Essential Products Is Shutting Down; Essential Phone Software Updates Ceased

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Essential Products announced today that the company is discontinuing operations and shutting down. The news comes merely a few months after the company teased its tall prototype device Project GEM.

“Despite our best efforts, we’ve now taken Gem as far as we can and regrettably have no clear path to deliver it to customers. Given this, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations and shutdown Essential.”, wrote the company in an official blog post.

With this announcement, Project GEM bites the dust and will never become a reality. In the same blog post, the company posted a few videos that depict the Gem phone’s hardware, voice mode, camera, software and app integrations.

In case you’re unaware, Essential was founded back in 2015 after Android’s creator Andy Rubin departed from Google.

Essential has been regular in terms of software updates for its first phone — the Essential PH-1. In fact, Essential Phone users received the Android 10 update on the same day as Pixel devices. The company notes on its blog post that the Essential Phone will no longer be receiving software updates and security patches henceforth.

That is, the February security patch that rolled out earlier this month will remain to be the last update for the handset. However, Essential will be hosting the vendor image and all the necessary tools required for custom ROM development on its GitHub page.

As far as the company’s Newton Mail is concerned, Essential says that users will have access to the service until April 30, 2020.

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