Android creator has a new phone

Andy Rubin’s Essential hits market

Entrepreneur Andy Rubin is known for meddling with the status quo. He helped develop the T-Mobile Sidekick, an Internet-connected smartphone that predated the iPhone, and he created Android — now the world’s most-used smartphone operating system — and sold it to Google.

Rubin believes smartphones still can be improved. On Thursday his new company, called Essential, began selling a $699 Android phone. It will go up against devices made by Samsung and Apple, which combined make up nearly twothirds of the U.S. smartphone market, according to research firm IDC.

Unlike some competitors, the Essential phone does not have a logo on its titanium body and has few apps installed. It has a 5.71-inch diagonal screen — slightly larger than that of an iPhone 7 Plus. It also has an eight-megapixel front camera and a rear 13-megapixel dual camera system.

A 360-degree camera that attaches to the phone costs an extra $199. The camera will connect with future phones, too, the company says.

The goal is “to create a consumer-positive brand in electronics,” Rubin said at a press

briefing at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters. “I don’t believe (that) exists anymore.”

The company declined to say how many customers had ordered the phone.

Rubin had promised the phone by about late June, so its arrival is slightly delayed.

Analysts say Essential will need to educate consumers on its product. Even though people in technology circles are well aware of Rubin’s past, some mainstream consumers may not know his background. The phones will be sold at Sprint and Best Buy stores as well as online.

“It’s going to be a long, slow, steady slog to earn eyeballs and attention and to pry people off whatever they are using now,” said Ramon Llamas, a research manager for wearables and mobile phones for IDC.

Rubin said that because Essential is producing fewer phones, it can be more innovative, because it works with different vendors than competitors that need much larger scale.

“There is power in being small,” Rubin said.

Photos by James Tensuan / Special to The Chronicle Above: A journalist photographs the new Essential smartphone. Below: Essential creator Andy Rubin, introducing the new product, thinks there’s a market for a whole new smartphone.