Nextbit, A company by ex-HTC and Android employees has unveiled its first ever phone Robin for $350
The Robin is a high-end phone launching on Kickstarter for $349 (about £230), with discounts for early birds. The real draw of the Nextbit Robin, however—according to the company, anyway—is the phone’s “cloud-first” software.
Nextbit’s Android-based OS integrates cloud-based storage with device storage, giving a user an onboard 32GB of storage on the phone, plus 100GBs in Nextbit’s cloud.The cloud can even store user’s apps along with all other multimedia contents.
It’s certainly a different approach to emphasize on cloud storage rather than increasing the device storage.But definitely it will be quite comfortable to use this facility and to prevent phone from slowing down due to the added “bulk”.But this approach has its own shortcomings,.For example the Cloud storage is useless when user has no Internet.Plus using this facility will also introduce a drastic addition in total data use.
Apart from all this Nextbit is worth a look because while the name might be new in the industry, the people behind it aren’t. The company’s CEO, Tom Moss, was an executive on the Android team at Google. Mike Chan, the company’s chief technical office, was with Android from versions 1.0 to 3.0. Heading up product and design for Nextbit is Scott Croyle, the former SVP of Design at HTC. Croyle launched some of HTC’s best designed products, like the Evo and One M7.
As for the hardware, the shape of the phone is about as basic as it gets: it’s a rectangle. The corners are rounded but only enough to not be sharp—it’s basically a box. The colored top and bottom pieces are plastic, while the middle section is metal. On the back of the device is the Nextbit logo and a few LEDs. When the phone is transferring data to the cloud, the lights will turn on to let the user know something is happening. The unique design traits continue on the front of the phone, which puts the usual ambient light and proximity sensors behind a circular lens that looks just like the front facing camera.Â
The Nextbit Robin has a 5.2-inch 1080p display, a Snapdragon 808 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a 2680mah battery. There are a ton of extras here, too. There’s a USB Type-C port on the bottom that—unlike the OnePlus 2—supports USB 3.0 speeds. There’s a fingerprint reader on the device, but it’s integrated into the side-mounted power button. You also get dual front-facing speakers, NFC, and a 13MP camera. Nextbit has stated that they want to embrace the modding community, too, as they will allow users to unlock the phones bootloader without voiding the warranty.
The phone is launching through a Kickstarter campaign that’s asking for $500,000 (£330,000). Devices are for sale for $350 and ship in January. After the Kickstarter the company plans to sell the device directly to consumers for $399 (£260).
