Meet Robin: Nextbit's Android smartphone promising unlimited storage

The smartphone market is getting fierce, but that hasn’t stopped new entrants from foraying into the segment. Nextbit, a app-making startup is working on a new phone with ‘unlimited storage’. Its all new phone dubbed Robin is still a prototype. Nextbit is selling Robin via a Kickstarter campaign for 30 days. Early backers can grab the device at $299 and standard backers at $349. The device is not expected to ship until January and will then carry a retail price of $399.  Tom Moss, Nextbit’s CEO, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview, “The iPhone owns the high end. It’s basically a luxury item. We’re not going for that. Instead, we think there’s a new high-end for Android around the $400 price point that can be just as compelling for consumers, if the ideas behind the software and hardware are right.” Now, the highlight of this device is unlimited storage, but that means one can access cloud storage once the 32GB on-board storage runs out. It will start feeing up space on the device by offloading your content to the 100GB cloud allotted to the handset. Nextbit has its own OS running on top of Android and designed to learn your habits. It automatically pushes unused apps and services onto the cloud. However, getting things back onto the system is made convenient with a single tap. “We’ll never move what you use most to the cloud. But the photos you took six months ago and haven’t looked at in six months can go to the cloud. That game you downloaded and stopped playing three weeks ago, that can go to the cloud, too. And when you want any of it, you’ll get it back just it was before," Moss had further explained to the news site. Now, backing content on cloud isn’t something novel and several others offer the service. However, Nextbit says its service is superior as its intuitive service automatically backs up content intelligently and without the need for user to free up space. It will do so only during favourable conditions such as when on Wi-Fi or pugged in, the report adds. The company plans 100GB storage space for every user that can be further adjusted in case the user requires more space. Besides, the device looks pretty neat in a rectangular form factor. Some other specs include 5.2-inch 1080p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 2,680mAh battery and 13-megapixel rear snapper. It also includes USB Type-C charging port and fingerprint scanner.