Cloud-Based Nextbit Robin Phone Arrives Feb. 16

LAS VEGAS—It'due south a lilliputian tardily, but in the annals of crowdfunding, not very late. Here at CES, Nextbit showed off a nearly final version of its Robin "cloud-based" Android telephone, and said it will get-go shipping to early backers on Feb. 16, nearly 2 weeks later than originally planned.

CES 2022 Bug Art "We're disappointed, simply in the grand scheme of things with Kickstarter campaigns, two weeks late isn't that bad," Nextbit founder Scott Croyle said. "And the extra two weeks lets u.s. squash more bugs."

Early backers will go the offset models, followed a few days later by other GSM pre-buyers. If you pre-order by Jan. 15, the phone will send by the end of February, Croyle said. At that place's still no hard appointment for the CDMA version.

I got to handle virtually concluding models of the new Robin in its three colors: "mint" blue, "midnight" black, and "electric" brilliant blue. That final model will only go out to the early backers.

The $399 telephone's specs aren't the star of the show here. The specs are the aforementioned as when nosotros first had our hands on it in September: a Snapdragon 808 processor, 13-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras, a 5.ii-inch 1080p screen, 32GB of onboard storage, dual front-facing speakers, and a matte polycarbonate torso.

The Robin's special sauce has ever been its 100GB of cloud storage, and the mode it automatically offloads less frequently used apps and content, letting you restore them from the deject when you lot need them. The Robin won't restore files like game save levels yet, but we're hoping it will in the time to come.

Cloud-offloaded app icons appear grey. When you tap on one, four trivial LEDs on the back of the Robin start to pulse, and go on rolling as long as the app is redownloading. I tried to redownload Pandora and it took a lilliputian while, but this is CES, and connectivity is awful.

I also tried out the camera. The thirteen-megapixel master photographic camera was overnice and abrupt, and the camera app looked simple and elegant.

With elegant, midrange smartphones similar the Huawei Award 5x going for $199, the Robin'southward sales points are actually its elegant design and its charismatic, accessible team. Scott Croyle, Eric Lin, and the other founders are contstantly in bear upon with backers, and they promise to find more consumer pain points to solve—although they're currently focused on getting this product out right at present, Croyle said.

"It's really important for us to be light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation focused and not drop the ball on Robin," he said.