Nextbit Robin

This morning, I’ve seen a bit of buzz about the Nextbit Robin, a new Kickstarted smartphone from the guys who made Baton.

I looked at it and thought “that looks awesome, and it makes me want to get one more than the OnePlus Two does. Thing is, I have Baton on my phone – courtesy of a CyanogenMod update and I’ve never used it, so I have no experience with this company. I’m wondering if I’m just experiencing a bit of Kickstarter fever.

I have a slight Kickstarter problem, you see, and this would be a big investment – buying a new phone outright when the old one isn’t even a year old yet. I bought the OnePlus One because I wanted to get out of the cycle of contract upgrades and buying phones that cost twice as much as they should through those contracts.

The Robin is $349 (£228), which is cheaper than my OnePlus One was (£269 last November, £219 now), but I don’t know how much use I’d get out of the flagship feature – I’ve never had a storage warning on my OnePlus One.

So my question to myself is: how much of this is going “ooh shiny?”. Backing the Kickstarter saves $50 on retail (according to the campaign), and maybe I’ll just wait for the retail package in February next year rather than prospecting a new phone now that I won’t get for at least six months.

But still… I kinda want to back it. I’ve put it on reminder so I can make a decision closer to the end of the campaign. Except for the “special SIM tray”, I’ve not seen any reason other than the discounted price to back the Kickstarter, and they’re fully funded now so they’re going ahead in any case.

2 thoughts on “Nextbit Robin

  1. Wow, that was… surprisingly unappealing. What do you see in it, if not the clever storage thing? I mean, that’s a pretty neat gimmick, though really not something I feel they should’ve released as a phone (but I see why they did and it’s valid).

    I’m not sure I’m sold by the look of it at all, let alone it seems to have dated quick charge and no info on whether it has a removable battery (though, even if it does, chances of getting a spare look slim). Equally, I’m quite controlling in what I like having and not having, but I do manually go through photos and apps and such regularly.

    1. I actually quite like the look of the Midnight colour scheme. It’s a little odd, a little weird, and I kinda like that in my tech.

      Basically no phones have removable batteries these days – which isn’t a plus in my book, but is how it is. The OnePlus One has a removable back (with effort) that can be swapped for other backs, but the battery isn’t removable at all.

      That said, I’ve not found the lack of a removable battery to be a problem with the OnePlus One. By the end of things, my Galaxy Note’s backplate came off all the time, and that was a worse situation as I needed to constantly be buying new backplates or accept that it (and the battery) would just detach sometimes.

      I like the concept of unlimited storage, even though it’s not unlimited (132GB total) and I don’t presently have much of a use for it. I’m using 34GB at the moment on my phone – I don’t take photos a lot. I value being able to browse the photos on my phone, but equally I already have them all go to two separate Cloud storage services where I can also browse them.

      The idea of getting a new phone has been on my mind since they announced the OnePlus Two, I think, and this is a viable alternative.

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