When Essential was first announced, there was a lot of hype and expectations surrounding the company’s product, the Essential Phone. This is due to the fact that Andy Rubin is behind Essential, where his experience with the Sidekick and also being the father of Android led to quite high expectations.Unfortunately, the phone failed to live up to the hype, but Essential did tease that they would be working on something different in the form of a device known as Gem. However, it seems that if you were hoping to maybe get your hands on Gem one day, that will no longer be possible as Essential has announced that they will be ceasing their operations and shutting down.
According to a statement made on the company’s website, “Our vision was to invent a mobile computing paradigm that more seamlessly integrated with people’s lifestyle needs. 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.”
It is rather sad to see Essential go, but to be fair, following the company’s release of the Essential Phone, we haven’t really seen anything else from them since. Also, given how competitive the market is, we’re not sure sitting by the sidelines for a couple of years did them any favors.