Mark Gurman and Alex Barinka, for Bloomberg:
Essential Products Inc., a startup co-founded by Android creator Andy Rubin that launched last year to great fanfare, is considering selling itself and has canceled development of a new smartphone, according to people familiar with the matter.
Too bad. I am still looking forward to an Android manufacturer gaining ground in the market, who is at least as privacy-focused as Apple.
Darrell Etherington, writing for TechCrunch:
Regardless of the reason, the price drop makes Essential arguably the best value smartphone on the market, and definitely the best Android device in that range. It’s one major failing has been its camera, which launched as a slow and buggy feature compared to most out there, but the subsequent camera software updates have improved its speed and reliability a lot, and more updates are promised in the future, too.
It will take a while before we get to the designs of the phones they used in The Expanse. Accepting all of the design trade-offs until we get there won’t be easy. They will however fuel the fires of many flame wars to come.