Essential shutting down after not being able to finish Project GEM

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Essential shutting down after not being able to finish Project GEM
Four months ago Essential surprised us, and the world, with a brand-new device codenamed GEM. It was a very narrow-sized smartphone that was supposedly equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 processor and should have run Android 10 at launch.

Unfortunately, it looks like Project GEM was too much for the US company. Essential announced today that it will cease operations and shut down the company. The reason behind the decision is explained in a short statement and refers to owners of the PH-1 smartphone:


If you own Essential's PH-1 smartphone, you'll probably be disappointed to hear that the security update released on February 3 will be the last one coming from the Essential software team. There will be no additional updates or customers supported available for PH-1 users going forward.

Also, Essential announced the Newton Mail users will continue to have access to the service until April 30, 2020. Essential's goodbye gift for PH-1 users is a prebuilt vendor image and everything else needed for tech-savvy to continue to hack the phone's software, which will be uploaded on the company's GitHub.

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