
Andy Rubin Nears His Comeback, Complete with an ‘Essential’ Phone - apress
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-13/andy-rubin-nears-his-comeback-complete-with-an-essential-phone
======
devindotcom
If you ask me, "essential" is something that _removes_ the bloat of
questionably useful "AI assistants" poking their noses into every conversation
in order to better advertise to you — not to mention a lot of the other junk
that clutters up modern smartphones inside and out.

I don't think we should all return to feature phones by any means, but people
still struggle with basic usability and you can't count on, for example, a
phone to last all day doing regular stuff, or to be relied upon to work
anywhere in the world.

To me trying to outdo the bleeding-edge devices and services is not a valuable
proposition, since small advances here and there mean 1st place in whatever
area (payments, notifications, accessibility) is passed around like a
football.

Why not focus on the "next billion users" or whatever people like to say? Why
on the top few percent of existing users, who will only get a fractional
improvement to their experience? It strikes me as shortsighted. But I suppose
that's where the money is today.

~~~
bitwize
Essential means different things to different people.

To you: This device is not fancy but it gives me just what I need -- no more.

To marketroids: This fancy, feature-encrusted gewgaw is the new base minimum
for what you need.

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braythwayt
This reads like a PR plant piece: Glowing profile of the founder, check.
Bragging about the talent hired, check. Macho goals to upend the entire
industry, check. Deep pockets, check.

But all that is standard. Now to the damning bits (damning for the article,
that is):

Loving attention to irrelevant details, check. Obviously, the devices
themselves should be beautiful ad have high-end cachet. But until the moment
of release, these are irrelevant and have no differentiation value. If and
when they are ready to ship, then and only then will we know if they are
ahead, even, or behind the major players in materials and industrial design.

If they are a year or more away from putting phones in the hands of consumers,
things like the strategy for charging, the screen materials, the ports, and
the accessories are irrelevant.

Sure, they create a certain vapourware desirability: If that phone was
available _now_ , it would be attractive. But anybody can “design” such a
thing. Who knows whether they can sort out how to get it manufactured
reliably, at scale, and at an appropriate price point?

Phones are not supercars.

And on the matter of AI, everything is possible, but little of value is
likely. They may turn out to make a major breakthrough that Google and Apple
are unable to copy, but this article doesn't explain what it is.

Overall, I say nothing about the company itself and I wish them well. But the
article is absolute garbage.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don't know. "Andy Rubin starting new phone company" is enough of a headline
to get me pretty pumped. Between the Sidekick and Android he's shown he is
able to think pretty good about the mobile future.

Didn't read much of the article, but I am excited. So I think the excitement
is warranted.

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bostand
The article makes the assumption that this device uses a brand new OS but I
suspect it's just android with some additions.

A team of 40 cannot create anything that competes with the android of today.
Not even Andy can do that.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Of course. I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise. Trying to create a
competitive and compelling mobile experience today requires an ecosystem of
apps, tooling and most importantly developers. You get all that with Android
for free. Unless he's come up with some revolutionary technology that eschews
the need to rely on the Android ecosystem he doesn't really have much choice
if he wants consumers to buy his phone.

~~~
untoreh
you can always offer a well refined android compatibility layer :p

~~~
cuu508
The more refined apps (which are the ones customers care about) use a variety
of Android platform services, not just the barebones stuff -- homescreen
widgets, rich notifications, bundled notifications, app-defined quick
settings, fingerprint authentication, Vulkan API, Cast support, Material
themes, Play services etc. etc. etc. Building a complete compatibility layer
means pretty much reimplementing all Android userspace.

~~~
akjainaj
You don't need to reimplement all Android userspace. You only need to
implement 90% of what the top 20 apps use.

~~~
eli
90% of Android is a whole lotta code

~~~
akjainaj
Microsoft did something similar with the Astoria project, but they gave up on
it, probably because of the Play Services dependency of most apps. And yes,
you could enable it in Insider builds, and it mostly worked. Slap microG on it
and you'll see it can be done.

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hrayr
>> Essential's engineers are developing a proprietary connector that serves
double duty for charging the battery and expanding the phone's functionality
over time, one person familiar with the planning said.

This is unfortunate. I wonder where usb-c falls short in their design?

~~~
johnchristopher
And then there's the EU market where it's mandatory for phones manufacturers
to equip phones with USB charging.

~~~
dave84
Which is essentially meaningless right? My EU iPhone still has a Lightning
port, but sure the other end of the cable is USB.

~~~
johnchristopher
Oh no, it's not. It's really a good thing that wherever you go now you know
you can charge your phone with anybody's charger or computer. The iPhone is a
minor special case.

~~~
iainmerrick
Exactly -- people forget that every phone used to have its own special power
cable until the EU forced them to standardise. It was such a pain, especially
for developers working with multiple phones, but even just trying to figure
out which power brick is whose in a normal household!

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general_ai
Nope. There's just no way it can compete against Apple, Google _and_ Samsung,
also known as the only three companies that make money on mobile. Andy or no
Andy, you just can't enter this market anymore.

~~~
newsat13
Well, he could partner with Nokia. I don't think Google/Samsung can compete
with such a paternship (serious).

~~~
general_ai
The game has moved from devices to services those devices provide. Having
those services costs billions of dollars per year, to both keep up on the data
side and to pay a small army of extremely in-demand engineers. And then,
unless you're Apple or Samsung, the only significant profit stream is ads,
since people have been conditioned by Google that services should be "free". I
don't care how much of a genius Andy is, there's no way to really win this
one.

------
dmix
What are the odds he'll be acquired by Google in the next 2yrs even if the
product flops? AI and smartphones...

~~~
hkmurakami
He's got FU money. He has fame and recognition. He has no reason to sell to
Google at this point in his life.

~~~
protomyth
I doubt all the engineers he has hired who have stock options have FU money.
That would probably be a consideration.

~~~
lumpypua
Why would that be a consideration?

We'd all hope so, but in practice it only depends on the board of Rubin's
company and their goals.

~~~
CalChris
> Why would that be a consideration?

In a startup company, everyone should be on the same page. A founder with FU
money is not on the same page as an engineer risking 2-3 years for a shot at
FU money. I'm almost certain that investors would look at an FU money founder
differently than a ramen founder.

As a startup engineer, I have done this. There are startups. There are
corporations. Both have their place and their appeal. But I'll avoid corporate
startups.

------
newsat13
Why all this Andy hate? Guys, entrepreuners create things from scratch, it's
what they do. And they take on the megacorps and beat them. Sundar cannot
compete against a fast moving company despite the billions of $$ that google
has.

~~~
Bud
From scratch? Ha. He copied iOS.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
It's awfully difficult to copy something that doesn't exist.

"Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy
Rubin"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_\(operating_system\))

~~~
Bud
Um, so? First, iOS was in development for years. Early Android didn't look
anything like the final product. It was changed to copy iOS in extraordinarily
obvious ways after Eric Schmidt was able to steal Apple's IP while he was on
the Apple board.

Early Android had no touchscreen and was more similar to the BlackBerry. If
you read the Wikipedia article you just linked to, you'd learn that:

>Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications
market continued to build through December 2006.[37] An earlier prototype
codenamed "Sooner" had a closer resemblance to a BlackBerry phone, with no
touchscreen, and a physical, QWERTY keyboard, but was later re-engineered to
support a touchscreen, to compete with other announced devices such as the
2006 LG Prada and 2007 Apple iPhone.[38][39] In September 2007,
InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed
several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony.[40][41]

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therealmarv
There is no room for another "meaningful" phone IMHO. Even when it is
developed by Andy Rubin himself. Phone business is hard, it's very hard. No
room left for another one.

~~~
jfoster
Think of it as him working on the next major iteration of Android in a legal
construct that allows for it to be sold to Google.

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richardboegli
The more competition the better.

While Android and Apple have the most dominant market share, they could be
usurped with the right product (Hardware and Software combination). Best of
luck to Andy and his team AND Microsoft with ARM Qualcom 835.

MWC will be a MUST watch event!

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j45
Hope it's the next coming of WebOS, which itself was a few years ahead of it's
time being javascript based on a platform that didn't give it a chance to
succeed.

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lowglow
To realize the future of what applied AI looks like, you must have control of
your entire experience and pipeline top-to-bottom. People ask us why we're
building our own hardware, this is the reason.

~~~
evv
I can see the benefit of an AI having access to more of your data (owning the
whole experience). But can you explain why the hardware is so important? Why
couldn't it be implemented as an app?

~~~
Sanddancer
Dedicated hardware would be much, much faster than an app, and would give much
more guarantees about real time performance. There are a growing number of
FPGAs and ASICs being used in AI research because they can be intimately tuned
for the task at hand.

------
MasterIdiot
Maybe it will be a Jarvis(ish) platform, with a nice addition of a functional
phone? A great "personal assistant" can make a real difference between this
and any of the competitors.

------
smilekzs
> Essential's engineers are developing a proprietary connector that serves
> double duty for charging the battery and expanding the phone's functionality
> over time

a.k.a. Project Ara?

