Effective...

It’s a huge morning of news from Andy Rubin’s Essential: a new Android phone with a unique edge-to-edge display, a modular accessory system, a new 360 camera for that system, and a new intelligent speaker with a huge circular display.

But the biggest news of all might be the OS that runs on that speaker. Essential is calling it Ambient OS, and says that the goal is to “activate” your home by understanding the physical layout of your home, its occupants, and the various services and devices available to them.

Ambient calls this “activating” your home, and says the Ambient OS is an “API” to all those things in combinations, allowing new kinds of applications to exist on top of them — like flashing your lights when a timer goes off.