[Essential Phone Questions & Answers] cb474:
That is a more generous way to look at it.

It's true the Verizon thing is the one thing I'm aware of where they made a promise about when something would happen and did it. I didn't say they never kept their promises. I said they have simply failed to keep them just about without exception. They didn't really promise a specific time on the security updates, as far as I'm aware, but it is good that they did it right away. Anyway, there have been so many promises they have not kept that I'm underwhelmed by the one instance where they did.

But, for me, the thing really is they have been called out repeatedly on tech sites and even in the AMA about their promises and not keeping them. Instead of owning up to that, they just do it again. They have been called out even more on how bad the camera is, especially in low light, and how it's inferior hardware can never live up to the hype. And yet to this day their website still says: "That’s why we put so much effort into developing one of the world’s best phone cameras." And: "This results in stunning images that are rich in color and detail, even in low light." (CNET critized them for keeping this on their website.) The camera was also brought up in the AMA. Rubin's response was hand waving jibberish about "computational photography," which is a technical term for bull**** (isn't, after all, all digital photography "computational"). Rubin also said, " We are pretty happy with the hardware design of the camera," even though the inferior sensors they are using was public knowledge by then. Rubin as recently as four days ago claimed in Time Magazine (http://time.com/4950677/andy-rubin-essential-interview/) that the reviewers received phones with incomplete camera software and that caused the problems, but there have been subsequent updates. This was long after the reviews had been out, the updates had been issued, and all the reviewers said it made little to no difference. This is not honesty. That is engaging knowningly in PR bull and trying to obfuscate something.

It's one thing to overpromise. It's another thing to overpromise and when you are called out on it double down on the overpromising. Further, there is zero way that the engineers within the company who worked on the camera didn't know that they were using sensors that are not as good as the best camera phones, so they knowingly claimed to make "one of the world's best phone cameras" when they knew that couldn't be true. They released the phone with that camera anyway, because there was nothing (much) more to be done.

Lastly, yes they are small and overworked. That seems clear. But even here, in promotional events, over and over, they have hyped the fact that being small makes them more effective and efficient, because there are not a lot of layers of bureaucracy to go through to make decisions and get things done. Yet clearly, being small in Essential's case means there are a lot of things they don't have time to do that well (and may never have time). And they have never said, oh, we're small, be patient. They have said over and over, being small makes us better. So if they weren't out there promoting the benefits of being small in contradiction to the reality, it would be easier to forgive them on this account.

When you add it all up, I just don't buy that it comes down to a simple tendency to overpromise. As they say, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I think they are being knowingly dishonest or, at best, knowingly engaging in PR misdirection to try to mislead people about problems with the phone and company.