Speaker 1: Welcome to Text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And you know when
Speaker 1: I posted on Twitter the other week that I was
Speaker 1: soliciting topics for upcoming tech Stuff episodes. Adam whom you
Speaker 1: can follow on Twitter. He has the handle at dead Technology.
Speaker 1: He's also a podcast producer himself. He suggested I tackle
Speaker 1: Essential also known as Essential Products. Folks in the text
Speaker 1: fere know it as an upstart phone company that recently
Speaker 1: went out of business. People outside the text fear may
Speaker 1: have never even heard of it. So today I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you the story of Essential Products, where it
Speaker 1: came from, what the company accomplished, and then what upen
Speaker 1: in February twenty and why it's shut down now. The
Speaker 1: story starts with some major unpleasantness, but it's something that
Speaker 1: we absolutely have to mention because it plays such an
Speaker 1: important role in the story of the company itself. The
Speaker 1: founder of Essential Products is a guy named Andy Rubin.
Speaker 1: He was one of the co creators of the Android
Speaker 1: operating system, also the developer of the Sidekick and tons
Speaker 1: of other stuff. He had co founded Android way back
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, years before consumer smartphones were even
Speaker 1: a thing. Really, there were smartphones around, but they were
Speaker 1: almost all marketed towards executives. It wouldn't be until two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, with the introduction of the iPhone from Apple,
Speaker 1: that we'd really see a more consumer oriented smartphone. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, this is not the Android story. I
Speaker 1: have covered the Android story before, so let me give
Speaker 1: you the highlights. Google acquired Android in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: just two years into that company's existence. The company kept
Speaker 1: the development of its smartphone operating system hush hush, only
Speaker 1: even acknowledging it after Apple had debuted the iPhone in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. Then Google announced that it was taking
Speaker 1: a very different approach to Apple. While Apple was creating
Speaker 1: both the operating system and the hardware, starting with phones
Speaker 1: and later doing things like the iPad, it would all
Speaker 1: run the same operating system. But Google was going to
Speaker 1: create an operating system that could run on an entire
Speaker 1: spectrum of hardware from multiple manufacturers, leaving it up to
Speaker 1: the manufacturers to choose whether or not they wanted to
Speaker 1: incorporate Android into their products. Or to go with some
Speaker 1: other operating system solution. In other words, Apple was going
Speaker 1: for a curated, purpose built approach and Google was going
Speaker 1: for a more broad spectrum strategy. The first Android smartphone
Speaker 1: wouldn't even arrive until two thousand eight, a year after
Speaker 1: the iPhone's appearance, and Android had a lot of catching
Speaker 1: up to do. But that broad spectrum approach meant Android
Speaker 1: could appear on lots of different mobile phones at a
Speaker 1: lot of different price points, on multiple carriers, from multiple manufacturers.
Speaker 1: That meant that people who wanted a smartphone but they
Speaker 1: couldn't afford the more premium iPhone, or maybe they weren't
Speaker 1: an a T and T customer. I mean keep in mind,
Speaker 1: for the first couple of years iPhone was exclusive to
Speaker 1: a T and T in the United States. Well, they
Speaker 1: could opt instead to go for an Android phone, typically
Speaker 1: at a lower price point, and since Apple has a
Speaker 1: reputation for charging more for its products, this wasn't really
Speaker 1: that unusual. In Android phone sales were outpacing iPhone sales
Speaker 1: by eleven Android phones were outnumbering iPhones in the United States,
Speaker 1: and by the Android operating system represented an eight percent
Speaker 1: market share of all smartphones out there the os really
Speaker 1: made up for lost time. Meanwhile, Andy Rubin was now
Speaker 1: a high level executive within Google. He trends position from
Speaker 1: overseeing Android to heading up a division within Google focused
Speaker 1: on robotics. He would leave Google inten and in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen he would co found a venture capital firm called
Speaker 1: Playground Global, and the tech company A Central Products would
Speaker 1: follow a little bit later. It wasn't until tween, with
Speaker 1: an expose a in The New York Times, that the
Speaker 1: world at large learned more about his departure. The details
Speaker 1: would throw major swerves at the company's he was working with,
Speaker 1: and those details go back to the major unpleasantness I
Speaker 1: alluded to earlier. According to the expose in Reuben coerced
Speaker 1: a fellow Google employee into performing sex acts. And I
Speaker 1: should add that Reuben himself denies this story. But Google
Speaker 1: led an internal investigation that must have found some credibility
Speaker 1: that Reuben was guilty of some form of misconduct or
Speaker 1: otherwise concluded that having Reuben on staff was untenable. As
Speaker 1: Larry Page himself, then the CEO of Google told Reuben
Speaker 1: to resign. Reuben had recently been awarded one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of Google stock, and in fact, according
Speaker 1: to the Verge, Reuben actually received that stock award while
Speaker 1: this investigation was underway, which is pretty phenomenal. Now. According
Speaker 1: to g Q, Reuben wouldn't see any of that money
Speaker 1: because the directive for him to resign would mean he'd
Speaker 1: have to leave the company before those stock awards would
Speaker 1: actually vest, so he didn't see that hundred fifty million dollars. However,
Speaker 1: Google would famously pay Reuben a whopping ninety million dollar
Speaker 1: exit fee. The public facing story was that Reuben was
Speaker 1: leaving Google on his own accord in order to pursue
Speaker 1: opportunities in creating new startups and making new investments. It
Speaker 1: was the combination of the allegations of sexual abuse with
Speaker 1: the award of early one million dollars that would bring
Speaker 1: incredible criticism down both on Reuben and Google in general,
Speaker 1: and justifiably so. The ramifications of this decision are still
Speaker 1: having incredible effects to this day, and the culture at
Speaker 1: Google continues to be shaped by the whole story and
Speaker 1: the fact that top level executives at Google we're covering
Speaker 1: up sexual harassment allegations and other awful things that involved
Speaker 1: quote unquote top performers at the company. Now, I wanted
Speaker 1: to get all that out of the way early because
Speaker 1: the actual incident happened two years before Reuben would create
Speaker 1: the company Essential Products, so it predates the company. However,
Speaker 1: the revelation of what happened and the aftermath that followed
Speaker 1: in and beyond would have a huge impact on everything
Speaker 1: else Reuben was involved with. So now we know about
Speaker 1: this awful act that was lurking in the background. But
Speaker 1: let's get down to the story of Essential Products itself.
Speaker 1: Noing that this scandal and a few others on top
Speaker 1: of that one will come back into factor into what
Speaker 1: actually happened. I really wish that this was just a
Speaker 1: typical text startup story and a failure that you know,
Speaker 1: I could easily cover. But the personal details of the
Speaker 1: company's founder and the company's fate itself are tied together
Speaker 1: pretty tightly. So it's two thousand fifteen. Reuben has left Google.
Speaker 1: The world at large doesn't know the details of that departure,
Speaker 1: and Reuben at this point is married to a woman
Speaker 1: he met at Google named Reri Hera Baru, and that
Speaker 1: will also play a big role in the story to follow.
Speaker 1: Reuben goes on to create an investment firm called Playground Global.
Speaker 1: Playground Global also acted as what is called a hardware incubator.
Speaker 1: That is, it was a company that would fund research
Speaker 1: and development projects related to new hardware products. People could
Speaker 1: come in and pitch an idea and then if the
Speaker 1: board liked the idea, they could approve of it and
Speaker 1: allow the people who pitched it some space and other assets,
Speaker 1: some mentorship, you know, stuff to help them bring that
Speaker 1: idea to life. And this could be anything from mobile phones,
Speaker 1: network devices, smart home technologies, really any kind of hardware product.
Speaker 1: And they also looked at software as well, though it
Speaker 1: was like a seventy thirty split between hardware and software.
Speaker 1: This investment company got its own initial investment from a
Speaker 1: group of limited partners and that included HP read Point Ventures.
Speaker 1: There was the Chinese company Tencent that was an investor
Speaker 1: and kill says Google. The amount of money raised by
Speaker 1: this collection was around three hundred million dollars, So wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's also pretty outrageous since one of the company's pouring
Speaker 1: money into this venture was the same one that had
Speaker 1: pushed Ruben out due to allegations of sexual misconduct a
Speaker 1: year earlier. Though again that wasn't public knowledge, but presumably
Speaker 1: people at Google were aware of it. And a bit
Speaker 1: later in after play Ground Global was off the ground,
Speaker 1: Reuben founded another company called Essential Products. This received funding
Speaker 1: from you guessed it, playground Global in the Series A
Speaker 1: Round of Funding. Reuben raised thirty million dollars for Essential
Speaker 1: Products in order to higher on staff, and one of
Speaker 1: Reuben's businesses was essentially funding another business. The other big
Speaker 1: contributor for the Series A Round of funding for Essential
Speaker 1: Products was Red Point And just to be clear, this
Speaker 1: wasn't illegal, Folks, weren't raising eyebrows or anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of Playground Global was to fund hardware
Speaker 1: ventures and that's what Essential Products aimed to be. The
Speaker 1: two ventures, by the way, shared the same operating space,
Speaker 1: so Essential Products had common space with Playground Global. They
Speaker 1: were co located in the same warehouse for two years.
Speaker 1: The company got to work on projects, and during this
Speaker 1: time things were pretty quiet. The company didn't have anything
Speaker 1: to announce yet. It would take time to develop the
Speaker 1: hardware and software to a point that Essential Products would
Speaker 1: have anything to announce. So Reuben and his company operated
Speaker 1: out of sight and largely out of mind. What they
Speaker 1: were working on were a couple of different things. Their
Speaker 1: flagship product and the only one from Essential Products to
Speaker 1: ever be brought to market spoiler alert on that one
Speaker 1: would become the Essential pH one smartphone sometimes just called
Speaker 1: the Essential phone, which is fair because it's the only
Speaker 1: thing that ever came out from that company, and this
Speaker 1: one ran on the Android operating system. The other two products,
Speaker 1: which again never emerged beyond the development stage, included a
Speaker 1: home hub similar to Google Home or Amazon's Echo line
Speaker 1: of products that was essentially called Essential Home, and then
Speaker 1: a custom built operating system for that hub, and this
Speaker 1: was one that the company called Ambient. Now I'll go
Speaker 1: over those in a moment, but we have some more
Speaker 1: business e business business to attend to first. In early seventeen,
Speaker 1: the tech media world was beginning to pick up buzz
Speaker 1: that Essential was preparing a launch of a product, and
Speaker 1: that product was rumored to be a smartphone, and it
Speaker 1: would happen sometime in the spring of Around that same time,
Speaker 1: the company was seeking a significant investment to the tune
Speaker 1: of one hundred million dollars from the massive Japanese holding
Speaker 1: company soft Bank, but that deal got scuttled. Now the
Speaker 1: apparent reason for this, for soft Bank's change of heart
Speaker 1: had to do with another tech company called Apple. One
Speaker 1: of soft Bank's interests is an investment arm called soft
Speaker 1: Bank Vision Fund. This is the arm that would have
Speaker 1: funded Essential, and Apple had made a one billion dollar
Speaker 1: that's billion with a B contribution to that fund, and
Speaker 1: analysts concluded that soft Bank backed out of this investment
Speaker 1: with Essential due to that sizeable contribution from Android's chief competitor.
Speaker 1: In fact, while Reuben would not specifically say the name Apple,
Speaker 1: he did state that a party that was involved in
Speaker 1: this investment fund discovered that they were one of the
Speaker 1: potential investments and that this would mean that this other company,
Speaker 1: Apple would have a stake of ownership in his company,
Speaker 1: and that neither party, Apple nor Essential wanted that and
Speaker 1: that was the reason why the deal fell through. Now,
Speaker 1: losing out on a one hundred million dollar deal is
Speaker 1: obviously enormous. Shortly after news broke of SoftBank's reversal, Andy
Speaker 1: Ruben tweeted out a message that included a render image
Speaker 1: of a new smartphone design and it would turn out
Speaker 1: to be the pH one, but we didn't have a
Speaker 1: name for it yet. This was the beginning of sort
Speaker 1: of a campaign of marketing for the phone and for
Speaker 1: the company at large, because Reuben was seeking out new
Speaker 1: investors to replace the fact that he lost the soft
Speaker 1: Bank money. The pictures showed an undeniably attractive smartphone. The
Speaker 1: device had an extremely thin bezel. And the word bezel
Speaker 1: comes from the world of jewelry and watches. It refers
Speaker 1: to the ring of material that holds in place the
Speaker 1: innerds of the thing, sometimes like the glass cover of
Speaker 1: a watch or a jewel in a setting. So with smartphones,
Speaker 1: it's the frame that holds the screen in place, and
Speaker 1: older smartphones had really wide bezels, and in turn that
Speaker 1: eats into the potential screen size, or if you want
Speaker 1: to have a really big screen, it means you have
Speaker 1: a really big phone because of that bezel. The phone
Speaker 1: in Reuben's tweet had an extremely thin bezel, creating a
Speaker 1: sort of edge to edge appearance for the phone's screen. Now,
Speaker 1: this was not the first smartphone to go that route,
Speaker 1: mind you, Sharp's Aquos Crystal phone, which launched way back
Speaker 1: in Twoteen, boasted a bez less screen. The Essential phone
Speaker 1: also appeared to have no three and a half millimeter
Speaker 1: headphone jack, which would be confirmed later, and again, this
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the first smartphone to ditch the headphone jack.
Speaker 1: That would require people to invest in either bluetooth headsets
Speaker 1: or use a dongle adapter to plug into the USBC
Speaker 1: jack that was on the phone and then use wired
Speaker 1: headphones through the adapter. But other smartphones, like Apple's iPhone seven,
Speaker 1: which had launched in TwixT also didn't have a three
Speaker 1: and a half millimeter headphone jack, and the headphone jack
Speaker 1: required more space and resources, including power supplies and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and that takes up valuable space inside a phone.
Speaker 1: So ditching it was a somewhat controversial decision when it
Speaker 1: first started to happen in the industry, because a lot
Speaker 1: of folks like yours truly were dinosaurs. We were still
Speaker 1: using wired earbuds, and we get real grouchy about the
Speaker 1: fact that we didn't have those anymore, we couldn't use
Speaker 1: them without a dongle, or that we had to say
Speaker 1: the word dongle. But more people begrudgingly accepted that this
Speaker 1: move actually meant that phones could be thinner, lighter, and
Speaker 1: that they could dedicate the space that would have gone
Speaker 1: to the headphone jack to supporting other stuff. So sometimes
Speaker 1: progress is painful, but later we're thankful for it. Now,
Speaker 1: the headphone jack thing wasn't entirely clear from that first
Speaker 1: tweeted photo, but the image first shared on March two,
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, would be the first taste of what was
Speaker 1: to come, and it helped Reuben get other investors to
Speaker 1: line up to take the spots soft Bank would have held,
Speaker 1: so essentially he was able to get new investors for
Speaker 1: the Series B round of funding. That round of funding
Speaker 1: would be official in June of but I'm not quite
Speaker 1: at that point just yet. At the end of May seventeen,
Speaker 1: just before the Series B funding round would become official,
Speaker 1: Reuben would take the stage at the CODE Conference and
Speaker 1: he was interviewed by Walt Mossburg, and it was at
Speaker 1: that presentation that he would reveal more information about his company,
Speaker 1: his company's plans, and their planned products. More on that
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: At the CODE conference, Ruben showed off the Essential Phone,
Speaker 1: or what would later be called the pH One. He
Speaker 1: explained that the bezel of the phone was made out
Speaker 1: of titanium and that the reason for that was because
Speaker 1: he needed a really strong material that could stand up
Speaker 1: to the typical forces of phone might experience without buckling,
Speaker 1: because other phones around this time were usually made out
Speaker 1: of aluminum, but aluminum would dent if it had been
Speaker 1: made as thin as the p H one's bezel had been.
Speaker 1: He explained that the back of the phone was made
Speaker 1: out of ceramic and that it was resistant to damage,
Speaker 1: so that was also really important, and it came in
Speaker 1: both a glossy or matt finish. He also explained that
Speaker 1: the camera on the phone was behind the screen itself,
Speaker 1: so if you look at a photo of an Essential phone,
Speaker 1: you'll see that the lens of the camera is at
Speaker 1: the top center of the very top of the screen,
Speaker 1: with the screen actually wrapping around the lens. It's not
Speaker 1: in its own section like its own little black band
Speaker 1: at the top of the screen. The screen is both
Speaker 1: on the left and right of the lens as well,
Speaker 1: so would be in the center of a notifications bar
Speaker 1: in other words. Of particular interest was a pair of
Speaker 1: magnetic pins on the top back section of the phone,
Speaker 1: and these were designed to interoperate with various accessories for
Speaker 1: the Essential Phone, so rather than plugging an accessory into
Speaker 1: a port, you could snap it on. You would align
Speaker 1: the pins on the phone with the pins on the
Speaker 1: accessory and the magnets would click together. The accessory would
Speaker 1: just snap into place, and the phone would detect the
Speaker 1: accessory through a wireless connection at the same speeds as
Speaker 1: USB three. So that would mean that this accessory would
Speaker 1: raw power and other capabilities from the phone, and it
Speaker 1: could in turn enhance the phones. This would mean the
Speaker 1: accessory would draw power from the phone as well as
Speaker 1: tap into the phone's networking capabilities, but it would also
Speaker 1: enhance the phone in some way. So what kind of
Speaker 1: accessories are we talking about. Well, the one that got
Speaker 1: featured in that talk and in various reviews and news
Speaker 1: articles for the phone was a three hundred sixty degree
Speaker 1: camera accessory. It looked a little bit like a periscope
Speaker 1: for the phone. So you would snap it on with
Speaker 1: these magnetic contacts and the phone would detect the accessory.
Speaker 1: You would be able to capture three hundred sixty degree
Speaker 1: photos and video using the camera. When you were done,
Speaker 1: you could just remove the camera from the back of
Speaker 1: the device, just pull it free, and then you could
Speaker 1: snap on some other accessory if you had one and
Speaker 1: you wanted to and Ruben's point was that he was
Speaker 1: pushing devices to move towards a truly wireless kind of future,
Speaker 1: you know, one where you wouldn't need any ports at
Speaker 1: all in a phone. You would charge your phone wirelessly,
Speaker 1: and you'd use a system like these contacts to enhance
Speaker 1: the phone's features. And this was a big selling point
Speaker 1: in the philosophy of Essential. For one thing, in an
Speaker 1: ideal manifestation, you could buy a basic phone and through
Speaker 1: this interface you could boost its capabilities with various peripherals.
Speaker 1: And this was the underlying principle of modular phones in general.
Speaker 1: And this also was not a brand new idea. I
Speaker 1: don't want to suggest that Essential invented this. Other companies
Speaker 1: like Motorola had toyed with modular phones, but it hadn't
Speaker 1: really gained much traction, and honestly, it still hasn't when
Speaker 1: you look at the current market. But another way to
Speaker 1: look at it was that the wireless data transfer technology
Speaker 1: meant that for future devices, the company could place the
Speaker 1: contact points in a different position on the back of
Speaker 1: the next phone, for example, and the older peripherals would
Speaker 1: still work with the new models. One of the downsides
Speaker 1: of other modular designs, at least according to Ruben, is
Speaker 1: that they frequently involved physically connected modules that make up
Speaker 1: a phone. But then if you redesign the phone form factor,
Speaker 1: then those modules won't connect, they don't fit with the
Speaker 1: new form factor. By making this sort of a magnetic contact,
Speaker 1: you could as long as you kept the same pen arrangement,
Speaker 1: you could place that wherever you wanted along the backside
Speaker 1: of the phone and still be able to snap stuff
Speaker 1: to it, and presumably still be able to use older
Speaker 1: peripherals with newer models of phones. So it was a
Speaker 1: kind of future proofing. For another thing, getting rid of
Speaker 1: ports means that you could in the future do stuff
Speaker 1: like create form factors that are more resistant to water
Speaker 1: and dust and other stuff that could work its way
Speaker 1: into the electronics of a device that has an open port,
Speaker 1: So you could create a sealed electronic system that could
Speaker 1: be far more water resistant or even potentially water proof. Now,
Speaker 1: that was not what the essential phone was because it
Speaker 1: did have a USB C ports. Ruben acknowledged on that
Speaker 1: stage that we were not yet at a point where
Speaker 1: we could easily transition into a truly wireless form factor,
Speaker 1: because charging stations like on an airplane or in hotels.
Speaker 1: Those almost always requires some form of cable. You've got
Speaker 1: to plug them into the USB port and then plug
Speaker 1: that other end into your device. You aren't likely to
Speaker 1: find charging pads in most charging hotspots, so the Essential
Speaker 1: Phone had a USB c port for that reason, and
Speaker 1: it was a compromise made in an effort to try
Speaker 1: and transition electronics to a more wireless approach. Let's get
Speaker 1: to some of the specs of the Essential phone. So
Speaker 1: it was an Android phone, but without a lot of
Speaker 1: the added stuff that was found in phones from other
Speaker 1: manufacturers and on various carriers. Another selling point for Essential
Speaker 1: was that users could expect at Android experience with as
Speaker 1: little added on software, often referred to as bloatwear tacked on.
Speaker 1: With some Android handsets, you're dealing with stuff that gets
Speaker 1: added on by the hardware manufacturer as well as whatever
Speaker 1: phone carrier you're using, and this all can bog down
Speaker 1: the phone's performance, and users typically don't care for it
Speaker 1: very much. A lot of it tends to replicate various applications,
Speaker 1: and so you don't really need it all, and often
Speaker 1: you can't remove it. Ruben did not want that to
Speaker 1: happen with his phone. The phone's processor was a qual
Speaker 1: Calm snap Dragon eight thirty five, which is an eight
Speaker 1: core processor running at two point four or five giga
Speaker 1: hurts clock speed. It also had an adren No five
Speaker 1: forty graphics processing unit. It sported four gigabytes of RAM,
Speaker 1: had a d twenty eight gigabytes of data storage space,
Speaker 1: did not have a memory card expansion slot. It had
Speaker 1: to thirteen megapixel rear facing cameras capable of shooting four
Speaker 1: K resolution video you at thirty frames per second. Uh
Speaker 1: you could set the frame rate higher, but doing so
Speaker 1: would reduce the resolution, so you could shoot up to
Speaker 1: one twenty frames per second, but that would make the
Speaker 1: resolution seven twenty P, so you've downscaled quite a bit.
Speaker 1: It also had a forward facing camera that could shoot
Speaker 1: at the same resolutions, but it was an eight megapixel camera,
Speaker 1: not a thirteen megapixel like the rear facing ones. The
Speaker 1: Essential phone supported Bluetooth five point o l E, the
Speaker 1: low energy Bluetooth standard that would draw less power from
Speaker 1: the battery. It had NFC chips near field communication chips,
Speaker 1: had WiFi compatibility obviously. It had a rear fingerprint sensor
Speaker 1: for unlocking the phone and for authorizing purchases and stuff,
Speaker 1: and it came in a variety of colors, from pure
Speaker 1: white to black moon to ocean depths, because of course
Speaker 1: those were the names they used. Reuben revealed that the
Speaker 1: phone was available for pre order at the cost of
Speaker 1: six hundred nine nine U S dollars. That's going to
Speaker 1: change before too long, so I'm gonna have to get
Speaker 1: back to that price in a little bit. But first,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the other stuff Ruben had
Speaker 1: to announce at the Code conference. Ruben also talked about
Speaker 1: this Essential Home device, the hub that Essential was working on,
Speaker 1: as well as the Ambient operating system. Now, according to Reuben,
Speaker 1: he had no plans of releasing a phone that was
Speaker 1: running on Ambient, but rather intended Ambient to act as
Speaker 1: sort of a unifying platform upon which any number of
Speaker 1: other systems could run, and specifically for home automation purposes.
Speaker 1: He laid out the challenge of creating a true smart home. So,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to outfit your home with smart devices,
Speaker 1: and we're talking everything. You wanted smart locks, smart lights,
Speaker 1: you wanted a climate control system that could tap into it,
Speaker 1: you wanted smart appliances, and everything else, you were likely
Speaker 1: going to have to depend upon products from lots of
Speaker 1: different manufacturers, and each product would likely be running on
Speaker 1: its own set of protocols or rules, and you would
Speaker 1: likely have to interface through each of them through individual apps,
Speaker 1: which would be very frustrating. You'd have an app for
Speaker 1: your lights, you would have an app for your locks,
Speaker 1: you would have a different app for your dishwasher, You'd
Speaker 1: have another one for your air conditioner, and so on.
Speaker 1: He said the goal of Ambient was to create an
Speaker 1: operating system that would be compatible with all these different systems,
Speaker 1: so you could have a centralized way to interface and
Speaker 1: control them. You wouldn't have to think about this fractured
Speaker 1: app environment, so you can have a system that could
Speaker 1: interpret your commands and make the relevant outcomes happen. And
Speaker 1: this isn't that different from what Google and Amazon and
Speaker 1: others were trying to do around the same time, I
Speaker 1: should add moreover, with Ambient, the goal was to make
Speaker 1: these various systems operate according to the desires of the user,
Speaker 1: making them do things that perhaps they weren't able to
Speaker 1: do on their own. So, for example, a user might
Speaker 1: tell their hub that they want a reminder to go
Speaker 1: off at a certain time of day. Maybe you've got
Speaker 1: a meeting coming up and you're working from home, so
Speaker 1: you said an alarm, and as part of that alert,
Speaker 1: the hub makes the lights in the home dim and
Speaker 1: brighten a few times. That way, even if you're not
Speaker 1: within hearing distance of the hub, you see the lights
Speaker 1: going dim and bright and you realize, oh, that's my alarm.
Speaker 1: I need to get ready for this phone call. That
Speaker 1: would be an example the sort of thing you could
Speaker 1: do with this hub, and it would be able to
Speaker 1: take these incoming commands and set up processes necessary to
Speaker 1: achieve whatever the outcome was that you desired. Ambient was
Speaker 1: meant to run on top of the Essential Home Hub,
Speaker 1: and the images of the hub, or at least the
Speaker 1: concept images of the hub, showed a round device shaped
Speaker 1: kind of like a classic analog clock, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind that hang on the walls and have hands and
Speaker 1: stuff in the old school, and a log clocks, But
Speaker 1: in this case this device was on its back. So
Speaker 1: imagine taking a clock off a wall and setting it
Speaker 1: flat on a table and the backside of it the
Speaker 1: or the top if you want to think of it
Speaker 1: that way, Like the twelve o'clock location on the clock
Speaker 1: was thicker than the six o'clock location. Uh, the whole
Speaker 1: thing was several inches thick at least again according to
Speaker 1: the concept photos, so it meant that the face of
Speaker 1: the hub was at an angle right, the top side
Speaker 1: was at a higher elevation than the bottom side, and
Speaker 1: on the face of it it was like again like
Speaker 1: a clock. Was a digital screen that Reuben said measured
Speaker 1: around five and a half inches across, and the screen
Speaker 1: was touch enabled, and the device itself could be voice activated,
Speaker 1: so the device could display information as well as spell
Speaker 1: out data on its screen. And Reuben said that the
Speaker 1: way information should be delivered is frequently dependent upon the
Speaker 1: purpose of that information. So in some cases hearing the
Speaker 1: information is really useful, like asking a quick question and
Speaker 1: getting an answer, that's fine. But in other cases it
Speaker 1: might be easier to read the information off a display. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you were trying to follow a recipe,
Speaker 1: it would be way easier to follow it if the
Speaker 1: instructions were on a screen rather than ving them just
Speaker 1: spoken to you all at once. Unlike the phone, Reuben
Speaker 1: didn't have a release date or a price for the
Speaker 1: Essential Home smart hub, and it would turn out there
Speaker 1: would never be a need for one because it again
Speaker 1: never came to market. Shortly after the Code conference event,
Speaker 1: Essential Products completed the Series B round of funding and
Speaker 1: raised another three hundred million dollars, bringing the total now
Speaker 1: to three thirty million. With those two series of investment
Speaker 1: funding rounds, this gave the company evaluation of one billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which catapulted Essential into the ranks of Unicorn startups. But
Speaker 1: now we're right at the precipice of where things would
Speaker 1: start to fall apart for the company. Some of those
Speaker 1: things revolved around the critical reception of the Essential pH
Speaker 1: one phone. Some would focus more on Reuben's past, as
Speaker 1: details about the real reasons for his departure from Google
Speaker 1: would slowly become revealed. But let's start with the reviews,
Speaker 1: as those came first, though not by very much so.
Speaker 1: Ruben announced the phone in May, and he said originally
Speaker 1: that he expected the phone to start shipping within thirty days.
Speaker 1: This was at the very end of May, so it
Speaker 1: would have looked at around July as a launch date. However,
Speaker 1: the phone would actually launch in mid August seventeen. The
Speaker 1: company had supplied a few different tech journal outlets with
Speaker 1: review phones before the final version shipped and the review
Speaker 1: models didn't have the finalized operating system on them, and
Speaker 1: the company missed those two ship dates. There was one
Speaker 1: in July, and then there was another one earlier in
Speaker 1: August that they missed. UM outlets like c net stated
Speaker 1: that they held off on writing and publishing a review
Speaker 1: until they were pretty sure that the handsets they had
Speaker 1: were running the same sort of software that the consumer
Speaker 1: models that were being shipped out we're running. Those reviews
Speaker 1: would end up being fairly mixed. Reviewers liked the look
Speaker 1: of the phone, and they like the feel of it.
Speaker 1: They liked how it felt when they held it. It
Speaker 1: felt substantial, it felt sturdy. They liked the thin bezel.
Speaker 1: They liked that it was carrier agnostics, so it could
Speaker 1: work with any cellular provider, at least in the United States.
Speaker 1: They liked how fast the operating system was and how
Speaker 1: responsive it could be switching from app to app, largely
Speaker 1: thanks to the absence of that bloatwear I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: but Something's reviewers really didn't like. They found the phone
Speaker 1: wouldn't perform well on T Mobile's network. They didn't care
Speaker 1: for the camera app, though the camera could take spectacular
Speaker 1: photos and video, but initially before Essential would send out
Speaker 1: a firmware patch, the camera had issues with stuff like
Speaker 1: auto focus and low light captures, and white balance stabilization.
Speaker 1: It didn't have a portrait mode. Some of those problems,
Speaker 1: like I said, would get addressed in a patch. The
Speaker 1: phone also lacked a noise reduction strategy, so if you
Speaker 1: were shooting in an environment with ambient noise, like on
Speaker 1: a windy day, that noise would get picked up in
Speaker 1: the video you shot, so it'd be very hard to
Speaker 1: hear anything else. Reviewers also initially found problems with the
Speaker 1: three hundred sixty degree camera peripheral, which at code conference
Speaker 1: Reuben had suggested might cost around fifty dollars. It actually
Speaker 1: retailed for two hundred dollars, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: felt that the battery just wasn't very good it didn't
Speaker 1: last very long. Ultimately, the general consensus was that despite
Speaker 1: the missed ship dates, the Essential pH one launched without
Speaker 1: being fully baked, like it still wasn't really ready and
Speaker 1: that would be a big problem. I'll explain more after
Speaker 1: this quick break. So, the Essential pH one launches after
Speaker 1: missing a couple of dates, and reviews are mixed and
Speaker 1: because it's not tied to a specific carrier, it gets
Speaker 1: no support from the major cell service providers. It's not
Speaker 1: occupying prominent displays in places like spring It or T
Speaker 1: Mobile or a T and T or Verizon stores. Customers
Speaker 1: don't flock to the phone. Sales are slow. It was
Speaker 1: not a great start to essentials plans of making a
Speaker 1: coherent tech ecosystem. And while the company would fix several
Speaker 1: of the initial problems of the pH one a few
Speaker 1: weeks after it launched, the damage had really been done already. However,
Speaker 1: that damage would be compounded in late November. That's when
Speaker 1: an initial report first broke the news that Reuben left Google,
Speaker 1: not because of some sense of wander lust, like he
Speaker 1: claimed at the Code conference, but a totally different kind
Speaker 1: of lust. And again, it would be another year before
Speaker 1: we would get the New York Times expose where more
Speaker 1: details would really come out, But the word early on
Speaker 1: was that Reuben had left Google after he had had
Speaker 1: an inappropriate relationship, an inappropriate and undisclosed relationship with a
Speaker 1: fellow Google employee that was totally not his wife, and
Speaker 1: his wife also was a Google employee, but that part
Speaker 1: was you know, known and fine and everything this was
Speaker 1: a different relationship. H Baru. The aforementioned wife had begun
Speaker 1: divorce proceedings against her husband back in May seventeen. That
Speaker 1: was the same month as the Code conference. Now that
Speaker 1: information hadn't really hit the news outlets at this time.
Speaker 1: The divorce process was a really ugly one, and it
Speaker 1: would just get uglier, as his estranged wife would later
Speaker 1: file a separate civil lawsuit against Reuben that would claim
Speaker 1: the former Google executive had been running a sex ring operation,
Speaker 1: that he had failed to disclose his actual finances, and
Speaker 1: that he had coerced re into signing a prenuptial agreement
Speaker 1: on top of a ton of other stuff. So if
Speaker 1: you really want all the salacious details, you can actually
Speaker 1: find lots of articles about it. Suffice it to say
Speaker 1: the allegations are many and lurid, but at this stage
Speaker 1: not much of that had been revealed other than this
Speaker 1: article that said Reuben had been forced to leave Google
Speaker 1: due to an investigation into allegations of misconduct at the company.
Speaker 1: Right around that time, Reuben requested leave from the Essential
Speaker 1: board of Directors so that he could you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote attend to some personal issues, and the board granted
Speaker 1: that request. Now, as far as I can tell, he
Speaker 1: had no formal departure from Playground Global around this same time.
Speaker 1: Remember that's his investment company. So Reuben was gone from
Speaker 1: Essential for just a couple of weeks. He took his
Speaker 1: leave towards the end of November, and by early December
Speaker 1: he was back. So why this quick rubber banding. Well,
Speaker 1: Essential wasn't doing so well. The lackluster sales of the
Speaker 1: pH one were a real source of concern for the company.
Speaker 1: Ruben's return was in part a way to address investor
Speaker 1: concerns about essentials future. The revelation of the real reason
Speaker 1: for his departure from Google, even without all the details
Speaker 1: that would later follow, couldn't have hit at a worse
Speaker 1: time for the company. What Essential really needed was someone
Speaker 1: in a leadership role who could be viewed both as
Speaker 1: a visionary and someone who would reliably be in charge.
Speaker 1: And Reuben was still viewed as a visionary, but in
Speaker 1: the wake of these revelations, the reliability part was more
Speaker 1: in question. Essential would reduce the price of the pH
Speaker 1: one by two hundred dollars, so they knocked it down
Speaker 1: to four hundred bucks in the United States, and before
Speaker 1: a year would pass from the launch of the phone,
Speaker 1: the price would get knocked down again. It reached around
Speaker 1: three hundred fifty bucks on Amazon, which meant that it
Speaker 1: was being marketed at a fifty percent mark down at
Speaker 1: that point yikes. And there was no word about the
Speaker 1: Essential Home smart hub or the ambient operating system. The
Speaker 1: company was in a type of information lockdown. They weren't
Speaker 1: really saying anything much at all about what was in development.
Speaker 1: Presumably the company was working on the follow up to
Speaker 1: the pH One, but there were no details about that either,
Speaker 1: and so it went throughout the rest of and much
Speaker 1: of According to slash Gear, the company only sold nine
Speaker 1: thousand handsets of the pH one in all of seventeen,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind they didn't really launch until August, but
Speaker 1: still ninety thousand not a lot. Essential flagship Phone eventually
Speaker 1: sold out. The company announced that they had no intentions
Speaker 1: to manufacture more of them, and that makes sense. They
Speaker 1: had had to cut the price down to half by
Speaker 1: the time they finally sold out, so my guess is
Speaker 1: that making more of them would have been a money
Speaker 1: losing process, and that it probably made more sense internally
Speaker 1: to focus on the next divide rather than try to
Speaker 1: continue to push a failed device, at least one that
Speaker 1: had failed in the sense of market reception. And then
Speaker 1: the latter half of two thousand eighteen came, and with
Speaker 1: it the double whammy of Ruben's ex wife filing that
Speaker 1: civil lawsuit and the expose in the New York Times
Speaker 1: that contained way more details about Ruben's alleged activities that
Speaker 1: led to his dismissal from Google and more, plus the
Speaker 1: added piece of information that he had left with a
Speaker 1: ninety million dollar exit package. That bit of information would
Speaker 1: inspire thousands of Google employees to participate in a walkout
Speaker 1: protesting the company's tolerance for sexual misconduct perpetrated by quote
Speaker 1: unquote high performing employees. This was one of the big
Speaker 1: stories to play out during the early days of the
Speaker 1: hashtag me too movement, along with equally high profile stories
Speaker 1: out of companies like Uber, and Reuben's story was front
Speaker 1: and center in this discussion. Now, I imagine that those
Speaker 1: revelations made it even harder for essential products to secure
Speaker 1: investment money. Reuben had always been pivotal for landing those
Speaker 1: deals because he had previously had a really good reputation
Speaker 1: as a co founder of Android, and his reputation at
Speaker 1: Google until two thousand seventeen appeared to be a very
Speaker 1: upstanding one, and it gave him a lot of cash.
Speaker 1: Among investors, they were all eager to back the next
Speaker 1: runaway success, you know, the way Android had turned out
Speaker 1: to be. They wanted to be on the ground when
Speaker 1: the next one happened, and they thought really believed in Reuben. Now, Reuben,
Speaker 1: mostly through his lawyer, denied many of the allegations were
Speaker 1: made against him, but the New York Times piece was
Speaker 1: pretty darn thorough, and the civil lawsuit brought up even
Speaker 1: more allegations, including a charge that Reuben had intentionally misled
Speaker 1: his ex wife about his finances when he committed her
Speaker 1: to sign that prenuptial agreement. On that front, the matter
Speaker 1: became a story about an accused ex husband who may
Speaker 1: have been involved in a lot of unethical and potentially
Speaker 1: illegal activities and an ex wife who was accused of
Speaker 1: trying to work around a legally binding prenup agreement. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, this got super ugly. That civil lawsuit
Speaker 1: would eventually be settled out of court, and we never
Speaker 1: learned the details of that settlement. Now, back on the
Speaker 1: company front, Essential was still in business, but things were
Speaker 1: not great. The company had seemingly abandoned the smart home
Speaker 1: hub project and the ambient operating system project. There were
Speaker 1: no signs of an essential pH two phone. There were
Speaker 1: rumors that Reuben was looking to sell off the company
Speaker 1: even in the middle of twenty nineteen, but apparently no
Speaker 1: suitable suitors came a call in. In the spring of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Reuben quietly resigned from Playground Global, you know,
Speaker 1: the investment firm, but he stayed on with essential products.
Speaker 1: His departure from the investment in hardware incubator firm was
Speaker 1: not widely reported until a few months later. In the
Speaker 1: fall of twenty nineteen, the company broke radio silence to
Speaker 1: announce a new product in development. This was Project Gem.
Speaker 1: Technically it's a smartphone, though at casual glance it looks
Speaker 1: more like a remote control. It's long and narrow. It
Speaker 1: does not fit the more established form factor that you
Speaker 1: think of when you think of the words smartphone. The
Speaker 1: front of the device is a screen surrounded again by
Speaker 1: a thin bezel, kind of like the pH one, except
Speaker 1: again it's long and narrow, not in your typical smartphone shape,
Speaker 1: and applications appeared to be represented as cards or tiles,
Speaker 1: employing users would use touch commands to scroll through apps
Speaker 1: rather than selecting an icon on a screen. Now, according
Speaker 1: to earlier reports from Bloomberg, this phone's user interface would
Speaker 1: rely more on voice commands than a typical smartphone would,
Speaker 1: And there was a small section on the back of
Speaker 1: the phone, a little round section looked like a touch
Speaker 1: sensor or a fingerprint skinner, and the general thought was
Speaker 1: maybe this was an activation for voice commands, kind of
Speaker 1: like a walkie talkie button. The company released at least
Speaker 1: one video showing off the concept of the phone running
Speaker 1: productivity apps, and I gotta say I was not blown
Speaker 1: away by this video. It looked awkward to me, particularly
Speaker 1: the on screen keyboard, which had sort of a diagonal layout,
Speaker 1: which was necessary because again, the device itself is narrow,
Speaker 1: so it's not wide enough to fit a keyboard and
Speaker 1: quirty layout across the screen. And that's about all we
Speaker 1: know as far as Project Gem goes. It didn't get
Speaker 1: far enough for us to learn very much more. And
Speaker 1: that's because while Essential announced the Project Gem device in
Speaker 1: October two thousand nineteen, the company itself would not last
Speaker 1: very much longer. On February twelve, twenty Essential said that
Speaker 1: the team had taken Project Gem as far into development
Speaker 1: as it could go, but they had no route forward
Speaker 1: into the marketplace, and that the project was scuttled and
Speaker 1: the company itself was shuttered. Essential was non Essential, I
Speaker 1: guess now. Even mind this was February of which is
Speaker 1: early enough to be before the real impact of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus and COVID nineteen would take hold. The company was
Speaker 1: already struggling enough as it was, so my guess is
Speaker 1: that if they had decided to try and tough it
Speaker 1: out a little bit longer, they would have still had
Speaker 1: to call it quits once the scope of the coronavirus
Speaker 1: outbreak became better understood. So what actually happened, Well, if
Speaker 1: I had to guess, and I do, because there aren't
Speaker 1: a lot of reports about this, I would say that
Speaker 1: Ruben's presence became toxic as far as raising money for
Speaker 1: the company goes, and the failure of the pH one,
Speaker 1: exacerbated by details of Reuben's departure from Google, was a
Speaker 1: huge blow. If it were not for the stories about
Speaker 1: Reuben's departure, he might have been able to secure more investments.
Speaker 1: The company's first product is rarely a runaway success after all,
Speaker 1: and the vision Reuben had was one that investors could
Speaker 1: really still get behind. But I think the increased singly
Speaker 1: gross stories about his alleged conduct discouraged investment. While I
Speaker 1: don't know if he left Playground Global you know that
Speaker 1: investment hardware incubator firm, or if he had been asked
Speaker 1: to leave, I suspect that Playground really wanted to distance
Speaker 1: itself from its co founder and focus on other projects.
Speaker 1: So that also meant that Playground Global wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be backing Essential any further. They didn't want to have
Speaker 1: that pr albatross around their corporate neck, and so Essential
Speaker 1: and Playground, because they were sharing the same workplace, I
Speaker 1: imagined there was a lot of pressure for Essential to
Speaker 1: move out as well, again to actually make physical distance
Speaker 1: between the two companies. This again is me using conjecture.
Speaker 1: I don't know any details for sure about this. I
Speaker 1: suspect that the Playground partners were eager to get more
Speaker 1: distance from Reuben. In addition, Project Jim was such a
Speaker 1: dramatic departure from what people expect with smartphones that I
Speaker 1: get failed to capture a lot of excitement. It was
Speaker 1: more like a befuddling kind of response. So you had
Speaker 1: a company with a leader who was increasingly seen as
Speaker 1: being an anchor as far as pr is concerned, and
Speaker 1: a product that no one was really sure would be
Speaker 1: met with enthusiasm if it ever made it to market,
Speaker 1: and you had a company with dwindling capital because their
Speaker 1: first product was a failure. It was a flop, and
Speaker 1: it's not a big surprise that the company ultimately folded.
Speaker 1: It's a shame for a lot of reasons. I don't
Speaker 1: want to see people lose their jobs, especially with the
Speaker 1: timing involved. Right, losing your job just as the coronavirus
Speaker 1: outbreaks starts to become a dominant thing in the world
Speaker 1: very very hard for people. The ideas that were behind
Speaker 1: all these products are really intriguing. I mean, they're they're
Speaker 1: good ideas from a technological standpoint. As for Reuben Man,
Speaker 1: I mean, if the things said about him are true,
Speaker 1: even if half of them are true, I don't really
Speaker 1: mind if he just sort of fades away from the
Speaker 1: public consciousness, because while he might have great ideas as
Speaker 1: far as tech is concerned, everything I've read about the
Speaker 1: person really makes me think it would be best if
Speaker 1: we all just took a break, you know, and that
Speaker 1: wraps up the story of Essential. I know it's not
Speaker 1: incredibly satisfying because there are a lot of question marks
Speaker 1: that remain, but ultimately I think my guesses are probably
Speaker 1: pretty close to the mark. If you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics I should cover on tech stuff, whether
Speaker 1: it's a company, a technology, a trend in tech, maybe
Speaker 1: some other tech related concept. Reach out to me and
Speaker 1: let me know. You can get in touch on Twitter
Speaker 1: the handle is tech stuff hs W, or on Facebook,
Speaker 1: where the handle is tech stuff hs W probably was
Speaker 1: a better way to say that, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.