It's a long (and steep) road ahead, but there's promise in this smartphone startup.
Nextbit is a fresh mobile startup that's already off to a hot start with its first phone, Robin, which raised more than $900,000
on Kickstarter
in just its first week of crowdfunding. The phone isn't coming to
retail until early in 2016, but we've had an opportunity to get our
hands on some pre-production units and see what Robin — and Nextbit as a
whole — is all about.
Here's an early look at the hardware it's bringing to market, and a little more on its company strategy as well.
Robin
is one of the most interesting looking (and feeling) devices I've had
my eyes and hands on in some time. Part of that is the unique "mint" and
white color scheme, but this is a
very cool device in the darker blue (almost black) color as well — and the color I expect a majority of sales to come in.
Robin looks nothing like the rest of the smartphone industry today, and it's refreshing.
It looks nothing like the rest of the smartphone
industry today, but Robin certainly has ties to the look of the solid
polycarbonate Nokia phones of yesteryear as well as the color and sharp
lines of HTC's Desire phones (Scott Croyle, Nextbit's designer, is
formerly of HTC).
The phone is flat on all sides without feeling sharp, and it has just a
few subtle design flourishes that make it stand out. Dual speakers
flank the display, there's a notification LED on the
top edge
of the phone (so it can be seen even when the phone is face down), and
an array of four LEDs on the back plate indicate cloud activity
happening in the operating system. Some more subtle additions are a
fingerprint sensor in the side power button, and a USB-C port on the
bottom for charging.
Robin definitely stands out without trying
too hard to be flashy and intense. There aren't any chamfered metal
edges, swoopy curves, bits of chrome or superfluous design elements —
and I find that incredibly refreshing. It's just a phone, with some very
clever design decisions, and one that I'm initially a fan of
aesthetically. Reactions from around the Internet have been slightly
more mixed to be fair, but I think the overall feeling is positive, as
is mine.
On the inside you're getting plenty as well —
particularly considering the $399 price. Robin has a Snapdragon 808
processor, ample memory and a decent 32GB of storage, a 5.2-inch 1080p
display, 2680 mAh battery, 13MP camera, and a few other little perks
like quick charging, NFC and a two-tone camera flash. The internals
aren't really the big focus of Robin, and I'm OK with that so long as
there's enough inside to power the experience it wants — and it seems
like there is.
But Robin isn't just about nice-looking hardware — there's a
big software component here
as well. Nexbit has some lofty ambitions when it comes to value-adds
baked into its build of Lollipop on the phone (and they're already
working on
Android 6.0 Marshmallow),
with the tentpole feature being integration with cloud storage right
into the operating system. Though the phone has 32GB of internal
storage, you also get access to 100GB of Nextbit cloud storage —
included for the life of your device — that will automatically back up
your photos, videos
and apps.
Seamless cloud backup is something nobody else really does, and it has tons of potential.
But this isn't a "push" kind of system, Robin is always
backing up for optimization purposes — meaning if you haven't touched an
app in a few months, the app's assets (but you your personal app data)
will be seamlessly moved to the cloud to clear up your local storage,
and you can quickly recall it and pick up right where you left off (with
all of your data and preferences) before. The operating system will
also back up full-resolution photos to the cloud and keep
device-appropriate sized ones, again to save storage.
And that's
just what Nextbit has announced so far. The company has bold ambitions
to do even more with the cloud and add entirely new features to Robin
before
and after launch. Of course what's there now is
certainly new and not found anywhere else, but Nextbit feels there's
more to be done with this cloud-integrated thinking. There are concerns
about battery and network issues when you start doing a lot on the
cloud, but it also opens up massive possibilities when you don't tie
everything down to just the phone's internal hardware itself.
Beyond the cloud features, this is a relatively familiar
Lollipop
experience, with some simple changes to the interface — primarily in
the launcher and color scheme. Nothing feels foreign to anyone who's
used Android before, and you still have full access to the suite of
Google apps and anything you want to install from Google Play.
Considering the pre-production nature of the devices I had access to I
can't make any calls on performance (nor would I want to at this point),
but I do appreciate Nextbit's software approach — it seems clean,
simple and useful, just like the hardware that carries it.
So much
can change from now until Robin starts shipping out to Kickstarter
backers early next year, but first impressions have me ready and willing
to get a full production device in my hands for real long-term use.
There are plenty of other questions about the launch — mostly in the
realm of retail sales, the future of the Nextbit itself and customer
support in the real world — that need answering. But when evaluating it
based on what we know now, purely as a phone, Robin is extremely
exciting.
Source;
AndroidCentral
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