What type of Android phone is that? It seemed to differ from other Android devices only in trivial details; there was no significant differentiation or innovation.

Software upgrades within a week or so of Google releasing new Android, no bloatware, fast, excellent battery life.

Sounds like the Nokia phones to me - I have a Nokia 6.1 and it ticks most of those boxes. (I don't know if the battery counts as excellent - it lasts ~36 hours if I'm not using it constantly but that seems about average for a new battery in most mid range phones)

I'll say the same about my Pixel.

Android One phones will do it on software side.

And given enough thrust pigs will fly. I'm sure it would be magical when it actually happens but it has not happened so far.

The battery is only 3040mAh and isn't even removable. Not impressive at all.

I don't think any of those features are related to their failure. They launched with a sub-par product in the $700 price range.

A classy phone not from a giant tech company or with questionable governmental ties? No forced bloatware? Fast, reliable updates?

There's really no market for that? The market is stupid and wrong.

This isn't a failure of technology. This is a failure of marketing and getting the message out.

> A classy phone not from a giant tech company or with questionable governmental ties? No forced bloatware? Fast, reliable updates? There's really no market for that? The market is stupid and wrong.

How is this a differentiator though? Besides the "not from a giant tech company" you get all those with a Pixel and you also get a great camera.

Is there any reason to trust this random company over a big company? It's not like this is a nonprofit where they're donating their money to some noble cause.

The market is there, of course! It just appears to be narrower that what's required to sustain a company like this, at least at the price point they chose.

I can imagine such a phone as a no-compromises ultra-premium product for the select few who want utter privacy and safety, and would pay at e.g. the iPhone's price point for a comparable level of assurance.

I can imagine such a phone at a low-end, cheaper segment for the privacy-conscious but not very well-off who could tolerate a number of compromises in features.

At a mass-market segment it, unfortunately, did not seem to work too well, though.

It was overpriced. They sold what? 50k phones at about $500 a pop average before cutting the price to $350? That's $25m in revenue after raising $300m. They should have continued working on a line of phones. Instead they switched gears, dropped the price on a phone and started doing a fire sale.

It's kind of bizarre planning to bet the whole company one one product whose go-to-market strategy wasn't clear.

If you decide you are going to be a smartphone company, after you do sufficiently well on your first phone you do not go and decide to go into the market of connected home.

If a phone is fully running Google software, how is it any more secure or private to buy it from an unknown third party manufacturer than Google itself?

Basically all the android phones on the market today have a bunch of bloatware crapware or customized os on them. The ph-1 is pure android and works really well. At $400 with great battery life and 128gb it's an excellent deal. If only they had a headphone jack and wireless charging they'd have it all. It's fast enough, works well, every month they have an upgrade for security fixes.

>The market is stupid and wrong.

The market can stay stupid longer than your 100 million lasts..

Or maybe people don't care about being spied upon, getting updates, and don't even know what bloatware is.

> people don't care about being spied upon

Perhaps "sign in to google" isn't the bulletproof privacy phone some commenters are implying it is.