Andy Rubin's Essential Smartphone Has Potential, But Faces Competition From Samsung, Others

In Andy Rubin’s past career stops, the former Android co-founder has generally managed to be either ahead of the curve or close to it. At Danger Inc., Rubin helped produce the T-Mobile Sidekick and with Android, he also nurtured the mobile operating system into Apple’s biggest competitor in the smartphone marketplace.

Essential, the new consumer electronics company from Rubin, doesn’t necessarily fit the same mold. At last week’s Code Conference, Rubin admitted a smartphone is more “technology evolution” than rocket science. But the upcoming Essential Phone is, at least against the current smartphone market, a similarly aggressive moonshot.

Read: Who Is Essential's Andy Rubin?

At least on paper, the odds against Essential already are considerable. For starters, the smartphone market has been less than accessible to upstarts like Essential, which aims to force itself into the premium smartphone conversation. Rubin hasn’t been modest about Essential’s upscale ambitions — the phone is priced at $699 and sports a sleek ceramic and titanium body — but the premium market has long been dominated by companies like Samsung and Apple.

Even within the Essential Phone’s ideal audience — Android fans who want a boutique phone without carrier bloat — Google already has its own Pixel smartphone, and with the upcoming Apple iPhone 8, the upscale smartphone market only looks to get more saturated.

Accessories also look to be a similarly tough gambit for the Essential, which wants to embrace a modular ecosystem of add-ons. At launch, the phone will come with a 360-degree video camera that’ll attach to the phone via a magnetic lock. The potential for modular add-ons that could add functionality like a sharper camera or extended battery life has been probed by a lot of companies, but the field is better known by failures like the LG G5 and the since-shuttered Google Ara. For the most part, consumers generally have treated phones as singularly unified devices and are wary of breaking them down and customizing them like Lego sets.

Read: Benchmark Reveals Specs For Andy Rubin's Essential Android Smartphone

But at the same time, Essential’s ambitions aren’t solely coming from the phone. Essential will launch its own virtual assistant device and, most notably, plans to make its platform open to any virtual assistant.

It’s unclear how successful this gambit will be — the voice assistant field alone is already packed with programs like Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Samsung’s Bixby — but it speaks to the core opportunity Essential sees in the market. With the Essential Phone and its other hardware, Essential wants its technology to be a bridge and Swiss Army knife for consumers. Instead of having to stay exclusively with Apple or Microsoft or Samsung-compatible products, you can simply have one phone work without any compatibility issues.

The metrics of success for Essential likely will be murky, at best. The company knows it won’t be toppling competitors like Samsung and its best strategy — offering a boutique alternative for discerning smartphone shoppers — can still be profitable, if niche. With Rubin’s past track record and Essential’s confidence in its platform, the company’s pitch is straightforward: the Essential is the best Google Android-based smartphone you can buy. But for consumers in a smartphone market that’s become increasingly crowded, it remains to be seen if that’ll be enough.