The "Robin" Android smartphone from Nextbit is shaping up as a great Kickstarter hit, promising to make storage woes history by leveraging cloud storage.
The project hit the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform on Sept. 1, initially pledging to raise $500,000 to make it happen. Just one week later, the cloud-first Robin smartphone not only surpassed its goal (it did that on its first day), but has already raised more than $874,000 with 23 days left to go.
As expected, the early adopter pack that started at $299 is all gone, but backers can still go for the other tiers that start at $349. More than 2,000 people backed this intriguing smartphone so far and at this rate, more will likely join the party by the end of the campaign.
In terms of specifications, the Robin smartphone will sport a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display with a full HD resolution (1080p) and Gorilla Glass 4 protection, while under the hood it will employ a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor coupled with 3GB of RAM. Other specs include a 13-megapixel rear shooter with phase detection autofocus and dual-tone flash, a 5-megapixel front camera, dual front speakers, a fingerprint sensor, a 2,680 mAh battery with quick charging capabilities, LTE and NFC.
What makes Nextbit's Robin stand out from the crowd, however, is its approach to storage capacity. The smartphone itself comes with 32GB of internal storage capacity, but it leverages the power of cloud storage to eliminate such concerns.
"Robin is the only cloud-first smartphone. It gets smarter every day and makes running out of space history," boasts the project description on Kickstarter.
More specifically, this cloud-first smartphone comes with 100GB of cloud storage and promises to automatically offload the user's photos, videos or apps to the cloud in order to free up the internal storage space. This cloud integration should improve in time, albeit it doesn't sound too bad now either.
Once a user hits the 32GB limit of internal storage space, the Robin smartphone will automatically back up their media and apps to their private cloud server box.
This could prove incredibly useful. If you're witnessing a great scene you'd like to record on video, but you're out of storage, for instance, you'd no longer have to start going through files and decide what to delete, missing all the action in the meantime. Robin would let you record the video you want and make room for it in the meantime. The smartphone is designed to act smart when you hit your local storage limit, moving the older media on the device to the cloud.
Users will still have a thumbnail in place of that media so you can access it quickly at any time. The phone will also move the apps you rarely use, leaving a grayed-out icon in their place, but all app data will be backed up and you can restore the app to its exact same state simply by tapping it.
Nextbit's Robin smartphone could also get an edge against rivals when it comes to software, as it has a neat approach many mobile users dream of. More specifically, Robin will run the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow when it launches, but it will also come with an unlocked bootloader and open source drivers and allow users to install CyanogenMod or some other ROM without voiding the warranty. Even if they brick the device, the warranty will still cover it.
Considering Nextbit's approach to both platform and storage departments, Robin could turn out to be a great hit even if it doesn't have the latest and highest-end hardware specifications. If its success on Kickstarter so far is any indication, the cloud-first Robin could revolutionize the smartphone market and herald great things to come.
The first batch of Robin smartphones is expected to start shipping to backers in February 2016. It remains unclear just when exactly Robin will hit the market, but it will sport a $399 price tag when it does. If everything goes well—and it looks like it does—Robin will make phone storage limitations a thing of the past.
