Essential Gem hands-on video offers a rare look at this crazy prototype
Forget foldables — give us a weirdly tall phone, already!
JoriPress
- Essential teased its “Gem” smartphone hardware back in 2019 as a follow-up to the PH-1.
- When Essential shut down in 2020, work on the Gem shut down with it.
- Occasionally the rare prototype hardware surfaces on eBay, leading to hands-on encounters like we get today.
Are smartphones too boring these days? Sure, foldable phones are now a reality, but even those have been around for enough generations that they’re starting to feel familiar. When’s the last time you found yourself excited by a really “weird” phone? Today we’re taking a walk down memory lane as we think about one of the most unique phone designs of the past decade, while getting to see some newly released video of this promising hardware, doomed to never see the commercial light of day.
Smartphone critics often lament the lack of players in the modern market, with only a handful of companies competing in any meaningful fashion. While true, occasionally we do see someone brave enough to step up as a new voice, as we did back in 2017 when Android co-founder Andy Rubin and his company Essential introduced the PH-1 handset. It received a decent reception, and fans wondered what might come next for the company… all the way up until it folded in 2020.
