Nextbit Robin "The Cloud Phone"

krishna February 15, 2016 Tech News

IN SHORT

The Nextbit Robin — available on Kickstarter for $299 — is an Android phone with an interesting take on design and storage. Rather than offer large internal storage or a microSD slot, Nextbit favors the cloud instead. The device will actually moved unused apps to the cloud to save space, and pull them down again when needed. The phone will back up the APK data to its cloud, leaving your personal application data locally on the phone. The app icon will gray out, indicating that the app is backed up. If you try to launch the app again it'll prompt you to re-download the app.

Robin is a 5.2-inch phone with 32GB of onboard storage, 3GB RAM, a 13MP camera, fingerprint scanner, and 2680mAH battery. The phone will be available in two variants — a mint on white model as well as a midnight black with blue accents. Robin doesn't look like your average smartphone — it has a totally different vibe to it — but that's what the team at Nextbit is going for.

Nextbit's Tom Moss (who is the former head of business development and partnerships for Google):

"We were equally unimpressed with the state of phones the past couple of years," Moss says. "Yes, there are some good products here and there. But in in general, as Android enthusiasts ourselves, nothing's really inspired us in a while. It feels like the last great kind of shift in industrial design in phones ... was when Scott did the HTC One. Basically all the phones kind of look the same now, and we think it's kind of boring, and we think consumers are ready for something a little bit fresh, something a little bit cool."

Nextbit Robin Specs: