I wasn’t following the Gem but I sure wonder what the appeal of a skinny phone was supposed to be.
It’s like trying to make a two door minivan. All phones look the same just like how all cars look the same for a reason - we have converged on the most useful design that works for everyone.
Speak for yourself. It drives me absolutely insane that I simply cannot buy a recent phone today which is smaller than the largest phablets sold in 2014. This is bonkers.
What? The pixel 4 is a half inch smaller than some of the the smaller phablets of 2014 (the iPhone 6XL and Nexus 6). I can't find a single "phablet" releases that is smaller than the pixel 4 (and similarly an iPhone X, although the 11 seems to be larger than the smallest phablets).
If you compare with the largest phablets, those with > 6 inch screen sizes, modern phones are like an inch smaller in both dimensions.
I find that bezels play a role in ergonomics. Fit the biggest display you can and your phone cannot be held anymore without accidental touches registering.
I don't understand why simple algo "don't register touches 5mm from the edge" isn't implemented. Or at least give me it in settings. This will allow to use full screen for video etc, but also will be much more convenient. Don't know who iphone handles it, but my current phone (xiaomi) doesn't have it and it's very annoying.
True, but even 4 inches is already a perfectly acceptable display size (and you can push at least to 4.5-4.7 without compromising ergonomics; see the Sony XZ2 compact, the single compact phone in existence in the last 2 years).
I was holding my old iPhone 4 not too long ago and I think it’s my favorite one so far. I’m still stuck with my iPhone 7 because everything has just gotten too huge.
Nostalgia, rose-colored glasses, etc., but I loved the iPhone 4 form factor. Mostly symmetrical, fit in your pockets, easy to hold, with a bit of heft. And the 2x screen density was a revelation.
Non XL Pixels are okayish, but I still prefer the iPhone SE form factor. Or the Nokia N9 form factor, which aside from being small had a perfectly curved screen and matching gestures.
The only device right now that comes a bit close is the Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact. But it's very expensive for what it offers. At least, they have great kernel & AOSP suppport.
I use a Pixel 4 and still use my Nexus 6 as a backup alarm clock. Every time I pick up the Nexus 6 I'm amazed I used to carry that around. It's immense in comparison.
Have you looked at the new Palm phone? [1] It looks like an ideal small phone, with a camera that, judging at least by the marketing copy, should be quite good. It's advertised as Verizon's exclusive, but at least in Europe you can get an unlocked version on Amazon.
I bought one, tried to use it as a primary phone for a while, Super cute, everyone laughs when I spoke on it... it's just a little too little phone.
My biggest complaint was the battery, It has much too little battery to be used as a primary phone, and the "secondary phone" idea is just a stupid one.
Also, as far as features I do use my phone for, camera is important for me personally. And the palm palm camera is much to bad to be useful.
I'm ok with how small it is, but I'd be happy with something quite a bit bigger, but Battery and Camera would be essential for me to use it.
Not only is it Verizon exclusive (or was, up until recently), it is not considered a primary phone, so you have to have a separate, regular phone on a normal line just to use it.
That’s actually a weird quirk of this phone, even the Verizon one is not locked. The SIM card slot is still there but they make it weird to eject, too.
You can use it with any old SIM but you’ll want to adb uninstall Verizon apps.
I think they wanted the Verizon exclusivity money but know that the tinkerer type is more of their market.
I did try this phone for a while and it was far too much of a toy. Even for the intended purpose the battery life isn’t enough to take away dead phone anxiety.
The screen was sharp and surprisingly readable. Text was very, very hard to input.
It’d truly be a good device if it was literally the size of the iPhone 4 instead of something smaller.
At the time I couldn’t find any sort of convenient way to root the phone.
This might have changed recently as well; from the marketing copy:
Unlocked Palm is a standalone device that works as a normal phone with supported carriers.
However, Palm is also enjoyed by many users as a secondary device.
Please don't use code blocks for quoting. (Unless you also hard-wrap the quote at ~50 columns. The blocks themselves don't wrap long lines but rather are horizontal-scrolling, cut off, and annoying.)
It gets better reviews than the Palm. From what I can tell, Unihertz’s previous model (the jelly pro) was smaller, with battery problems similar to the Palm.
When my wife was in Singapore around 2005 she brought back the most amazing LG phone. Black metal. Heavy for its size. Felt durable as all get out. And small. So small.
This was pre-iPhone days, so it didn't have a full app ecosystem, but it took photos and little videos and was a great little device. I wish I could remember what it was called so I could look it up and buy one.
Honestly I have considered more than once in the past year just ditching smartphones altogether and carrying a feature phone with wifi+gps... But it's still a big headache in terms of missing features and applications.
These tick all the boxes for me (small, long battery life, GPS, music), but they have 2-3 MP cameras. This is understandable, given the < $100 price tag.
Am I the only one that would pay $100’s more for that package with a decent camera? (And AGPS, since some seem to be GPS-only)
It also frustrates me that phones are slippery by default and have buttons on the sides which parents inevitably push by accident when receiving a phone to look at photos.
I have nothing against buying cases but let’s be honest, if the answer to a genuine solvable hardware problem is to buy more hardware then you have to sympathise with those who complain about the insanity of the current market.
Why commit to small differences in an entire inventory/supply chain problem for a very complex and expensive device instead of a thin wrapper?
Phones are thin! The case makes them reasonably sized. Treat a naked phone the same as you would a naked human: unsuitable and unprepared to go outside.
But if phones were built more durable would they be smaller than the thick case or could they make use of the extra space that a case requires by having larger batteries, etc.
I never get a phone case. I’ve dropped my iPhone XS I don’t know how many times. Not a single scratch or crack on it. Pro tip: needing a case is a marketing gimmick “it’s made of glass!”
Yeah, I don't get why phones have to be as thin and fragile as possible. They look gorgeous, but are so flimsy you need to hide them in an ugly case that undoes all the work in making them thin and pretty.
In some ways, the best design is still my old Motorola Milestone. Rubberized steel, and indestructible. No case needed. Small, better looking than anything in a case, and it had a sliding keyboard to boot. I still miss that.
I have an Essential phone and couldn't agree more. While we're at it, can it be e-ink? And have the processing power of a 2004 phone? And a headphone jack? I just want less phone overall.
There would probably be a market for a truely “essential” smart phone as you mentioned that’s somewhere in between a feature flip phone and an iPhone. Plus a battery that lasts for a week (depending on call usage I guess?).
Who were you thinking for the end point partner (which retails/delivers the devices)? Possibly with governments or NGOs or local marketplaces?
Maybe you could help finance it with a western version of a stripped down smartphone. But that seems to be a significant shift from what your vision/offering is. It's best to do one thing at a time.
I wonder if batteries are still being made for the GSM phones from just before the iPhone came out. They might work, and are probably available on fleaBay.
Hopefully GSM isn't going the way of AMPS anytime soon.
2g is basically disabled in the US. Go out in the country, signal will be atrocious. Anything outside of a metro seems to require walkie talkies now. I've tried att, vz, tmobile, and sprint, but there's a nice spot I liked to go fishing where I could make phone calls up until ~2008 or so. Traveling around recently I've noticed this anytime I was in an area that had <5000 population.
I just want better control over the processor. I'd be happy with a modern processor, running at 10% clock speed and 50% voltage or less. I had a sony phone back in the early days of android where after rooting I could actually tune the processor parameters, and I went from 1 to 4-5 days battery life. I haven't been able to find a way do it on my current phone due to lack of root.
I don't care about having a super responsive phone, or a thin one. Just a utility. Something like the ulephone armor series but without the sketchy bloatware.
That's exactly how I (reluctantly) became an iPhone user. The iPhone SE was the only decent phone with a smaller form factor, so I had to make the switch from Android.
Nope. Literally seven phones, with the search just limited to sub 5" diagonal, Android 9 or 10, and a release in the last two years.
My phone now is an Xperia X Compact. Based on that list of seven the Xperia XZ2 Compact would be my next choice. Which actually looks like a fine phone, but not much of an upgrade versus what I already have. And it's from 2018 anyway, feels kind of silly to upgrade from a phone from 2017 to a phone from 2018 in 2020.
Librem... if you're listening... I'll pay extra for a phone that's under a 5" diagonal. You can quote me on that and call it a pre-order.
I don't have market research to back it up, but I do hear more and more people basically saying they haven't bought a new phone in years because they're all too big. Do they not include people who wear women's clothing in their market testing?
Wow, those reviews... people really hate that phone. The battery is so tiny. But yeah, my filter excluded it because it's not updatable to Android 9 or higher.
I agree that's not an important filter per se, but it does filter out the stuff that's got sub-par hardware or tons of manufacturer installed apps or vendors that don't provide quick updates. At least somewhat. I'd be nervous getting that phone, though it looks really great other than the battery... and reviews...
I'll just wait until it exists again, it's inevitable. Until then, I hope my phone stays healthy.
If memory serves, when the XZ1 Compact came out in the US, it was severely handicapped in some way, although memory escapes me as to why. Something like the fingerprint reader inside the power button was disabled due to a lawsuit, and the camera was awful if you went off the stock OS that Sony shipped.
Real pity. I held the phone in my hands at a Best Buy and got incredibly close to buying it.
My last Sony phone was the Z5 Compact, which was the first and last Sony phone in the US to have a fingerprint sensor until they cleared that legal mess up.
I ditched it for the Pixel 2 (and now 4) eventually; Sony's software got worse and slower with every update, and the phone would heat up for seemingly no reason. The camera was really good, but I couldn't install a custom ROM without crippling it due to DRM junk.
As much as the Pixels aren't perfect, and the physical size of them is not what I'd like (I'd really like something like a 4"-4.2" screen), they've at least been consistent in build and software quality (to the point where I haven't been motivated to flash a custom ROM), and the cameras have been wonderful.
When my girlfriend's Galaxy S4 Mini finally died, we looked high and low for a good replacement, but didn't find anything good under 5 inches of screen.
In the end, we decided to find a phone that was at least not too wide, so it could still be used one-handed. We ended up buying Motorola One Visions for us both, since my Moto X Play was getting rather long in the tooth.
While it is a 6.3" screen, the bezels are rather small and it has a 21:9 aspect ratio, so it doesn't feel clunky at all, it falls naturally in my average-sized hands.
Overall we are both very pleased. It's afforable, plenty fast (especially now with Android 10) and it's on the Android One program, so you get stock Android with a few Motorola features on top, no bloat and great battery life. It's a damn good midrange phone.
The Droid Mini remains my favorite smart phone I've purchased. Even its current run speed isn't a deal-breaker- it's the lack of battery replacements and security patched android that keeps me from still using it. If a modernized phone came out in the same form factor, I'd buy it day 1.
Those all look huge. The Moto X is the last phone I've owned that I found to be an acceptable size. Compared to that, the Nokia lineup is enormous. https://phonesized.com/compare/#1192,359,1105
Edit: That same site has these tables, which show that there really are zero phones in that form factor on the market https://phonesized.com/charts/
I think people just have different standards here, which should be no surprise (different hand sizes!). I found the Pixel 2 (and 4, which is nearly the same physical size despite the larger screen) to be tolerable, but nowhere near ideal. I like to one-hand my phone, often feel like reaching for things with my thumb comes close to a hard drop to the floor.
Sadly not actually small. I have a Pixel 3A right now and I hate it, it's way, way too big. What I need is something where I can reach the top of the screen (notifications, Firefox URL bar and tab controls, other controls) while using one hand, without loosening my grip on the phone. This worked fine up to about 4.7" screens. Beyond that and it's just impossible.
I have a Nokia 3.1 with Android One. Screen-rotate broken, or fixed again, on successive system updates. Currently broken. Other than that, the 3.1 has been okay.
yeah, the 6 is 4.7", which it appears will be the size of the "SE2". this is apparently the smallest phone any major manufacturer is capable of making, even though just a few short years ago, 4" was the latest and there was enough demand for hundreds of millions to be manufactured. hrm...
Writing this on my Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. It's nice and small and plenty powerful and I hope it keeps running forever. Phones on the market now are all way too big.
If you're us, I hope you don't need to travel outside of cities much. That was my last phone, most newer built or refurbished towers rely on bands it can't support. I loved it until I moved to a smaller, newer city, and was constantly running into dead zones because of it. Most of my received calls went straight to voicemail because the towers couldn't reach me.
sony's xz1 compact is the perfect size for me. I still have it as a backup phone but I had to upgrade to sansung's s10e to get a decent camera. its a bit of a joke that this is supposed to be the small version
>They updated to 8.1 and I got a security update not many months ago.
That's still pretty bad considering phones from as far back as 2014 are getting Android 9 through LineageOS (nightly builds, up to date Android security patch level).
Take the Moto G4 Play, for example. One of my daughters has one, so I care, and it's listed on the LineageOS site. How do I get an up to date Android security patch level for that?
Or the Redmi Note 3 or Sony Z5C, both also in the device list at lineageos.org. I don't care, those aren't in use, but how would I get new security patches?
None of the phones you listed are on the build roster, because they're unmaintained. If you go on the wiki page for them, there's a warning saying
>Warning: The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact is no longer maintained. A build guide is available for developers that would like to make private builds, or even restart official support.
However, if you look at this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bx6RvTCEGn5zA06lW_uZ..., there are plenty of phones released in 2014 that are still actively maintained. Those phones tend to be flagships, which explains why the phones you've listed aren't being maintained.
One of them was the most expensive phone available of its size at the time. Isn't that what flagship means?
Anyway, I think you're being facetious. Three or five years ago you couldn't say which phones would be supported today, and right now you have no idea which of this year's phones are going to have lineageos updates in 2025. Right?
>One of them was the most expensive phone available of its size at the time. Isn't that what flagship means?
I'm assuming you mean the Sony Z5 Compact? On the Z5 line, there's also Z5 and Z5 premium, which suggests that it's not really a flagship. That said, being a flagship doesn't mean automatic lineageos support. It's due to a multitude of factors, but one of the necessary factors appears to be flagship.
>Anyway, I think you're being facetious. Three or five years ago you couldn't say which phones would be supported today, and right now you have no idea which of this year's phones are going to have lineageos updates in 2025. Right?
You're right, it's impossible to know for sure, especially since it's a community supported project and all. However, you can look to the past and have some sense of what support might look like in the future. Oneplus phones for instance, has consistent support all the way back to their first phone (one).
In the context of this discussion though, my point still stands. If a bunch of hobbyists (most phones are maintained by a couple of people) can keep a phone phone updated to Android 9 with monthly security patches, a for-profit company being able to push out Android 8 updates every few months isn't special.
The Z5 premium was about 40% bigger than the Z5 Compact. The Z5 Compact was by far the most expensive of the phones of its size, if you're going to talk about flagships it has to be the phone you mean.
Maybe thats why I have not purchased a phone since the Iphone SE came out. Can't stand large phones. I must be alone in this thinking, because so far, no manufactures are going back to small form factors.
I want my phone for music, driving directions, calls, a pocket camera, and occasional texts. I do not need or want my phone to be my primary media device. I have an ipad for that.
> I do not need or want my phone to be my primary media device. I have an ipad for that.
It might be partly that I have big hands, so despite smaller phones being more comfortable to hold, big phones aren't that bothersome for me.
Maybe because of that, I would never buy a tablet. My phone can do more than a tablet can, so getting a tablet would just be paying twice for no reason. If my phone doesn't suffice for something, that's where my laptop comes in. With a phone and a laptop in hand, a tablet is very much useless to me.
I can take handwritten notes and sketches on my tablet while in splitscreen with a second app (slack, browser, mindmap, video lecture, whatever), and can't imagine trying to do that on a phone.
Switching to a laptop wouldn't do well for me either, typing notes has never helped me learn or remember anything, and I can't draw on it. With a Surface/Yoga/similar you get the option to draw on it, but I used to have a Surface Pro and it's frankly not a very good tablet.
Even if you have a stylus with a big phone, it's more of an equivalent to a moleskine style notebook. Certainly has its uses, but it's not a replacement for a full size pad of paper.
I have a tablet, so I would never buy a big phone. If I want a device so big that it requires two hands to operate effectively, I might as well get my iPad out.
> I can take handwritten notes and sketches on my tablet
Touché. I don't need to do that, but I can agree that it's a good use-case for a tablet.
> typing notes has never helped me learn or remember anything, and I can't draw on it.
For me, the main benefit of typed notes is that you can search them better. I don't imagine you can search for hand-written text among all sketches on your tablet.
Also, if I ever needed to take notes on a classroom setting, typing also brings the benefit of being able to do it without having to look down. Or at least, it's easier and faster to type blindfolded than to hand-write blindfolded. You can keep your attention to the front of the room that way.
> With a Surface/Yoga/similar you get the option to draw on it, but I used to have a Surface Pro and it's frankly not a very good tablet.
Probably not as ergonomic, I suppose. If I ever needed to draw sketches electronically, I would prefer to do it on my convertible laptop simply because the ergonomics of a tablet are not enough to outweigh all other benefits that a laptop bring. Realistically speaking though, when I (rarely) need to sketch or hand-write, I use a paper notebook. Different people have different needs.
> For me, the main benefit of typed notes is that you can search them better. I don't imagine you can search for hand-written text among all sketches on your tablet.
You'd be surprised! OneNote's handwriting recognition is a killer feature for this.
As an example, searching for "rotation" finds all my notes about matrix transformations https://imgur.com/a/dJ4hTSZ
> Also, if I ever needed to take notes on a classroom setting, typing also brings the benefit of being able to do it without having to look down. Or at least, it's easier and faster to type blindfolded than to hand-write blindfolded. You can keep your attention to the front of the room that way.
It's true that you can keep your attention off the computer while touch typing, but my experience is that I'll just zone into typing what I hear without processing it, and end up not internalizing anything as a result. I don't think I'm alone in that:
>Probably not as ergonomic, I suppose. If I ever needed to draw sketches electronically, I would prefer to do it on my convertible laptop simply because the ergonomics of a tablet are not enough to outweigh all other benefits that a laptop bring. Realistically speaking though, when I (rarely) need to sketch or hand-write, I use a paper notebook. Different people have different needs.
I use paper a lot too, but the iPad strikes a great middle ground for supporting memory better, being able to search back through things, keeping everything organized and accessible across years worth of data, and giving me more free-form input than I have with a keyboard (for diagrams, graphs, tables, etc).
You also get great apps that support things you can't realistically do with paper, like Procreate's perspective assist tools. It's like working at a full size drafting desk with a big straightedge packed into something that you can toss in a backpack.
Like computers, it has more potential for distractions than paper, but when I really want to focus on something I'll just put it on airplane mode.
For me the big difference is that a tablet is a good consumption device, while a laptop is a good production device. I have a Galaxy Tab 4 which is much better for me for reading, watching video, and playing (some) games than either my laptop or my phone. It's when I need to write, code, or research something that I reach for the laptop.
I think there is demand for smaller phones -- it's just that not that many people are willing to give up a large display for it. That's why we're starting to see manufacturers coming out with foldable phones.
I was the same way for a while. I used the SE and swore I could never use one of the huge phones. Then I got an iPhone 11 Pro after I realized people weren't really designing with the small phone in mind and that it wasn't the future. It took ~2wks but now I can't believe I was using the SE for as long as I did. The larger format is superior in my experience after having forced myself to give it a go.
I would agree that a larger screen is superior but that doesn't mean that is it preferable for everyday usage. I've used phones ranging from 2.5" screens (Unihertz Jelly) to 6.6" screens (Honor Note 6) and it depends on what the phone is going to be used for. I think a larger phone will generally coincide with increased media consumption on the phone and not everyone wants that. It was great being able to comfortably read books on my Note 6, but I didn't like how big it was when all I might need one day is calls and texts. It depends on use case and I think its a fair sacrifice to make trading screen size for portability, especially when I want to cut down media consumption on my phone.
I too prefer my SE to any of the current offerings. I don't want a big phone. I really don't want one.
But recently I got a used 32GB Kindle Paperwhite for $100. I was deciding between it and an iPad Mini ($400) but then saw a review saying that the PW was purpose built for reading, which is exactly what I wanted it for. Now I download PDFs of docs, decks, papers and check out e-books. It is purpose built as a reader and rocks at that.
So now the SE is even less likely to be replaced by a mega-phone.
The other big problem would be app support, how many devs are going to patch their app to look right on the wacky aspect ratio that a tiny fraction of a percent of the market uses.
i saw someone talking about a blackberry-style Android phone the other day with a square screen and people were going nuts for it, even as they were making fun of its huge size. I sort of want one myself, the ruggedness and battery life are an OK trade-off with size and weight.
We have not 'converged on the most useful design'. Equilibrium points are often just the lowest common denominator as a technology matures enough to become commodified. Then you start to see a variety of alternatives optimised for different use cases and market entry becomes more affordable to smaller players.
That's an interesting case, because there's actually a lot of variety in cars. In my circle of friends, everyone has a very different vehicle. We've got an SUV, a hatchback, a sedan, a pickup truck, a supermini, a sport wagon, a motorcycle, a cargo van, a minivan, etc.
The powertrains aren't even similar: there's electric and internal combustion, gasoline and diesel, 2/3/4/5/6 cylinders, inline and flat and V, longitudinal and transverse mounting, turbocharged and naturally aspirated, automatic and manual transmissions, front/rear/all wheel drive, etc. (I know someone who even had a rotary engine, but he sold it a few years ago.)
(And that's just the last <10 vehicles I've been in!)
I'm not seeing a lot of "convergence" yet. Vehicles are diverse because our needs are diverse. It's a shame our phones aren't. Where is the truck smartphone, for people who need something tough to carry their digital 4x8 plywood sheets, or the motorcycle smartphone, for people who want something sleek and fast? All I see is the "crossover SUV" smartphone: tries to do everything, and ends up not being the best at any of them.
Everyone I know seems to complain that phones aren't good at the one area they care about, so they keep buying the next new phone that's marginally better at everything, and inevitably worse at a few of the things they care about. We're not post-convergence, we're pre-divergence.
I hate the skinny phone trend. Rather than read a page of text then scroll to the next page, I tend to read the content of the middle third of the vertical space on my screen and then drag the next section up. I'd much prefer a 16:9 or even 16:10 screen.
There is a large population of consumers that live within their phones 24/7 and they appreciate large screens for consuming content.
But there is also small population of users (me, anybody else?) who don't. I use a phone to make rare calls, read text messages, play music on the train and occasionally for location. It is perhaps because I have my laptop at hand for most of the time.
Recently I have lost large smartphone and had been using iPhone 5S and it is so small, sturdy and lightweight. I can put it in my pocket and I can replace it for $75. Perfect.
So now I am in a market for a smallish smartphone.
No, we have hit on a demand curve that maximises profits.
McDonalds and similar fast food businesses shift a lot of units, so it probably makes good business sense to keep doing that. Doesn't mean it's universally appealing.
Of course diversity is by definition the opposite of mass market.
I was saddened by the recent BlackBerry news too. There aren't many phones out there for those who find physical keyboards more accessible.
There's a 2-door minivan design which might work: conventional driver's door, and a full folding or retractable passenger's side door that opens the full length of the vehicle, with an overhang to keep the rain off.
I don't know if the novelty would be worth the other trade-offs, though.
Exactly! I bought the first Essential Phone, PH-1, because I liked the design of it and wanted to support a new product. And to be honest, it's a decent phone, but that was before his misconduct came out to the media. Once it came out, my girlfriend asked me if I still wanted to support this company and at that point I knew I would never buy another phone from them.
A real bummer. For me, the PH-1 was the only truly beautiful current-generation phone out there, since Windows Phone shut down. I can live with a not-so-great camera, especially if it means I don't need a camera wart. With an OLED screen, the PH-1 would have been, to my mind, perfect. And, unfortunately, no one else is making anything that looks quite like it.
I understand (phone) aesthetics are not universal, and usually (and probably rightly) considered secondary to more practical, functional considerations, but man, it was nice having a company that carried that standard. Don't think any of the other angles they were trying to pursue made much sense, but thanks for making something beautiful, even if it ended up being only briefly.
Yeah, I turned on my PH-1 yesterday after using the Pixel 4xl for some time. The PH-1 is still by far my favorite, both the form factor and fingerprint unlock. RIP
The PH-1 was a beautiful phone, but i'm somewhat relieved to see essential shut down. although it was a nice-looking phone, it wasn't really any better than any other phone. The idea that an unheard of company with no track record or assurance of future support could come out and sell a phone for the same price as apple and samsung's flagship offerings seemed wrong to me.
If essential had done something truly revolutionary that deserved the high price tag, that would have been one thing, but it's nice to see consumers reject the idea that a company can charge apple-level prices with no real justification for it.
I mean, the phone looks super cool if all you want to do is use it for is a phone and music player.
But the super-weird keyboard means typing (like replying to texts and e-mails) takes a ton of getting used to... and the narrowness means you can't really browse the web. Even reading a basic news article becomes frustrating with only three words to a line. (Or five lines to a screen in landscape mode.)
And given that most people spend way more time texting and reading the news on their phone than making calls... it's crazy to me they ever had user research indicating this ever had a chance of succeeding in the first place.
I'm not sure what market research inspired the phone, but there's probably a segment of people where pretty severe constraints are considered a positive, primarily to reduce device usage, either as your only device or a device you just use in certain contexts.
I don't want the temptation of the web and apps when I'm getting ready to go to sleep, but I do want basic functions like phone, controlling my lights and music, etc. For this use case, the candybar form factor is excellent.
I have used the Essential Phone for a few years now. The experience has been great in every dimension except for the one thing many people care the most about: the camera. The camera app the phone is shipped with is horrible. I really don't know how they expected to sell it as a high-end phone. The crazy thing is that there are some builds of the Google Camera app that you can find which make the pictures really good (it is definitely still really bad in low light conditions though).
Does anyone really care about the phone part of "phones" anymore? Even my parents text me far more often than they call these days. I'm sure I'm an outlier, but I would say browsing, email, text, nav, camera, ..., phone. Honestly with the ratio of spam phone calls I receive, I might prefer a smart "phone" that didn't even accept incoming calls.
Agreed, but I have some more reasons for why the "phone" part of the phone isn't really much of a factor when it comes to buying a phone these days.
At this point in time, texting+phone parts of the phone are pretty good and uniform across all devices, so it isn't a differentiating factor that people care about anymore imo. The only "texting" part of the modern phones that is still somewhat of a differentiator is iMessages, but that's about it.
Oh man, I just saw one of the product exec's LinkedIn and he spent 3 years at Juicero before spending 3 years at Essential.
That's gotta hurt.
If you're a reasonably talented product & engineering person don't work for a hardware startup. Startups are lottos already as is but hardware is so unforgiving. I think Ring's acquisition by Amazon was the last one I can think that was a true success.
I don't see how a "reasonably talented product and engineering person" could have worked at Juicero without realizing it was going to fail miserably (also if they had any scruples they should have felt pretty guilty working for the company trying to wrap DRM around fruit).
This is a shitty comment. It wasn't DRM on fruit. It was an expiration date so that juice bars couldn't sell expired product to end customers. And it's really smart of you to try to judge someone so quickly. I would looove to see your LinkedIn profile and see what great flawless decisions you've made or will make in your lifetime.
If that’s true, expiration dates are hardly exact. A bag could go bad well before or it could be completely fine well after the date. Unless there was some sensor to detect whether something had gone bad I don’t see how preventing use of something you’ve already paid for is a good idea or even legal
Not to mention that I've never been to a juice bar where I couldn't see the fruit they were putting into the juicer beforehand - it's pretty obvious when it's spoiled both visually and from the taste.
Even if this rationalization was true Juicero was only solving a problem they created by enforcing the use of these prepackaged bags in the first place.
It's clear from your comment that you've never even seen the product that you're making a comment on. Talk about an uninformed "expert" espousing their overly-confident opinion on something they know nothing about. And they didn't even use fruit, btw.
No, it was green juices. There was basically no fruit except as a preservative as a matter of principle. That was the whole point, the original founder already exited his first business selling green juice bars on the East Coast.
Companies in the "slap DRM on commodity goods and market the shit out of it" space always have a bullshit post hoc rationalization of why they're doing it, taking their marketing material at face value is probably not a good representation of the truth though.
The QR code was validated against a web service and included a lot more than just the date. It used a unique code for each pack and you couldn't squeeze packs that Juicero didn't like. If all that was needed was expiration date validation that could have happened entirely offline with a much simpler QR code.
this is a purely empathetic comment...to invest so much blood + sweat + tears in 2 high profile hardware cos to watch your equity value disappear, or incur a huge loss if you exercised options, is a painful experience.
I mean, I thought (and still think) that Twitch was a terrible business idea - something I'm clearly very very wrong about. Equally, there are dozens of business ideas that I thought were fantastic, but are dead in the water.
Sometimes it's good to acknowledge that your foresight can be wrong. I think engineers in particular can be overly pessimistic.
Why not occasionally take a risk on someone else's gut feeling? You won't always win, but "losing" means enjoying a cushy, well-paid office job for 2-3 years before moving on the next thing. It's hardly the end of the earth.
A lot of startup products start very different than what they end up being. Especially once the VCs get involved and the growth + business model part has to be figured out.
It’s hard to say that the final product was the vision he bought into when joining early on. I’m sure it was very hypey too.
Is it right to let the transgressions of the founder color the quality of the product the employees worked to make, or worse, the employees themselves?
Let's not rush to judgement. Sexual harassment is wrong, yes, but that doesn't mean anyone who has associated with the man is irredeemably guilty.
i didn't say the employees were guilty of anything, i just don't know what makes this company have a "good" reputation - clearly it's a failed product that never really worked or made sense. it reeks of a pet project of a wealthy founder who could raise money by his name alone but never really achieved product market fit.
Is it right to let the transgressions of the founder color the quality of the product the employees worked to make, or worse, the employees themselves?
If the employee joins the company after the transgressions have been make public, yes. There are enough companies and jobs in the tech industry we get to choose who we work for. If you choose to work for someone with a reputation for sexual assault then you have to live with that choice, and all the things that go along with it. That includes people writing off your hard work based on the founders bad reputation.
Most people are not willing to overlook someone's previous transgressions so joining them in a company is a stupid idea.
That's an interesting team page. They have, by my count, 20 engineers total, and 45 other employees in categories like administration, business, sales, finance, leadership, marketing, operations, management, and other positions that don't actually build the phone. Plus Cosmo and Henry...if only there were more employees like those two.
They were building a phone, not a web app. Negotiating with suppliers, making sure your contract manufacturer is doing things right, getting people excited about your product, and not running out of money are all really important.
No, I don't think it takes only engineers to run a good phone company. I dispute, however, that it takes mostly administration.
And my concern seems to be validated by the outcome - they failed to build and ship the phone. They have a really shiny website, nice renderings and concepts, good market awareness...but no product.
It seems self-evident to me that it's impossible for a company to function on only administration and no product. You have to have engineers to actually ship a product, if you have none and ship nothing, the company is guaranteed to fail. However, if you have only engineering and no administration, yeah, things will be a mess, marketing will be basic word-of-mouth, and the design will be fragmented, but if the product works, exists, and is able to be purchased the company can hobble along and fix the rest later.
Not sure if this is accurate - but they seem to have an overly-large number of CXX, VP, Director and "Head of XXX" positions on that page compared to rank-and-file employees.
Seems like this was pretty doomed from the get-go. Right off the bat the entire internet would be broken on these phones, as I doubt any websites are designed to handle a ~100px wide viewport. Even designing sites for 320px viewports of the iphone4 is massively challenging and not well implemented by many. Not sure how they planned on handling that.
It's not _that_ hard, as long as you don't try to do things that nobody ever wanted in the first place, like floating Google and Facebook buttons on the left hand side of the page.
I would argue that they were thinking you wouldn't really need to use the web browser that much. The idea would be do whatever it is you need to do and get out.
I suppose! But I do imagine having to occasionally load something up on the web and having most sites being totally broken. They must have had some plan on how to handle--I'd be curious to know because I can't think of anything.
Or.. maybe there were so many insurmountable problems like this which caused them to shutter the project.
I've had an essential phone since its release and overall I've been very happy about it. Too bad it's shutting down.
I can also say Im not surprised at a the company is shutting down - - their strategic decisions were downright idiotic after the essential phone's initial release. They should have just made a great second iteration instead of getting distracted with shiny toys.
The first phone only sold 150,000 units over its lifetime, even after a fire sale. It's reasonable to conclude that iterating on the same concept won't create enough sales.
That’s a real shame about Newton Mail. Anything that provides more user choice and adds innovation in a saturated market is a good thing in my book. I hope Essential open sources it, as well.
From TFA:
“As part of the company wind down, the security update for PH-1 released on February 3 is the last update from the Essential software team. Your PH-1 will continue to work but we will not be providing any additional updates or customer support. Current Newton Mail users will have access to the service through April 30, 2020. For developer fans, a prebuilt of our vendor image and everything else needed to keep hacking on PH-1 will be hosted on our github.”
50 EUR a year for an e-mail client? No wonder that never took off. Which features of Newton Mail did you use/need?
I can recommend p≡p (K-9 fork) [1] and FairEmail [2]. Both FOSS. FairEmail Pro features cost a one time fee of, I don't remember, less than 10 EUR (hence I don't remember). Supporting FOSS like that felt great.
Prior to the Essential acquisition, Newton was shut down. I assume Cloud Magic (Newton creator) was pretty dead in the water, and the acquisition was the best chance they had at resurrection.
They need to start by having a working computer in a form of a phone that runs Android applications from Google Play, has support for 4G LTE. Until that happens, pine phone and librem are non-starters.
In my experience it is 99% of the internal politics and 1% of the legal. People in software related business ( including software engineers ) like talking about open source, GPL, etc the same way as think tanks like talking about eradicating poverty and homelessness, but any attempt to actually do something about it (release the source, build a few shelters, hire janitors) results in massive hand waving rather than action.
This is personally very disappointing to me. Like many others on the thread, I've been following the Project GEM fairly closely (as close as you could given the lack of information) and was planning on buying at least one this year. I loved the idea of the tall form factor. I want to do less web browsing and video watching on my phone and more listening to music and quickly managing my life. I know I have very long fingers and large hands, so the larger phones feel fine in my hand, but are a pain to carry since they are heavy and take up a lot of space in my pants pocket.
We run repair shops, so I get to hear all sorts of feedback about Android phones from customers. The Pixel 3A is definitely the most popular and budget-friendly "clean Android" phone out there right now. Pixel 4 is out as well now, but less popular thanks to the higher price.
Used my Essential today to snap gorgeous 360 pics with the snap-on camera. I think they had a good approach that could've lead to building a good ecosystem.
Not sure what I'll upgrade to after carrying the Essential...
Why upgrade to anything else, until your Essential breaks?
Drive it like you stole it.. and there's always LineageOS[0], so you can keep updating it basically forever, and since it was a flagship, the specs are still pretty solid, even compared to mid-tier phones.
It's pretty hard to find a phone that has the stock Android experience, no bloatware, and beautiful, powerful hardware for this kind of price ($150 on Ebay for grade-A used), let alone one that has an awesome 360 camera and can run nightly android builds.
The problem is that stock Android on Essential will no longer receive security updates. LineageOS will receive updates, but if you want to use things like Google Pay or Netflix, you'll have to install kernel mods to trick SafetyNet into thinking that it's not running LineageOS.
I'm almost OK with doing that, but I think it's a tall order my partner (non-technical) who has been using an Essential.
Such a shame, I had the PH-1 and to was the best <$300 phone. I loved their commitment to updating Android. I remember getting Android 10 within the same day the pixel phone officially got it. I wish they just updated the PH-1 with a better camera (and app), processor, and maybe more storage (the default was 128GB!).
I've downloaded the latest APK from apkmirror but the app is force closing at launch on stock. It was the same 2 years ago when I first tried, is it working for you? Do you have a suggestion?
Had no idea they also owned Newton. Going to use this as yet another reminder not to invest in new email clients, they all seem to get shut down within a few years of launch.
Newton Mail’s send later’s “don’t send if recipient emails me before sending” feature looks really nice. Aside from that I can’t tell why I’d use Newton over Apple Mail.
I mean outside of any specialized features that the email client hosts, the majority of the functionality is local, no? So even if the email client is no longer developed, it'll keep working as long as your email service works.
I was in the market for an Android phone a few months after the Essential came out, and bought it at a much-reduced price. As others have said, it was a really nice phone except for the camera.
I'm not sure exactly why it failed. I remember showing a friend a picture on my phone once. His eyes opened wide and said, "That phone is all screen!" He was amazed by it, in an era when most phones still had big bezels.
I interviewed with them for an engineer position back in 2018. My overall impression was actually quite good. The interviewers I met all seem very smart and experienced (a few with 20+ YOE at bigCo). I was quite bumped that I didn’t get an offer, but it turned out to be a blessing I guess.
Maybe it also shows that just having smart people isn’t enough for a company/product to succeed.
I had an essential phone from the first fire sale, was overall happy with it but a few months in I went hiking and my pants got a bit wet from walking though wet forest (wasn't raining) and the phone died. They were small enough that nobody knew how to work on it (tried all the usual tricks). As other people have mentioned, the phone was pretty good, except for the camera.
The iFixit guide was b---s---, they froze the phone for no clear reason, and destroyed the entire phone. I almost gave up on buying because of them. Here is a tutorial by fixEZ. All you need is a heat gun (I used a hairdryer) and a playing card.
I think the hardware phone market was just too competitive. While I was hopeful they would make some awesome stuff. It's obvious when you're playing with the giants of industries (Samsung, Apple) unless you have a super huge value proposition that no one's thought about before the odds are stacked against you.
I can't say I'm a fan of this ruler aspect ratio phone. If Essential wanted to exist in a crowded market, they didn't need to invent something new. Copy a recently designed phone and just add a removable battery. No one else is doing it. Instant success.
As someone who thinks the iPhone SE is the ultimate form factor I’m sympathetic to the “build it and they’ll come” argument but I don’t believe it. The reason no one is making a phone with a removable battery is because there isn’t a large enough market for it. These companies do a lot of market research, if there was an opening in the market someone would have capitalised on it.
I'm sure they do conduct a lot of research. However, I bet that research points toward failing batteries after 1-2 years as the major driving force in phone upgrading. If an OEM makes an easily removable battery phone, they are essentially killing their chances of future sales. The Lg g5 is a good argument to this case, but I feel it was mainly DOA because LG at the time was not conducting enough testing on their phones (Bootloop problems).
Good time for an employee to write a book about Essential?
I would love to know more about Essential + the development process around the PH1. Shipping such a product with a relatively small team must have been challenging in many interesting ways.
It makes me mad that I can't buy a recent iPhone with headphone jack and USB 3. Instead I'm lured in to buying phones with a lightning port that fails after 2 years, plus dongles, or expensive ear pods that fail after 2 years (and which I will lose after 4 months). Meanwhile, the IPhone 6S is becoming so slow with recent IOS releases that it stops being an option, too.
My biggest issue with the PH1 was the lack of cases. I work in an industrial environment where I need an otterbox or bulky protective case. The PH1 only lasted for a month before I dropped it on a concrete floor and cracked the screen.
Was this ever not a strong possibility? Entering the world of Smartphones is incredibly tough. When I first read about essential my thoughts weee this is either going to sell to someone for pennies on the dollar or just shutdown.
I'm not sure your "It's been an Incredible Journey" post is the appropriate place to showcase marketing videos for a product you see "no clear path to deliver it to customers".
Not only the engineers are likely proud of their work and want to showcase it, they may also use this to promote themselves in their search for a new job.
The GEM is now literally legendary since no one will be able to use it long enough to discover the downsides. It can join Xanadu, Magic Cap, and BeOS in history.
I would have never bought an Essential phone because of the sexual harassment allegations that Google internally found credible. It’s just not the character I can support.
Andy Rubin has never acknowledged his behaviour was wrong. He’s never apologised, and maintains it is a “smear campaign”.
I'm frustrated by this logic. On one level, you're punishing an entire company because of the actions from one guy. Wouldn't it suck if your CEO committed some offense, and you personally had to pay for it by losing your job?
Second, I simply do not feel it is my place as a consumer to punish a person for his behavior. The legal system is in place to deal with this, and that should be more than sufficient, and it's important that is the system used to deal with the issue, because everyone has rights. The legal system is designed to allow both parties to exercise their rights. Cowboy boycotts by consumers are emotionally driven mobs. That's not justice.
Finally, we as a society used to believe in second chances. Once someone commits an offense, usually they pay some price (maybe losing a job, going to jail, paying a fine etc) and then we give them a chance to participate in our society again. They don't always get all their previous privledges back. If you commit a felony, you won't be able to own a firearm for example. But you do get a another chance to be productive.
I hope you're kidding but don't think you are. This guy doesn't need a second chance - he has hundreds of million of dollars.
Anyone working at this company is smart enough to get a job anywhere else with relative ease. I'm hardly worried about highly skilled people "losing their job" - at this point the ones that choose to stay are doing so for some reason, not because they just need any random job.
What about a secretary at the company? Is it fair if (s)he loses their job? But what is it about being highly skilled which makes it okay that they should have to uproot their lives? Just because I might not fall down does not imply that I would enjoy being kicked.
I just don't feel like you're being morally consistent here. Sure I get having empathy for the guys victim(s) (i have no idea what the details of the situation here are). But there's two sides to the coin that are worth considering.
I'm sympathetic to this -- especially the first paragraph re: the employees who aren't directly involved -- but it's your last paragraph that I think is kind of the sticking point in this particular case. What material price did Andy Rubin pay for his behavior? Yes, he was asked to resign from Google -- but they not only didn't fire him, they gave him a $90M exit package and agreed to keep the reason why he was leaving secret. This all only came out due to investigative reporting years later. The "price" Rubin paid was... being compensated so highly he really doesn't have to ever work again if he doesn't want to?
Look, I don't want to see the man's head on a pike, but as near as I can tell he's not only paid absolutely nothing for what he's done, he hasn't even admitted he did anything wrong. (And, sure, it's possible that he didn't actually do anything wrong and this is an elaborate smear campaign, but Google has a history of what the NYT dryly called a "permissive workplace culture," which included giving executives accused of sexual harassment very soft landings.)
I don't know how "as a society" we should handle cases like this. As individuals, though, I think it's okay for (some of) us to believe that Rubin hasn't acted in a very ethical manner, that he's compounded the issue by not apologizing (or presenting a very credible defense of his actions), and finally, that as an employee, your perception of the ethics of your company's culture -- including the behavior of your executive team -- should factor into your decision about whether to seek other employment or, in fact, take the job at all. There are companies I certainly wouldn't work for on such grounds.
He’s not even saying he changed: he has never acknowledged his behaviour as wrong, nor apologised for his behaviour. He describes it as a “smear campaign”.
I think you're missing my primary point. I do not think it is my "job" as a consumer to get to the root of the issue, and make a judgement. I don't know the full story (in fact here I don't know ANY of it). My consumer life is separate, and I think the legal system is the way to deal with bad people doing bad things.
I don’t, but there’s also a big difference between using a product that someone formerly led (and was asked to resign after it was bought to light), and another where the person is the CEO.
Andy Rubin has continued to deny all the allegations that Google HR internally confirmed , and WSJ reports Larry Page directly asked Andy to resign.
That’s pretty damning to me, and the lack of apology or even admission throughout the years is not a good reflection on his character.
There's not really any data to retrieve. Newton Mail is an email client rather than an email service. Oddly they had announced a shutdown about a year and a half ago but Essential bought them out right before the shutdown and kept it going until now.
We've changed the URL from https://www.essential.com/blog/essential-update to an article that says more directly what's happening. The site guidelines call for original sources (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) but corporate press releases increasingly feel like an exception to this rule. Maybe it's because they're as much a mask for information as a source of it.
If anyone can suggest a better URL, we can change it again. I just picked the first item from some search results.
That's fair. On reflection I suppose I was reacting mostly to the title and the fact that comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22311295 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22311297 were showing up in the thread. Perhaps a title change would have sufficed in this case. When I said that the genre of official corporate announcements tends not to have a great track record, I was speaking generally.
I wasn’t following the Gem but I sure wonder what the appeal of a skinny phone was supposed to be.
It’s like trying to make a two door minivan. All phones look the same just like how all cars look the same for a reason - we have converged on the most useful design that works for everyone.