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I may be biased here, but I think almost everyone here is missing the point. Yes, Essential raised $300M because Andy Rubin is at the helm, but the bet is not on the phone they just launched. Its on the Smart Home. Here's a quote from Rubin himself:

    The long-term vision for Essential, Rubin said, is more closely aligned 
    with the Essential Home, which Rubin hopes you’ll put in your kitchen or 
    living room and use to control all the connected devices where you live.

Apple has HomeKit, Google has "works with Nest" (a joke, really), Samsung has SmartThings, etc.. If he follows the same path he has with Android and decides to open up the Essential Home platform [1], then its going to revolutionize a market that has the potential of being as valuable as the smartphone. If that's not a company that's worth $1B, especially led by someone with Andy Rubin's track record, I don't know what is.

[1] I mean truly open, the way he's done with Android. The Essential phone will already be more open that most phones on the market (unlocked bootloader), there's good reason to believe the Home will be too.

if you're getting ads after you uninstalled, then you're blaming the wrong app.

    IoT finding its footing in augmenting other systems rather than revolutionizing them

This is key. All the companies that are trying to start from scratch and build something big are failing or are hitting huge roadblocks due to high learning curves. On the other hand, those that are starting with simple, one-feature, even buttonless devices (philips hue, chromecast, echo) are the ones that are staying afloat.

I'm in this niche, and have been hit hard by this reality. IoT is definitely coming, but right now it is SO young, immature and fragmented, that it takes a pretty skilled person to use it in any meaningful way.

People need to be educated, and the best (read: only) way to do that is to introduce them to IoT one piece at a time. And these pieces have to be reliable and consistent. Until then, the switch on the wall has nothing to worry about.

SEEKING WORK - Remote, travel OK

Location: Mountain View, CA

Specialty: Android, senior level

I have 8 years of experience in Android - I started working with it the day it officially went out of beta. I'm one of the first 100 people to ever publish an app for Android, and the first to publish an In-App Purchase. I've worked on a wide-range of apps with all kinds of technologies, from simple lists & galleries, google maps integration (gps, location, navigation), to complex Bluetooth 4.0 LE enabled smart home apps.

Previous work:

- Lead Android engineer at a YC startup (Circle)

- Lead Android & founder at a smart home startup (AnyMote)

- Lead Android & founder at a security startup (40+ mil users, acquired in '11)

- LAMP stack, AWS (EC2, S3, ELB & more), scripting & similar when the job requires it

If you need someone to get a prototype started quickly or get your app off the ground very quickly, using the latest tech & guidelines, reach out to me at [email protected]

This is Android - what about apps that run mostly in the background ? A music player, fitness tracker, activity tracker? What about apps that run continuously, like a launcher ?

remember that you paid $4.64, but 30% of that went to Amazon anyway. Generally, about 2-3% of the people who would download a free app would also pay for it, which could make Underground a good choice. People who haven't paid though, aren't as invested, and are more likely to quit using that app sooner.

Also, there's the niche issue: it's very possible that fighting fantasy fans are more likely to pay for their apps, which means none of these numbers applies to them.

That's maybe a discussion for another medium, but we're actually updating the app right now with a customizable notification - so you have access to your commands from anywhere (including lockscreen) without any kind of intrusion. Also, we already have a floating remote (facebook chathead-style) that shows on top of the lockscreen. Best of all - you can configure it to show only while you're on the home wifi.

Since they make money only with advertising, Peel is only focused on TV-watching. While we're going to have the same feature soon (tv guide with auto-switching), AnyMote is meant to do let you do much more than just control a TV and Set Top Box. It has all kinds of wifi lights support, receivers, media centers, etc.