All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Eye-catching, memorable look, unusual features, 100GB cloud storage included, loud speakers
Slow camera, intermittently slow software, cloud archiving of apps ultimately annoys, poor battery life
Just a few years ago, "The Cloud" used to be what "IoT" is now, a term discussed frequently but understood by few. Now we all live in the cloud – even the technologically illiterate use Netflix, have an Amazon Kindle library and use Google Photos.
We talk about it less, but rely on it a whole lot more.
The Nextbit Robin is the first handset sold as "cloud-first". This angle and a smart-looking design were enough to earn Nextbit $1.3 million (£923,000) on Kickstarter.
But when every smartphone platform is fundamentally reliant on a whole series of cloud services to function, you may be left wondering: exactly how does the Robin use the cloud more than any other Android phone?
The Nextbit Robin's promise is that it'll seem as though you never run out of storage. It has 32GB of the stuff, which will usually start getting full after a few months of care-free photo snapping and installing of games and apps.
This is where the cloud comes in. Apps and photos are automatically uploaded to the 100GB storage included with the Robin. Syncing happens whenever the phone is plugged-in and connected to Wi-Fi, although even those restrictions can be loosened. While doing its cloud thing, four LEDs on the back light up, just to let you know it's working its magic.
Once the Robin's storage starts to fill up, the phone silently starts removing apps and games that have not been used in a while. The same happens with photos.
Uninstalled apps become greyed-out ghosts on the homescreen. The grey icons are there to remind they were once wanted, but have to be re-downloaded with an icon tap.
None of the app removal process is prompted. The Nextbit Robin doesn't ask for permission before it silently sends Angry Birds off to the retirement home. A notification just pops-up after the deed is done. It's rather like returning to your flat only to find your mum there as you open the door. "I've cleaned out a few things while you were out. I hope you don't mind, dear."
WIRED has been digging into exactly how the algorithm works in person. The Robin only starts culling your collection when there's less than 5GB of storage left. After this point, you'll return to find a few more archived apps every now and then. Being able to install new apps is given absolute priority. A true app splurge can even result in games installed the previous day getting shelved.
What actually happens is that the app install data is removed from the phone. Right now user data isn't sent over to the cloud, just the kind of data initially downloaded from Google Play. Resurrecting an app is oddly similar to re-downloading it fresh in terms of mobile or Wi-Fi data used.
Finding an app you used just a week or so ago 'parked' on Cloud 9 just because you installed a large game is annoying. And this is the Nextbit Robin's issue: is its app spring clean really better than being told when you run out of memory?
In it favour, the Robin lets you be supremely lazy. And to avoid that back-firing – if the Robin were to uninstall a Rome tour guide app an hour before you head to the airport – apps need to be 'pinned'. This gives them exemption from the long arm of the Nextbit law. Having to think about whether an app should be pinned gets rid of some of that lazy appeal.
Even those who fully embrace the two-minute attention span of the digital generation, tending to use apps and games a couple of times before leaving them on the phone like discarded chocolate bar wrappers, will find the Robin bittersweet. If the Robin performs the equivalent of an overbearing parent's spring clean, it still leaves bin bags scattered around your flat. This is a solution more annoying than the problem it purports to solve.
It is also easy to overestimate the technology smarts involved here. To offer a solid guarantee that your data won't simply evaporate without warning, the Robin actually uses Amazon Web Services rather than creating its own infrastructure.
Data is encrypted before it is sent to the cloud, but that's down to Amazon, not Nextbit. Google also offers very similar, and quite excellent, photo archiving for every Android phone as part of Google Photos. There are options to upload full-resolution photos to Google Drive, and to flush out any backed-up images from the phone. This half-hidden option alone, available to all Android fans, is going to solve many people's storage issues.
The Nextbit Robin's look is more successful. It comes in two colours, the version WIRED reviewed being the more eye-catching of the two. A sandwich of two-tone aquamarine and off-white gives this phone a look that's hard to forget. Be prepared to have complete strangers come up to you and ask what phone you're using – it has happened more than once during our time with the handset.
Thought made from plastic, the Robin doesn't come across as cheap. After the initial thrill of its colours has worn off, the Robin's most obvious trait is that it feels large for a phone with a 5.2-inch screen. Sharp edges and a thick screen surround put this in the same size class as a 5.5-inch phone. It feels a lot larger than the Samsung Galaxy S7.
As with the cloud features, the Nextbit Robin's design comes off a little better on paper than after a month's use. The core hardware is perfectly good for the money, which works out at roughly £350. A few highlights: there's a fast fingerprint scanner on the side, almost exactly where Sony puts a scanner in its Xperia X phones and its speakers are unusually good too. They are partly to blame for the Robin's large footprint, but also create proper stereo sound that can go louder than most mid-range Android phones.
The screen is respectable, although a 5.2-inch 1080p IPS LCD is the least WIRED expects for the price. It's a natural-looking, fairly sharp display, although it is also very reflective.
Nextbit is a company desperate to stand out. Putting this into action, the Robin has its own Android interface on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. As with the hardware it looks fine, but few of the changes are specific to the 'cloud-first' credo, and even fewer are positive.
The main alteration to note is that instead of using a soft key to switch between the home screens and the apps menu, the Nextbit Robin uses a floating button that sits on the home screen proper. It's meant to be thumb-friendly, and is, but ultimately only puts another layer between you and the apps menu. It doesn't open up the app drawer, but a menu from which it is opened. It slows you down.
To make matters worse, there's a delay before the app drawer opens. Laggy delays like this are fairly common when using the Nextbit Robin, and have little-to-nothing to do with the phone's hardware. It has a Snapdragon 808 CPU, the same six-core Qualcomm processor used in the LG G4. With this CPU and 3GB RAM, it shouldn't be laggy.
So why is it slow? The Nexbit Robin's software isn't so much "a bit buggy" as unfinished. The camera app is the worst offender. It's painfully slow to shoot, with an almost unbelievable amount of shutter lag and post-shoot processing lag meaning the phone has to be held still for up to five seconds just to get a reliable shot.
The Nextbit Robin isn't meant to be like this, of course, but WIRED used the phone for a month and the issues haven't been updated away. This camera is a chore to use, particularly while the autofocus reliability remains poor. Using tap-to-focus, shots still end up soft, even when conditions should make it a cinch for the phone to lock on.
If these issues are fixed the Robin camera will fit in perfectly well among its £200-400 mid-range peers. The Robin uses a 13-megapixel Samsung ISOCELL sensor, very similar to the one used in the OnePlus X.
It produced good shots in daylight, with occasional white balance issues, and reasonable ones at night with a still enough hand. The Robin doesn't have optical image stabilisation and its grating shutter lag makes judging when the exposure is actually happening tricky, but it doesn't resort to ultra-high ISO sensitivity as soon as daylight disappears.
There are quite a lot of cheaper phones, also from an enthusiast bin, that have more consistent results and easier shooting. The Oppo F1, OnePlus 2 and Motorola Moto G 3rd generation are three obvious examples. They're faster, cheaper, more reliable and produce similar quality photos.
2015 flagships like the LG G4 have far better cameras, and those with the mobile phone nous to know about Nextbit may also be savvy enough to realise that LG's phone often sells for less than the Robin these days.
In too many ways, the Nextbit Robin tries your patience. Some things you get used to, such as the unintuitive way you access the phone's apps menu. But one of the issues that continues to linger after using the Robin for a month is battery life – it's just not good.
An unfortunate combo of half-baked software and a slightly sad 2680mAh battery, which is fairly small given the Robin's hardware, is to blame. You can end up fully draining the phone twice from 100 per cent charge within a day. And unless it's used very lightly it'll almost certainly give out before midnight.
Some of the Robin's elements feel underdeveloped in one way or another, but the battery simply uses the wrong hardware. A lack of clever CPU management only compounds the problem. In its favour, it does have fast charging, but does not come with the faster charger needed to get this. The standard package comes with no charger at all.
It will work with your existing Android phone chargers, though, as while it has a USB-C port, the end of its eye-catching aquamarine-colour cable using a regular full-fat USB plug. This sums up one of the Robin's problems nicely: the parts you end up appreciating are its 'normal' elements, not those that try so hard to be different.
A great premise can get you a long way. The Nextbit Robin sparked the internet public's imagination, claiming to bring an end to running out of storage. It does, but only on a superficial level. Like a wish from a genie, this solution comes with irritating side-effects that outnumber, and perhaps also outweigh, the benefits.
The cloud features amount to an interesting concept that doesn't quite work out in the real world, but the Robin is also let down fundamentally by poor battery life and serious performance issues – including an infuriatingly slow camera.
The phone's design seems like something that's been agonised over and perfected for months, but actually using the Robin is patchy enough to suggest Nextbit may have run out of development cash, time or steam at some point.
Display: 5.2-inch, 1080x1920 pixels
Camera: 13 megapixel rear-facing, 5 megapixel front-facing
RAM: 3GB
Processor: Six-core Snapdragon 808
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
