Essential Products
Android's co-founder launched a premium modular phone company, sold one difficult first device, then closed before its radically narrow successor could ship.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A consumer technology company founded by Andy Rubin, best known for the Essential Phone PH-1.
A consumer technology company founded by Andy Rubin, best known for the Essential Phone PH-1. Essential shipped a titanium-and-ceramic Android phone with an edge-to-edge display and accessory connector, then developed a very different AI-focused device called Project GEM.
Existence timeline
Essential presents its first phone and accessory ecosystem.
Ordinary customers gain access after production delays.
Essential shows an unusually narrow concept for a future mobile device.
The company says it cannot find a path to deliver GEM.
The final PH-1 security update leaves the original product without vendor support.
Why it ended
The company concluded it had no clear path to deliver GEM and ceased operations in February 2020, ending updates and customer support plans.
Last confirmed trace
Released PH-1 hardware, open-source repositories, patents and Project GEM photographs preserve both the product and the unshipped successor.
What it left behind
Essential's design ideas spread quickly through the phone industry, while its closure showed that influential hardware does not guarantee a sustainable device business.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.