Andy Rubin, one of the cofounders of Android, parted ways with Android and brought in a new smartphone under the name Essential.
Essential Phone PH-1 is probably the first smartphone to have a notch in the display to house the camera module. It was released back in 2017 and, was criticized for its design back then.
But, according to a recent development, the quintessential smartphone company is now shutting down. Meaning that it won’t be releasing a new phone any further. This also means that the company will stop providing security or firmware updates for the Essential phone.
The February update which was pushed on February 3, 2020, for the PH-1 was the last update the device received. Though the smartphone will continue to work without the support of software updates from the Essential team.essnet
This announcement was made on the official blog on Essential’s website and below are some of the important mentions from the blog:
(Source)
However, the company will be providing the vendor image and everything else on GitHub, which means that custom ROMs will still be an option.
Moreover, the Project GEM which was the new phone teased a while back by Andy Rubin as a successor to the PH-1, will not see the light of the day. In fact, the users of the email service called Newton mail will be able to access the service till April 30, 2020.
So, with that, a promising company bites the dust and if you own an Essential Phone then, it is time to switch over to something else as there will be no customer support for the device.
PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.
