Remember Andy Rubin's iPhone killer? It's dead.

“We are sold out of Essential Phone on essential.com and won’t be adding any new inventory.” —Essential spokesperson, via 9to5Google.

From Rubin’s Wikipedia entry:

• Carl Zeiss AG, robotics engineer, 1986–1989.^[2]
• Apple Inc., manufacturing engineer, 1989–1992.^[2]
• General Magic, engineer, 1992–1995. An Apple spin-off where he participated in developing Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for hand-held mobile devices.^[2]
• MSN TV, engineer, 1995–1999. When Magic Cap failed, Rubin joined Artemis Research, founded by Steve Perlman, which became WebTV and was eventually acquired by Microsoft.^[2]
• Danger Inc., co-founder, 1999–2003. Founded with Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt. The firm is most notable for the Danger Hiptop, branded for T-Mobile as the Sidekick, which is a phone with PDA-like abilities. The firm was later acquired by Microsoft in February 2008.^[2]
• Android Inc., co-founder 2003–2005.^[2] Android was acquired by Google in 2005.^[5]
• Google, 2005–2014: Senior Vice President in charge of Android for most of his tenure.^[2] Since December 2013, managing the robotics division of Google (which includes companies bought by Google, such as Boston Dynamics).^[11]
• Playground Global, 2014– present: Founder. This venture focuses on artificial intelligence and it is creating new generations of hardware.^[27]
• Redpoint Ventures, 2015– present: Partner.
• Essential Products, 2015– present: Founder and lead. Rubin launched the Essential phone through this company in late June 2017.^[28]

My take: There’s a lot of Apple in Android’s DNA.