Essential

Someone is selling a bunch of those rare Essential ‘Gem’ phones for $1,200 [Gallery]

Ben Schoon | Jun 12 2025 - 7:20 am PT

Before it kicked the bucket, Essential was teasing a radical new “Gem” smartphone that never came to market, but someone on eBay is currently selling quite a few of them.

Essential’s founder, Andy Rubin, shared a teaser of his company’s “Gem” concept smartphone in late 2019, saying that the tall and narrow smartphone would be its sequel to the beloved Essential Phone. Just a few months later, though, Essential closed its doors and “Gem” was forever shelved.

Only a limited number of “Gem” prototypes were made, but someone got their hands on a lot of the rare Essential prototypes and is now selling them on eBay for $1,200 a pop.

eBay seller “anuket_bay” has just over half a dozen Essential “Gem” devices for sale currently, each one priced at $1,200. The devices vary in color, with options including “Holo Blue,” purple, matte black, and glossy black. Each device is in full working order with Essential’s custom software experience, though no software updates are obviously available to the device. The cameras don’t work, some features don’t work, the back housing is very delicate, and some of the devices “sometimes [have] a green and/or purple line going through the screen.”

Advertisement - scroll for more content

While we’ve seen Essential “Gem” units pop up for sale in the past, one of which having led to a fairly extensive hands-on, we’ve never seen this many available for purchase.

Notably, this also comes just as Nothing has posted its own hands-on with Essential “Gem,” with the company also having confirmed that it purchased the “Essential” trademark because it once considered going by that name.

$1,200 is quite a bit of money to spend on a smartphone that can’t really do anything, but it’s hard to imagine these will be around for a particularly long time.

Will you buy one? More importantly, will you let me try it? 👀