Nextbit turned some heads earlier this year when they attempted to crowd-fund a “cloud-first” smartphone, the Robin. The Kickstarter campaign surpassed its $500,000 target in just ten hours, and now the early adopters will be getting their devices soon. At CES today, Nextbit’s chief designer Scott Croyle announced that the GSM varieties of the Robin will be shipping out in early February. Croyle says he believes that users can expect to have their devices in hand by February 16.
The Robin is unique because it offloads apps and photos to the cloud rather than store data primarily on a microSD card. People who purchase the phone get 100GB of free cloud storage thrown in, and supposing your data plan is rigorous enough to handle it, the Robin will use that space as primary storage by default.
See also: Nextbit Robin quick look: a fresh take on smartphone design and cloud integration19
Hardware wise, the device is no slouch. It’s rocking a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 chip, runs on 3GB of RAM, and in spite of its cloud-first design, it doesn’t even skimp on the internal storage: 32GB. The rear camera is 13 megapixels and the selfie snapper is 5. The minimalist body houses a 5.2-inch display and two front facing speakers. For a smartphone that costs less than $400, these stats aren’t bad at all.
If you were one of those who saw the value in this product and invested up front, it looks like you’ll have your device on your doorstep in a little over a month. Meanwhile, what are your thoughts regarding this cloud-first storage concept? It does seem like a bit of a controversial design step. What do you think: disaster waiting to happen, or the wave of the future? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out the rest of our CES coverage!
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