Hey it’s Joshua Vergara – what’s going on everybody? I guess I should just start this the way I try to start most things in my life – with gratitude. Yes, this is my final post on Android Authority and I lay a lot of my feelings out in the video above. There is really nothing I could say that would adequately express my love for the people on this team and the founders, Darcy and Derek. Almost six years ago we found each other quite randomly — I can share the story here, as many have asked me how I even ended up at Android Authority.

One random application, one phone call, one review. The rest is history.

Simply put, it was serendipity. I was between jobs and while searching for my next place to work, I decided I wanted to get back into writing. By that time I had dabbled in spoken word poetry, picked up photography as a hobby, and had my own blog that I wrote random stuff in from time to time. I figured, “If it is just for one or two articles a week, why not?” That was a really naive thought, ultimately, because the gig turned out to be so much more than I anticipated. As you all know, it turned into hundreds of videos over the years. And it all started with that one application and a phone call in the middle of the evening from Darcy.

Darcy was actually out filming the highest viewed drop test on the YouTube channel at that time. Consider it a passing of the guard, I guess. I went on to do not only reviews, comparisons, and commentary, but also a bunch of different drops. I dropped iPhones, HTC Ones, Sony Xperias, a tablet, and a LG curved phone. For the record — they were all raw and real. We damaged each device to the extent seen on camera, and it always hurt to shatter especially the glass on every screen.

Since then, I have been blessed to know this crazy group of incredible people. I am eternally grateful for the friendships I have made here at Android Authority and I am proud of all the work that we have done, especially in building the YouTube channel. After all, it had humble beginnings and now we are over 3 million subscribers strong.

Which obviously leads to another show of gratitude to you, all of the readers and viewers (and listeners, #AAPodcast) that have stuck by us throughout the years. Thank you so much for all of the support and for sticking by this Filipino kid fresh off his first job after college. Thank you for every like and comment (good or bad) peppered throughout, and thank you for helping me reach the kind of audience that I do today. I detail many more of my feelings in the video, which makes sense because that is really my way of expression. But I wanted to write this here for the readers, though I still encourage you to watch.

As for the future — I still love doing this work. I am sure that in our respective moves forward, JV and AA will eventually cross paths. It is just time for me to see what kind of path I can carve out on my own. I hope you fondly remember me and what I’ve done here. But at the very least I hope you remember my name. Because I’m not hard to find — just put my name in a search box.