Nextbit Robin

Can the cloud be cuddly? Nextbit thinks so. The start-up's new phone, called Robin, comes in a lovely matte pale blue, with the trick of potentially unlimited storage. I got some time with the executive team and prototype phones last month, and I'm convinced they're real, which is more than I can say for some phone start-ups.

The creators' pedigree has a lot to do with that. Nextbit's team includes former Google and Cyanogen executives, HTC's former design director, and a well-respected guy who has been a journalist and a PR person. The company has venture capital, and it will be building its phones at Foxconn. So far, so good.

"We went out to make the phone we would want to buy," said CEO Tom Moss, a former Google exec. And out came the phone.

Forecast: Cloudy
Nextbit's matte, sharp-edged phone looks and feels a bit like a Microsoft Lumia. It really stands out from the current crowd of phones, which all "look exactly like the HTC One," Moss said. On the back, there's a little cloud logo and four LEDs, which show "that things are backed up in the cloud," Croyle said. Soft-touch paint gives the whole device a pleasant, slightly rubbery feel.

The phone itself bucks the trend of larger devices. It's about 2.8 inches wide, with a 5.2-inch, 1080p screen like last year's Moto X. So far, so good in my view. Robin runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, with 32GB of onboard storage, 100GB of cloud storage, and 3GB of RAM. It has 13-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras, a fingerprint sensor on the side, dual front-facing speakers, and a reversible USB-C 3.0 connector.

When Nextbit came to my office, they didn't have a fully functional Robin. Instead, they had some physical device models not running the specialized software, and a Nexus running the Robin software, so I couldn't test how it all comes together.

Robin runs a clean-looking, hackable Android 5.1.1, with an unlocked bootloader. But it has some very proprietary software on it, which dumps apps and data into Nextbit's cloud storage if you haven't used them in a while. For apps, that means the icons gray out; if you try to launch the app, it re-fetches. Data only gets sent to the cloud when you're on Wi-Fi and charging, to save battery life and your data plan, but of course it can be re-summoned at any time.

"If you haven't traveled in six months, we can take all of your travel apps off of your phone," Nextbit's design director Scott Croyle said. "They'll look like they're there in the form of a shadow icon."

Offloading your files to the cloud isn't exactly new—it's Dropbox's whole business—but Nextbit is trying some new tricks. While Android lets you store photos and videos on memory cards and in cloud services, apps must always live in the phone's main memory. If you delete an app, you lose all of your settings and game progress. Robin is the first Android phone that can push lesser-used apps off into the cloud, keeping their data, logins, and statuses intact, and re-fetch them when needed. Amazon's Fire Phone does this to some extent, but veers far away from a standard Android experience.

Offloading data is only the beginning, Moss said. Nextbit is looking at ways to use the cloud to improve battery life and camera functionality, although he didn't explain quite how. Still, the company will make sure not to break compatibility with the main branch of Android.

"We've done some enhancements to Android, but they're actually pretty lightweight," said CTO Mike Chan, another ex-Googler. "We want to enhance it, not change or derail it."

Nextbit Robin Inline

Why No Carriers?
Robin will not be sold by any U.S. carrier, and the unlocked phone space in the U.S. is getting pretty crowded. While carriers sold 92 percent of phones in the U.S. as of the beginning of 2015, recently Motorola, Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel, and OnePlus have all decided to go it alone with non-carrier devices. Unlike the Moto X Style, though, the Robin will initially be restricted to T-Mobile's and AT&T's networks only, further limiting its potential user base. Moss said Nextbit is just hitting the beginning of an accelerating curve.

"We do believe that the direct-to-consumer market is growing, and will actually accelerate its growth pretty dramatically over the next couple of years," he said.

In that time, Moss says, Verizon will permit LTE-only devices, making more unlocked phones available on its network; technologies like software SIMs will make it easier to change carriers; and device financing and subscription models will move beyond carriers to manufacturers, letting makers like Nextbit advertise the same "zero down, $20/month" deals you currently see from carriers.

"We're not here to fight over a small pie. We're here to make it bigger," he said. If the company can sell 3 million phones next year, he said he'd be happy.

Kickstarter is not a store, but Nextbit is using it as one. Initial sales are exclusively through the crowdfunding site, and the price is tiered. The first 1,000 buyers will pay $299. Other Kickstarter buyers will pay $349, and everyone else will pay $399 early next year. That puts the 32GB Robin at roughly the same price point as the $389, 64GB OnePlus 2 and the $399, 16GB Moto X Style.

"Components have to be ordered quite a while ahead of time," so Nextbit will use Kickstarter to forecast demand, Moss said.  

The phone is on pre-sale now, for early 2016 delivery.