When the Nextbit Robin was first revealed, it was promised that the cloud-centric Android phone would begin shipping to backers in January 2016. Today it’s been revealed that the Robin will miss that timeframe, but not by much.
Scott Croyle, Nexbit’s head designer, has revealed that the Robin will begin shipping to the phone’s first thousand Kickstarter backers on February 16. The bad news is that only the GSM model will start going out on that date. Folks that ordered the CDMA version for Sprint and Verizon will have to wait a bit longer, as that model isn’t expected to begin shipping until later in 2016.
The Nextbit Robin first launched on Kickstarter in September 2015 and ended up making $1.36 million, which is considerably more than its $500,000 goal. The big feature of the Robin is the way that it handles storage. The phone comes with 32GB of built-in storage, but it also includes 100GB of cloud storage to hold your apps, photos, and other stuff. When you’re on Wi-Fi, the Robin will automatically back up the apps and content that you haven’t used in a while to the cloud. It’ll still show up on your phone, though, and when you tap on one of those cloud-stored items, it’ll pull the content down and store it locally on your phone.
The Robin also boasts a unique look, which was crafted in part by Croyle, who previously served as SVP of Design and User Experience at HTC. In terms of straight-up specs, the Robin has a 5.2-inch 1920x1080 display, 13-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front cameras, hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, NFC, a 2680mAh battery, fingerprint reader, and dual front-facing speakers.
While the Nextbit Robin’s Kickstarter — and its $299 early backer pricing — is long over, you can still pre-order a unit for $399. That slots the Robin into the competitive “affordable flagship” category, and with its spec list and design, it seems like it’ll make for an interesting option in that market even without its unique cloud storage functionality. Speaking of that cloud feature, it’ll be interesting to see how well it works once the Robin is complete and in backers’ hands. The good news is that we’ll find out in about a month and a half.
Did you back or pre-order the Nextbit Robin?
