
Essential has sold just 5,000 phones since launch - rexbee
http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/essential-has-sold-just-5-000-phones-since-launch-baystreet
======
jakef
Who would buy this thing? The phone doesn't look to be anything special, the
name makes it sound low-end, there's zero brand recognition. The magnetic
wireless accessory thing is irrelevant to vast majority of consumers,
especially since Bluetooth has already solved that problem and works with any
device.

I can't imagine a scenario where someone is looking to buy a phone in the
~$700 range and chooses this.

~~~
blensor
I'm not sure we are talking about the same bluetooth here. I have yet to see a
bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for
IOS devices).

The worst example are my wireless headphones. When I get into the car the car
radio tries to connect to my phone, so it stops the wireless headphone output.
I then have to scroll through the menu and disconnect the car radio, which
tries to reconnect after a while.

But that is not even the worst. If I have an audiobook playing while I connect
the headphones the audio switches immediately to the headphones as soon as
they are connected (which is the expected behavior). But if I start the
audiobook after the headphones are connected it takes several minutes until I
can actually hear something and I have not figured out a way to speed this up
apart from disconnecting and reconnecting after I hit play.

I for one love my wired headsets, they just work. But I have to buy some new
ones every other month because I regulary rip them when they get caught up in
something.

~~~
gumby
> I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user,
> so I can't speak for IOS devices).

Indeed, if you go all-in on Apple they really do "just work", and come pretty
close when you use a non-Apple BT headset with Apple gear. I can't say if this
is because the standards are inadequate and Apple does some extra work, or if
the BT implementations on cheap hardware are simply terrible. I kinda lean to
the latter, but really either could be true.

> When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it
> stops the wireless headphone output.

BTW if you are in California it's a crime to have an earbud in both ears or
cup headset covering both ears. You're unlikely to be stopped for that
specifically, but if you get stopped for erratic driving, speeding, or have an
accident the cops are quite willing to load that one on too, and in the case
of an accident your insurance company may not cover you. So your car may have
a crappy implementation (see my comment above) or it might be attempting to do
the right thing.

~~~
nsxwolf
Apple's Bluetooth products "just work" because they don't use Bluetooth for
the pairing part.

~~~
ninju
Do you have a citation for this?

~~~
khedoros1
[https://appletoolbox.com/2016/12/airpods-not-auto-pairing-
sy...](https://appletoolbox.com/2016/12/airpods-not-auto-pairing-sync-
problems-fix/)

This page mentions it in the "Setting your Airpods up" section.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I wonder if the name also hurts. When I see the word "Essential" I think
"basic/stripped-down". When I see the price of $699 for an "Essential phone",
I think that I might as well get an Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or Google
Pixel.

~~~
svachalek
It's also at odds with the gadgety stick-on camera. I don't think I've ever
seen anyone use an add-on camera lens with their phone, much less the black
sweater crowd they seem to be calling out with the "Essential" name.

------
Analemma_
Trying to break in to the high end of the smartphone market as a newcomer is a
mistake. That's Apple and Samsung's territory, and they have the muscle to
fight you intensely for it. The Chinese manufacturers have the better idea:
start with cheap phones, build a user base, and move up.

In particular, the camera is the ace in the hole that the established players
have. People spending $700 on a phone expect a top-notch camera, and from the
reviews it sounds like the Essential Phone isn't cutting it. Unfortunately the
camera is the main reason why there won't be any Cinderella stories about new
high-end phone makers: Apple, Google and Samsung probably have teams of
hundreds working on camera software now that the low-hanging fruit has been
plucked, and new companies can't hope to match that.

~~~
s73ver_
Isn't that what Tesla did, though?

~~~
majormajor
No, basically nobody had expensive luxury electric cars before Tesla. This is
more what Faraday Future was trying to do - be late to the game and copy,
maybe change a few details to try to marginally improve it.

What Tesla did is more like what Apple did - massively expand the "smart
phone" segment in the first place.

If you compare the Essential phone to a V30, S8, or Pixel, there's nothing
anything near the difference of comparing an iPhone to a Nokia N95. Something
that is so compelling it makes you not care about the other things the iPhone
_doesn 't_ have that the Nokia does, like GPS and 3G. Similarly the Model S vs
a 7 series: one has more bells and whistles, one is a fundamentally different
product that a lot of people not very interested in the old option find much
more compelling.

~~~
s73ver_
"No, basically nobody had expensive luxury electric cars before Tesla."

But high end luxury cars were a thing. Tesla wasn't competing with just
electric cars, they were competing with all cars.

~~~
jandrese
Tesla would have gone precisely nowhere with a mass market luxury gas burner.
Established brands had that market pretty much locked up and beating them on
quality when starting from scratch is basically impossible.

Small players in this market have to go to the ultra-niche extremes where you
sell like 20 cars a year for millions of dollars per and usually still lose
money.

The electric drive was the killer feature on the Tesla. Without it the car has
no reason to exist.

Also, by luxury car standards the interior of a Tesla is absolutely subpar.
They were competing against cars with handcrafted mahogany dashboards and
precision stitched leather seats where people will spend hours and days fine
tuning the static and moving resistance on the heater control knob to get it
just perfect.

~~~
s73ver_
But their strategy was still go to after the high end market, instead of try
to target the low end market and go up.

~~~
jandrese
That is true, and it works because there is a market for high end vehicles.
The market is there because the high end companies make a product that is
measurably better than the mass market product from traditional manufacturers.

Such a thing really isn't possible in the cell phone market. A tiny shop can't
build a phone notably better than an iPhone or a Galaxy. The only luxury phone
provider I know about just glued diamonds on old dumbphones and went out of
business.

Essential was apparently banking on people finding the modularity concept to
be a killer feature worth a price premium, but that has not been the case
apparently.

------
rrggrr
Value. Early adopters recognize and act on it. This is how OnePlus succeeded
with its first phone. No bloatware, great specs, fair price.

Essential is about $250 too expensive. It would have been enough if they had
released a cheaper phone with the same specs, branding anonymity, and
durability - less the attachments.

Value. Value. Value. This concept is key.

~~~
DarronWyke
The attachment system would be a huge selling point if it gave it the ability
to do significant improvements or upgrades to the unit. But so far it appears
to be a novelty thing. If they released several addons at launch to show the
versatility of the system, then they'd capture the market that wants modular
phones. But they didn't.

The specs are nothing spectacular. It's not as great, stats-wise, as my
Oneplus 3T, though a titanium body is a better selling point than an aluminium
one.

~~~
rrggrr
Yes, the Ti body almost had me. Give me this: a Ti body phone with replaceable
CPU/Memory. Give me an heirloom quality phone (like the pocketwatch of old)
that has strong utility for 5 - 10 years.

~~~
DarronWyke
Unfortunately modular phones haven't become a thing yet. Google tried that
with Ara, but it's in indefinite hiatus. Of course, the next problem with
making phones modular like that is a lack of standards. One developer makes
the modules and keeps others from making them, thus entering the walled garden
model.

------
jasonkostempski
[https://www.essential.com/](https://www.essential.com/) I'm sick of articles
about products with no links to the official product site.

~~~
jccooper
I haven't decided if "journalists" haven't embraced the fact that they're on
the web yet or if they're trying not to link off site for SEO juice or just to
keep people on their site.

~~~
mrgordon
If its for SEO they could just use rel="nofollow"

------
alexashka
I don't get what problem this phone is solving. I think that's how everyone
else feels too.

We already have good phones by a number of other companies, and some of them
actually cost a reasonable amount.

~~~
sadlyNess
It's supposed to be a long-term purchase, which is how they will explain low
sales volume. But this makes it hard when they'll want to release a better
version of the phone. Or not. Not sure though about their long-term pricing
strategy.

------
thinkythought
This is going to be a great budget phone when it's getting cleared out on
various sites for $3-400 early to mid next year. At $700 it just can't
compete, especially with a mediocre camera, but once it drops under $500 then
it'll be a lot cooler than most of the stuff in _that_ price range.

I tried one out, and it's not a hunk of junk in any way... it just doesn't do
anything to wow you at that price _besides_ the screen. And it screams "brand
that will push one big update if that then quit making phones"

------
wslh
Selling is hard beyond any specific product criticism. Critics here in HN
think it is more related to the product than to the marketing/selling aspects
but 5000 are really few units sold.

------
bllguo
A shame. It's missing too many features I'm interested in but it's definitely
the nicest looking "flagship" Android phone imo

------
foobaw
I have higher hopes for their next phone. This first edition was way too basic
for my taste. It also showed a lack of experience in dealing with camera.

With the funding they have, I'd rather have them do some sort of acqui-hire
over an OEM rather than just hiring a bunch of MBA / former Google employees.
They should realize that making a good phone requires years of experience by
now.

------
gue5t
The Essential phone does nothing fundamentally new. The Librem 5, on the other
hand, will if it gets crowdfunded: it'll be the first phone to not lock its
users into the shitty app store paradigm where you rely on the manufacturer
for a max of 2-3 years of support/security-updates while renting siloed
closed-source programs that sell your usage data and show you ads. The Librem
5 will run regular Linux that keeps working until the hardware falls apart
(and then some), that can be updated by anyone, not just the manufacturer,
will have its kernel kept up-to-date via efforts of the entire community of
Linux kernel developers, and will run applications that aren't rented and that
respect their users.

The Librem 5 will have open-source drivers and a non-Android operating system
running a mainline Linux kernel (atop which Android compatibility is trivial
if folks want to run that).

Lots of HN readers have tech jobs and can afford to make history by
crowdfunding: [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

~~~
alexblumel
Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never
get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a
business should already understand. People don't care about being tracked and
they certainly don't care about running some obscure Linux distro on their
damn phone. A million people showing dislike on how the market works won't
magically change how it works.

People buy fast, sexy, bleeding edge smartphones with GREAT CAMERAS (not
surprised the whole website decided to omit this, it's probably terrible).
Companies that make these phones thrive (see: Apple, Samsung, etc. ) while
companies that focus on things only a handful of programmers like (for
free)wither away into obscurity, see: the Ouya, Firefox OS, opensolaris, etc.

~~~
lawrenceyan
Have you ever heard of the concept of niche targeting? I definitely recommend
checking it out if you haven't. :)

~~~
imustbeevil
Niche targeting is how you end up selling 5,000 phones.

~~~
gue5t
With ~1000 more preorders the Librem 5 will be fully funded.

------
bronson
In my phone I want a good camera and a reasonable price. The Essential misses
on both.

(they say a software update will improve the camera, we'll see)

------
obilgic
I just started to see the commercials on TV for Essential, in addition to the
online ads just started few days ago.

