Nextbit, a company founded by former Android engineers from Google, HTC, and others, has unveiled its first smartphone. The Robin has a pretty unique and fun design, but the major selling point – they claim – is that the phone intelligently manages its limited storage by offloading lesser-used or unused stuff (content and applications) to the internet. An interesting strategy in the current climate of privacy wariness – especially since these more boutique Android phones tend to be for technologically inclined users, who will be more aware of these issues. One also has to wonder how well this will work and how reliable it’ll be, considering the company’s young age.
As for specifications:
Speaking of hardware, the Robin is a uniquely designed mid-range Android phone. Nextbit tapped former HTC designer Scott Croyle as its head of design in 2014, and set out to make a phone that stands out among the sea of similar looking phones. The result is a device that’s starkly rectangular, but with circular details throughout. The Robin’s all-plastic chassis houses a 5.2-inch, 1080p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 2,680mAh battery, and 13-megapixel camera. Unique additions include a USB Type-C charging port and fingerprint scanner embedded into the side-mounted power button. The Robin is completely carrier and bootloader unlocked and is compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile LTE.
Decidedly midrange for a phone that’s on Kickstarter right now and will (supposedly) ship in January.
I want my selection of cloud service, it comes with a promotional 100GB but then after that, what? If they go under, whats my SLA?
Allow me to plonk the data on my own service and I’ll consider it!
Very good points. I believe they use Google Drive and don’t actually charge for the first 100GB of storage.
I don’t think this is a great solution for most users. Storing Photos/Videos online is already an option for most, but automatically removing apps that you don’t use often is only useful if you are really running out of space.
For example, I only use some Japanese applications (and maps) while I am on vacation in Japan. Those apps would surely be removed. Result: I arrive in Japan and cannot use the apps that I need most at that time (because I have no internet) and my nice offline maps are not there as well?
Another example would be a big game that you only play ever so often. You want to start it but have to wait for the 500 MB to get put back on your phone.
The cloud is great for ALSO storing everything, for synching and even for some backups. But main storage should be local and so should apps be
Its unlocked, cyanogen should be available for it. Worst case scenario: they announce they’re going under, you back up your data & install cyanogen.
Full disclosure: I was approached to be a beta tester but couldn’t sign the NDA.
Edited 2015-09-02 13:52 UTC
Cute phone, but “cloud first”? Give me a fsckin break. Just put another SD card slot in it!
Oh, the cloud first is marketing. This thing is “local first, cloud later”
And there is the typical kickstart/marketing lie. It isn’t hassle free at all. You need an internet connection to get things back.
For some reason Android is moving away from SD-Cards. The support in the OS is being limited and as a result manufacturers are choosing to remove SD-cards all together. When you are Google and always have internet that is just fine, but when you are a normal user that only has internet through Wifi and maybe a small data subscription this is bad. And when you are a traveler in another country this is horrible
It’s bad enough that phones kill background apps for ram/battery conservation. Now this one will delete apps/media for storage conservation? Ugh. It’s a solution in search of a problem. 128gb NAND chips are cheap. Cheaper than a year of most paid cloud cloud storage services. Bump up the price by $50, put one on the motherboard and everyone will be happier. Except for mobile operators who meter bandwidth.
It is my understanding that the SD Card standard supports up 256GB.
At the present moment my Nook HD+ has 28GB available with it`s internal storage and I have a 128GB micro-SD card installed, both work perfectly.
Even if they can`t make micro-SD cards any bigger adding support for 2-4 cards would not be that expensive.
And as already pointed out, as your data needs get greater the more time it takes to backup and restore using internet services. There is no real reason why the phone could not have two micro-SD slots and that would make backups easy and would work anywhere in the world whether there is internet or not.
SDXC supports up to 2 TB, I believe, with the exFAT filesystem.
MicroSDXC should be similar, although physical size constraints will obviously limit things. I’ve seen 128 GB drives in the stores, and heard rumours of a 256 GB card, but haven’t seen one or read a review of one.
2TB! Really!
If so then a dual slot device would be future proof for a number of years.
https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/capacity/
My phone already does this – it’s called OneDrive, only I don’t have issue with important apps not being available the moment I need them without proper cell coverage (Say, Nokia Here maps, which is important when I’m in the hills and don’t have reliable coverage away from the main highway)
You can lock apps in?
Heh no. I’m being somewhat facetious. There are plenty of cloud storage providers that integrate all through Android. Most of my media is stored on OneDrive, leaving plenty of room for apps.