed the price down 30% last October. So yeah, it's been cheaper than the Samsungs of the world for quite a while now.

Not familiar with any issues besides the camera.

It's also completely impossible to repair and the screen cracks if you breath on it wrong (contrary to all their claims about toughness they advertised so heavily when they came out with it). By impossible to repair, I mean quite literally no one including them will repair it, if something goes wrong they will send you a new one at a slight discount, but given how expensive it is that's not much comfort since you can still buy another brand of phone cheaper (I think it was $200 off, which is a bit better now that they've dropped the price, but still insane for a "repair"). It's a serious waste of money. Looks nice though. EDIT: I say it looks nice, but the polished back was a stupid idea; everyone complains about their phone being covered in fingerprints, so if you do mirrored metal guess what happens… it's the worst phone I've ever had for looking dirty.

Mine was the buggiest Android device I've ever owned (headphones not detected, random reboots, volume rocker not responding, etc). I returned it rather than exchange. That said I have friends who love theirs.

Why don't we have xiaomi in the US. One plus has crept their price up. I think if we have a company that can go make a pocofone would do well here. If you can get 90% of flagship features for less than 1/2 of the price I think you could do well in the US.

They would have to get a lot of patent deals in place and pay a lot of royalties, so the price point would likely be significantly higher.

Xiaomi could be sued by Apple in the US since their UI resembles Apple’s.

I don't understand why Essential suicided itself by immediately putting itself up for sale. Such a lost opportunity

Remember that Android, Inc was purchased by Google in less than 2 years after being founded, and before it even launched a product.

what are you getting at? he's not The Messiah?

That his previous success came via a quick exit/acquihire, which is what's he's trying to do again.

Google should buy this company, add a jack and wireless charging, sell it for $400 and declare victory.

Why would they sabotage the Pixel's pricing strategy like that?

I think it's basically as good as a pixel. Is there anything that comes from the pointless "neural network" chip in it? Nothing that I can see, but it's possible there's something new that I don't know about.

Really, just add a jack to it and declare victory.

Pride. Wishful thinking. Belief in magic. Pick any three.

Sad to see. It seems there really isn't a market for these types of Android phones.

What type of Android phone is that? It seemed to differ from other Android devices only in trivial details; there was no significant differentiation or innovation.

Software upgrades within a week or so of Google releasing new Android, no bloatware, fast, excellent battery life.

Sounds like the Nokia phones to me - I have a Nokia 6.1 and it ticks most of those boxes. (I don't know if the battery counts as excellent - it lasts ~36 hours if I'm not using it constantly but that seems about average for a new battery in most mid range phones)

I'll say the same about my Pixel.

Android One phones will do it on software side.

And given enough thrust pigs will fly. I'm sure it would be magical when it actually happens but it has not happened so far.

The battery is only 3040mAh and isn't even removable. Not impressive at all.

I don't think any of those features are related to their failure. They launched with a sub-par product in the $700 price range.

A classy phone not from a giant tech company or with questionable governmental ties? No forced bloatware? Fast, reliable updates?

There's really no market for that? The market is stupid and wrong.

This isn't a failure of technology. This is a failure of marketing and getting the message out.

> A classy phone not from a giant tech company or with questionable governmental ties? No forced bloatware? Fast, reliable updates? There's really no market for that? The market is stupid and wrong.

How is this a differentiator though? Besides the "not from a giant tech company" you get all those with a Pixel and you also get a great camera.

Is there any reason to trust this random company over a big company? It's not like this is a nonprofit where they're donating their money to some noble cause.

The market is there, of course! It just appears to be narrower that what's required to sustain a company like this, at least at the price point they chose.

I can imagine such a phone as a no-compromises ultra-premium product for the select few who want utter privacy and safety, and would pay at e.g. the iPhone's price point for a comparable level of assurance.

I can imagine such a phone at a low-end, cheaper segment for the privacy-conscious but not very well-off who could tolerate a number of compromises in features.

At a mass-market segment it, unfortunately, did not seem to work too well, though.

It was overpriced. They sold what? 50k phones at about $500 a pop average before cutting the price to $350? That's $25m in revenue after raising $300m. They should have continued working on a line of phones. Instead they switched gears, dropped the price on a phone and started doing a fire sale.

It's kind of bizarre planning to bet the whole company one one product whose go-to-market strategy wasn't clear.

If you decide you are going to be a smartphone company, after you do sufficiently well on your first phone you do not go and decide to go into the market of connected home.

If a phone is fully running Google software, how is it any more secure or private to buy it from an unknown third party manufacturer than Google itself?

Basically all the android phones on the market today have a bunch of bloatware crapware or customized os on them. The ph-1 is pure android and works really well. At $400 with great battery life and 128gb it's an excellent deal. If only they had a headphone jack and wireless charging they'd have it all. It's fast enough, works well, every month they have an upgrade for security fixes.

>The market is stupid and wrong.

The market can stay stupid longer than your 100 million lasts..

Or maybe people don't care about being spied upon, getting updates, and don't even know what bloatware is.

> people don't care about being spied upon

Perhaps "sign in to google" isn't the bulletproof privacy phone some commenters are implying it is.

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