The US-based smartphone company Essential has announced that it’s going to shut down its operations. This comes only a few months after Essential announced Project Gem – a new initiative meant to develop some off-beat devices for a higly saturated smartphone market.
“Despite our best efforts, we’ve now taken Gem as far as we can and regrettably have no clear path to deliver it to customers. Given this, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations and shutdown Essential,” the company said.
Essential was founded by the current CEO Andy Rubin back in 2015 and has since released only one Android-powered device in 2017 by the name of Essential PH-1. Rubin is already a known figure in the tech industry owing to his vital contribution to the early development of Android OS.
Essential PH-1 was the first Android device that brought the first ‘proper’ notch into our lives as we know it. Yes, Apple’s iPhone X was the second. Although, LG was the first company to experiment with the notch on LG V10.
Essential did everything it could to make its phone stand-out in the market. This is evident from the fact that PH1 got the Android 10 update the same day as Google’s Pixel series. The company also released a 360 Camera mod and a high-quality audio adapter for the smartphone.
Anyway, alongside the Essential Phone, another thing getting scrapped is Newton Mail, which is a top-rated email service for both Android and iOS users, among others.
Essential said that Newton Mail would be available to users until April 30, 2020, after which they’ll have to start looking for alternatives.
What will happen to my Essential PH1?
According to the blog post, the security update for Essential PH1 released on February 3 is the last one from the company.
However, users can continue to use their smartphone without any issues, except that there won’t be any customer support or software updates to download.
The company will upload the stock Android image for PH-1, along with other related data, on its GitHub repo to provide easy access to the developers.
Still, all thanks to the Android community, users will be able to leverage various custom ROMs that are compatible with the Essential PH1. This way, the smartphone will continue to get new features in the future.
