From the Father of Android to the Voice of Rock, why did those mobile phone brands that started off strong but ended up failing?

The phrase "start high and end low" is often used to describe the undesirable results that people see after having too high expectations for something.

In the mobile phone industry, many brands received great attention when they were launched, but gradually fell in the days that followed, and even disappeared briefly like a shooting star. Which brands have encountered such a situation? What are the reasons for their high opening and low closing? Today, Geek Choice (official account GeekChoice) will talk to you about this topic.

Essential Phone

How will a mobile phone designed by the father of Android sell? Essential Phone tells us with facts that the answer is disappointing. From its launch to its withdrawal, the total sales of this phone were only about 150,000 units. And until its sad departure, people did not see its second-generation product officially unveiled, which is regrettable.

In 2015, Andy Rubin, the father of Android, left Google and founded his own smartphone company Essential. At the beginning of its establishment, Andy expressed his dissatisfaction with the mobile phone industry. He wanted to design and manufacture easy-to-use smartphones that people really needed. This is also the origin of the name Essential Phone. Two years later, this phone finally met the public.

The Essential Phone had excellent hardware configuration at the time, a good appearance design, and a simple and square shape that left a positive impression on the media. However, even though it focused on a simple and smooth native Android experience, this phone would experience slow imaging and system lags in daily use. Even the official 360-degree modular camera function did not run perfectly and smoothly, which exposed the phone's shortcomings in the combination of software and hardware.

Since titanium and ceramic materials were tried in the design, the cost of Essential Phone is not cheap, which made the product reach a high price of US$699 when it was first launched. Even if it was out of confidence in its own influence, there were more suitable choices on the market at this price. Coupled with the difficulty in processing the color of the back cover, the Essential Phone not only has a high price, but also has been delayed in delivery, which disappointed many fans.

However, the last straw that broke the camel's back was the split in the company's management. Due to various reasons, the sales of the first-generation product were poor, and senior executives left one after another. The company then announced layoffs, but its second-generation product failed to gain support from operators. Therefore, in the financial crisis, Essential announced its cessation of operations on February 13 this year. The brand that was once favored by many Android fans also withdrew from the stage of history after 5 years.

Fire Phone

Amazon, a giant in the e-commerce field, is also an expert in smart hardware. Not only does its Kindle e-book reader firmly occupy the leading position in the e-book field, its smart speaker Echo has also quickly become popular and become the overlord of the IoT field. But did you know that the company's attempt in the mobile phone field was a complete failure? That is the Fire Phone.

In 2014, as a blockbuster product created by Amazon's Lab 126 laboratory, Fire Phone was launched with great fanfare under the introduction of its founder Bezos. Many people not only had high hopes for it, but also imagined that it could once again become the industry leader like Kindle. This phone was indeed special when it was released.

4.7-inch 720p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 32GB/64GB storage capacity. Just looking at these configurations, you may think that the Fire Phone is nothing special. However, a special feature demonstrated by the Fire Phone at the press conference attracted a lot of attention at the time.

This is a unique 3D display technology. Different from the 3D display used by HTC on its EVO 3D mobile phone, Fire Phone tracks facial movements by adding four cameras to the four corners of the front of the phone, thereby adjusting the 3D display effect in real time, which can give people an immersive visual experience.

But apart from this unique display effect, the Fire Phone team did not bring any other special features that distinguished it from other mobile phones. Even the 3D effect on the front, which was made with great effort, did not lead to more valuable functions. This fancy feature not only increased the cost of the phone, but also left consumers confused. Although this phone also had the function of taking pictures to identify products and purchasing them directly, which was very accurate and fast at the time, it could not support its selling price.

It took only one year for Fire Phone to go from its high-profile launch to its complete withdrawal. When the phone was released, the contract price was $199 (the price of the bare phone was as high as $650), but in the end it could only be cleared out at 99 cents. In an interview with foreign media, Bezos admitted that this phone was a "bold gamble". Its unremarkable configuration and impractical 3D display effect failed to impress consumers, and it failed to become a strong competitor to the iPhone. After that, Amazon never tried the smartphone business again.

Hydrogen One

Coincidentally, there is another company that wants to make a big fuss on mobile phone screens and try to overtake others. In 2017, Red, a well-known company in the photography industry, officially announced its first mobile phone, Hydrogen One, which brought a lot of unique "black technology" as soon as it appeared.

As a camera company, Red's modular cameras are popular with many film directors. Therefore, we can still see the shadow of modularity in the Hydrogen One it designed. Although the two 12-megapixel lenses are not good at taking photos, the metal contacts on the back can be used to carry modular lenses. This idea coincides with Moto's idea for the Z series. In order to make shooting more convenient, this phone also adds a shooting shortcut key and a wavy middle frame.

On the front of the phone, Red boldly uses a screen with 3D display technology, which is officially called the "4V effect". Its function is to allow users to have a more immersive experience when browsing photos, videos and even playing games. Unfortunately, when users experience pictures or videos with 3D content, there will be smearing and reduced resolution. What's more regrettable is that in order to support this display method, content providers have to convert video materials themselves, which means that Red needs to find enough partners to reflect the uniqueness of the phone.

Obviously, Hydrogen One failed to realize its ambitions. Both the modular camera design and 3D image display technology were the first to appear on a mobile phone, and previous predecessors did not succeed in this way. It can be seen that to achieve such a goal, it not only requires strong industry influence and keen insight into consumer trends, but also finds the right timing, not to mention the weight of this phone is 263 grams and the starting price is $1,295.

In the end, Hydrogen One, which claimed to change the mobile phone industry, withdrew from the mobile phone market and officially closed related projects in October 2019. From its release in 2017 to its delayed release in 2018 and then to its discontinuation of sales in 2019, the life of this phone lasted only two years. Not only did it not have any impact on the mobile phone industry, it even failed to attract the attention of professional photography users. To this day, it is still the most disappointing product of Red Company, which can be described as a high start and a low end.

Marshall London

After discussing the mobile phones made by camera companies, let's take a look at how a company that focuses on speakers makes mobile phones. If you like rock music and have heard many songs from Western bands, you may be familiar with the Marshall brand. This company also entered the smartphone field in 2015 and brought a special phone, Marshall London, which attracted a lot of attention.

When it comes to the term music phone, many people may think of the HiFi chips built into the phones of domestic brands, or the dual speakers on the outside, or the expensive headphones. However, Marshall London has a different idea. It chooses to add a headphone jack to the phone. In this way, you can not only listen and record at the same time, but also share music with others.

Not only that, this phone has indeed put a lot of effort into music. Not only does it have excellent external music effects, but it also brings great music playability through the built-in Cirrus Logic sound card, and pre-installed special audio equalizer and special DJ applications. The official even added a special music production software. When it was first released, a Marshall Monitor headset was also given as a gift when purchasing this phone. All these combined attracted the attention of many music enthusiasts at the time.

However, the poor basic configuration still holds this phone back. The 4.7-inch 720p display is at a low-to-mid-range level, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor is even weaker, and the 2-megapixel + 8-megapixel cameras cannot support its price of $499 when it was launched, and as a result, it was only popular in a niche market for a short time.

For music enthusiasts, a good music player can be bought at the price of Marshall London, and even Marshall fans can use other mobile phones with good Marshall headphones to achieve a similar music experience. This situation of not pleasing both ends will inevitably lead to the label of starting high and ending low, so it is inevitable that it will be short-lived.

Palm

Compared with the previous peers who suddenly entered the mobile phone market to get a piece of the pie, Palm was once a leader in the smartphone era. It made some groundbreaking attempts when iOS and Android were not yet mature, and also made various efforts in mobile phone design. The launch of Palm Pre in 2009 and its WebOS system demonstrated the various possibilities of touch operation.

However, Palm, which received numerous praises, did not seize the opportunity and was completely disbanded in 2012 for various reasons. But in 2019, the brand was revived again and tried to regain its position through small-screen smartphones. It launched Palm, and it was also at that time that many Palm fans were looking forward to the release of this phone.

The Palm phone may be the smartphone with the smallest screen available on the market in 2019. At 3.3 inches and weighing 62.5 grams, it feels not much bigger than a credit card in the hand. The double-sided glass + metal middle frame design is also very high-quality and easily reminiscent of the design of the iPhone 4 era.

Small-screen phones have been a popular label in recent years, but the return of Palm has not been able to capture people's hearts because its configuration is too conservative, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor, 3+32G storage combination, no volume button and headphone jack, and even too much pursuit of smallness and giving up the fingerprint recognition module, all of which make the phone less useful and more limited.

Although many users miss small-screen mobile phones, the better audio-visual and gaming experience brought by large screens is having a profound impact on people. In addition, the Palm phone's price of 1,999 yuan is not very affordable, which led to its rapid decline after it was launched on the market. Even now, there is no news about the second generation of Palm.

With iOS and Android systems dividing the world, the open-source, friendly and ecologically rich Android system has made it possible for some manufacturers to enter the mobile phone field. Therefore, both veterans and rookies have participated in the hope of getting a ticket into people's pockets. However, the seemingly easy mobile phone market is highly competitive and ever-changing, and more and more players are starting high and ending low.

In fact, there are more players who have ambitiously wanted to enter the mobile phone market and returned empty-handed than those we mentioned in this article. Whether it is the social giant Facebook or the old gun Kodak, they have tried to attract users through smartphones to build their own deeper user base, but in the end the results were all failures. No matter how much sentiment is supported, there is always a criterion for users to choose a mobile phone. Expensive but poor experience products are always like a tornado, coming quickly and going quickly.