About a week ago, it was reported by Bloomberg that the Essential Phone 2, the expected follow up smartphone release to last year’s Essential Phone was going to be canceled this year. The report further indicated that Essential Products (founded by the so-called father of Android himself, Andy Rubin) might be sold, including its products, patents, and even members of its engineering team.
Rubin has since posted a tweet saying to the effect that his company reserves the right to cancel upcoming products to give way for other offerings that have a better chance of succeeding in the market. He further revealed that his company might be looking to focus more on developing other products, like connected home gadgets.
Those words might have meant to provide some reassurance for fans of the smartphone brand, but there is no doubt that a number of existing owners of Essential Phone units will be wondering -- what is going to happen to their devices moving forward? According to Essential Products, it will still continue to offer support in terms of rolling out software patches and security updates for its flagship. As a matter of fact, a tweet from its official Twitter account says that support will keep on coming in the next couple of years and security updates in the next three years.
Releasing the Essential Phone last year was clearly an ambitious effort on the part of Essential Products. Being a new entrant into the smartphone business already presents all sorts of challenges for any company, especially more so in the ultra competitive world of Android mobile devices. But as Google has shown with its growing lineup of Pixel handsets, one can learn from past mistakes to deliver improving handsets.
Essential Products could have walked that path, too. While it is true that the Essential Phone was far from being perfect (some might say it was disappointing), it was not a terrible handset either. The things it did not get right could have been remedied the second time around.
It is worth mentioning that Rubin’s company has not exactly confirmed yet if it was indeed canceling the Essential Phone 2. For all we know, the phone maker may have only been choosing to take things a bit more slow, in order to be able to deliver properly in its sophomore offering, which could debut next year (instead of forcing it this year).
And as hinted earlier in Rubin’s statements, keeping busy with home products is not necessarily a bad thing. Just ask Amazon, whose efforts in phone making have largely been uninspiring, but has since enjoyed immense success with its Echo series of smart home speakers. Besides, with the 5G era just around the corner, we are inching closer and closer to a world where the concept of the Internet of Things is fast becoming a daily reality.
