Nextbit Robin Review

This phone is supposed to be the smartphone that never run out of storage. This is a brand new phone from a brand new company which want to be on the map of smartphone market and Robin is no exception.

Built Quality

Robin is rectangular  phone with very tight corners. It kind of looks little uncomfortable at first but has very soft touch and actually feel very good in hand. It has got balance of weight and well fitted parts and durable enough that it feels like you can hurt someone with this phone. So its well built and feels good. You have got your power button on the right hand side which is also a finger print reader and two tiny volume buttons on the left side. This might be the worst part of the built that buttons are little small with very little travel and the power button do not protrude at all, so its hard to tell which side is up without looking. The fingerprint reader is actually good though, the speed and accuracy is up to point. The placement is good though with your two fingers registered -one thumb and index finger. The USB-type c on the button with quick charging and on the front dual stereo front facing speakers are loud and clear and awesome for gaming, listening to music and watching videos. 

Software and Performance

Specs are pretty good too-Snapdragon 808, 3 GB of RAM, 2680 MAH. It runs the new Android 6.0 marshmallow and its a custom Nextbit skin but a lot of the element still feels stock - notifications, lock screen, quick settings, etc. Performance was pretty smooth throughout but just the occasional force close or weird storage problem. The battery life was little worse. I was getting only 3 hrs 30 mins screen on time which is less than i expected out of 5 inch 1080 pi display. 

Camera

The 13 MP camera on the back was decent and kind of reminds me of the Blackberry Priv's camera actually. So colors out of it were fine, details were fine and dynamic range is little weak though. But overall solid for the price. It is actually too late to take the photo in the custom Nextbit camera. The shutter lag is long.

Storage

How is this the phone that never runs out of the storage?All the is magic is buried here in the Nextbit skin. The Nextbit Robin comes with 32 GB of on board storage but also 100 GB of free cloud storage. Well, that is Not unlimited but a lot more than 32 GB. Nextbit Robin is supposed to be smart enough to upload the oldest and least frequently used stuff from the internal storage straight to the cloud when it has access to the cloud. So, when you start to fill 32 GB with all apps, photos and videos which have not been opened in a while , move to cloud and make room for more, and the idea is to happen seamlessly without being noticed by you. You may notice some of the icons are lightened as they are offline or in the cloud(not present in the device anymore). When you will click on that icon or app every thing gets downloaded to the state left previously. This is good selling point feature for the Robin. If you want to use apps frequently and don't want to be uploaded to the cloud, then you can swipe down to pin them and pinned apps never roll in the cloud. This is the secret to Robin's unlimited storage. 

Conclusion

For the price you are getting a good deal of 132GB of storage but only downfall is its highly dependent on the internet and buying it to Nextbit's system. I would not buy this phone for just this feature but I would buy this phone for the fact that at this price its a pretty good solid android smartphone and you can ignore all those Nextbit's stuff  and use it like any other phone. You can root it and boot loader is actually unlocked out of the box and also supports Cynogen mode on or something and they still honoring the warranty. So, this is like a good phone for the price with your storage solution. If you are buying a mid range phone specifically for lots of storage, I might look at the Oneplus X with SD card that supports more than 132 GBs. But if you are looking for phone like this and compare it with Nexus 5X or Oneplus 2, you should definitely go for this. Specs and performance are solid. User experience is too crazy, you can change it the way you like like it.