While Essential might now be a thing of the past, former employees have moved on to OSOM and could possibly be working on a new smartphone design or other mobile-related tech. Essential was an idealistic mobile tech company and although it had a short lifespan, it attempted to bring change to a somewhat stagnant smartphone market. Now, part of the team that was responsible for the innovative ideas that came from Essential have formed a new startup called OSOM.
Essential was a company created by one of the co-founders of Android, Andy Rubin. Android, Inc. was purchased by Google in 2005 and went on to have massive success becoming the most widely used mobile operating system in the world. In 2014, Rubin left Google amid sexual misconduct allegations. Essential Products started a year later with the intention of revolutionizing smartphones once again. The Essential PH-1 was an Android smartphone with remarkably thin bezels topped by what is now known as a 'notch.' The phone was to have various magnetic modules released over the years that allowed additional features to be added, however, the only module released was a 360 camera. Essential began struggling immediately and officially shut down earlier this year.
Android Police spoke with the OSOM team directly about the company's future plans. OSOM's founder, Jason Keats, was formerly Essential's head of R&D and indicated that OSOM would take a holistic approach to product design, saying the best user experiences come from both hardware and software. This was Apple's approach from the beginning and one of its core strengths, so a good direction to follow for a company that hopes to innovate. It's expected that OSOM may be planning a phone or other mobile device using custom software. Whether this means a customization layer over Android or a whole new system is not clear yet. OSOM is reticent to discuss plans too far ahead although Keats did tell Android Police that the company is keen not to follow Essential's mistake of releasing a product before it was ready. Further discussion suggested that onlookers should not expect any product announcements until 2021, at the earliest.
Very little is known about what OSOM is planning, but there is a record of the current staff, provided by founder Jason Keats via Twitter. The June 17 Tweet stated how "OSOM is thrilled" to confirm various former Essential staff had joined the company and that the plan is "to build something OSOM!" and that it should be "another insane adventure!" Starting a company during a pandemic has to be challenging, but it seems there is some excitement within the team about this new endeavor and that will certainly help.
OSOM's website uses one of the newer top level domains, .design, so the full domain name is osom.design. Currently, there is only a sign up form to receive updates about OSOM Products by email. Checking a Google cache turned up a different OSOM logo design with a highly stylized three-dimensional spiral that spells OSOM in shades of blue. OSOM was stamped at the bottom right in clear black lettering. Since then, the logo has been replaced with a more modern look, made up of thin black lettering, spelling the company name and topped by a rounded rectangular icon that contains a circle with 4 radiating lines. Perhaps this indicates that a watch might be coming as well as a new smartphone, although that's just speculation for now.
Source: Android Police, Jason Keats/Twitter
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