NEW DELHI: Nextbit, run by former Google and HTC executives, has announced that its first smartphone “Robin” is up for funding on popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.
Nextbit is led by co-founder and CEO Tom Moss, former Google worldwide head of business development and partnerships for Android; co-founder and CTO Mike Chan, former software engineer working on Android at Google; and chief product and design officer Scott Croyle, former senior vice-president of design and user experience at HTC.
What’s special?
So, what is so special about the Robin? The phone has 32GB local storage space, and 100GB cloud storage. But it goes a step ahead of other smartphones that allow access to cloud storage space by doing the maintenance bit for you.
Once you fill up the 32GB local storage on the phone, Nextbit will move apps, photos and other files that you haven’t accessed recently on to the cloud. This will free up critical space on the phone. For example, you may have a bunch of high resolution photographs clicked by the camera—Robin will store a 1080p version on the phone, and make the higher resolution variant available from the cloud on demand. When an app is moved to the cloud, it shows up with a greyed out icon—and if you wish to use that app, Robin will download it with the login details and other settings intact.
All the backups happen only when the user is connected to a Wi-Fi network and the phone has been plugged in for charging. There are no details yet on what happens when the user exhausts the 100GB cloud storage space. Will Nextbit upgrade the account automatically with more space, or will the user have to pay extra?
The features
The phone has fairly powerful specs. It has a 5.2-inch Full HD IPS (1,920×1, 080 pixel) display and is powered by the Snapdragon 808 chip with 3GB RAM. There is a 13-megapixel rear camera with phase-detection auto focus and dual-tone flash, as well as a 5-megapixel selfie camera.
The Robin smartphone will feature a USB Port-C port with quick charging support, fingerprint scanner, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac as well as complete 4G compatibility and a 2,680 mAh battery. A rather unique design element sees four notification LEDs on the back panel, which will tell the user about backups, new messages or calls. Robin will be available in mint and midnight colours.
Nextbit hopes to ship the phone with the upcoming Android Marshmallow operating system, but in the case the timeline of the OS roll-out and the phone’s shipping don’t match, they promise a quick software update.
It seems a lot of attention has been paid to the detail. The speaker grille above and below the screen has been machined, so that all the holes are of the exact same dimension.
The funding campaign
The goal of this 30-day funding campaign is to get $500,000 in funding. At the time of writing this, it had already received pledges worth $536,443, in just one day.
And early backers will also get the Robin smartphone at a lower price—1,000 early backers who pledge $299 will get the phone in January 2016 and 290 backers who pledge $349 will get it in February 2016. At some point after that, the Robin will be sold in stores in various countries (no specifics on that at the moment), with a price tag of $399. Judging by the reaction of the people and the super quick funding that Nextbit is getting, it could inevitably be a success story.
