- Unique boxy design
- Almost stock Android
- Great build quality
- Above average camera
- Excellent speakers
- Users need more control over cloud storage
- Battery life is disappointing
Bottom Line
The
Nextbit Robin offers a unique design, almost-stock Android interface
and excellent speakers, and while the battery and cloud storage feature
need improving, this is definitely a phone that leaves a lasting
impression.
Crowdfunding
isn’t a new concept and while many projects do fail to see the light of
day, just occasionally, we’re treated to a project that has the
potential to alter the way we use technology. The problem of limited
storage is one that affects the growing number of devices that launch
without microSD card expansion, but American company Nextbit has a
unique solution to this growing problem with its
Nextbit Robin smartphone.
Harnessing
the power of the cloud, Nextbit’s first smartphone aims to supercharge
the smartphone experience using smart cloud-based storage, which
intelligently, and automatically, backs up your photos and apps to the
cloud. When the company first launched on Kickstarter, many may have
thought this was a dreamy concept that wouldn’t see the light of day,
but several months later, the Robin is almost ready to jet into your
pocket.
With
over $1.3 million in backing on Kickstarter and a leadership team that
has considerable mobile pedigree – including Scott Croyle, the former
SVP of design at
HTC and Tom Moss of
Google
– the Nextbit Robin has many ingredients for success. However, does it
deliver and is cloud storage really the solution to a lack of storage?
Let’s find out in this, our Nextbit Robin review.
As
with the Mate 8 review last month, we have two reviews of the Nextbit
Robin: above, you can see Josh’s video review of the smartphone, and
below, you’ll find Nirave’s written review of the smartphone.
Design
In
an industry of seemingly-homogeneous devices, the Nextbit Robin stands
out from the crowd, despite being a throw back to older smartphones that
were nothing more than rectangular slabs. Yet, with the industry widely
adopting curved front and/or reader displays, the rectangular design of
the Robin actually feels refreshing and there’s no denying that it’s
unlike any other smartphone.
Since we first went hands on with an early unit of the
Robin back in September last year,
Josh and I have been waiting to experience the phone in all its glory,
and for good reason: from the design to the cloud storage, the Robin is
the most unique devices on the market, and both of us really like the
design. As Josh puts it:
It’s very rare that you find a device that’s incredibly unapologetic about its design.
Opting
for the flat rectangular shape has also allowed Nextbit to be quite
clever in the design of individual elements; from the size of the bezels
above and below the display (more on this later) to the front and back
cameras and the speakers, all the individual elements are perfectly
symmetrical to one another; the bezels are the same size and colour; the
speakers are exactly placed; the cameras are exactly the same size and
distance from the edge of the phone and the USB Type C port is perfectly
in line with the headphone jack.
For a rectangular device, the
symmetry makes the phone surprisingly pleasing to look at and the
circular elements contrast the rectangular design perfectly. Aside from
the power button, the SIM tray and the USB Type C port, all the other
elements on the Robin are circular, which continues through to the OS as
well.
Bezels
are a necessity on almost all smartphones as they serve to hide the
complex mesh of wiring, connectors and transistors that are packed
tightly underneath them, but Nextbit have – quite cleverly – use
circular elements to make the considerable size of the bezels more
forgiving. For example, the company could have opted for more
traditional shaped speakers, but by opting for circular speaker grilles,
the bezel somehow feels a lot smaller.
One benefit to the
rectangular and flat design is the graspability of the phone; whereas
current smartphone designs that adopt curved sides can be quite
difficult to grasp, the flat sides of the Robin makes the smartphone
easy to pinch and hold. Furthermore, while some may make claims that a
curved back is more ergonomically friendly in the hand, the flat design
of the Robin refutes this.
There’s
a lot to like about the design of the Robin but there are a few areas
that takes adjusting to. One of these is the location of the USB Type C
port, which is offset to the left of the bottom of the phone and means
gripping the phone is extremely difficult when it’s on charge. While the
software goes some way to solving this by allowing you to use it upside
down – unless you’re on the home screen that is – it’s near on
impossible to comfortably grip if you have the charger and headphones
plugged in at the same time.
On the left of the Robin is the two
circular volume keys that are recessed enough to provide solid tactile
feedback, while on the right is the dipped power button, which also
houses the fingerprint sensor. The design of this is similar to that
found on Sony’s latest Xperia Z5 range, but the button is more dipped,
meaning you have to press it down further than you might have first
thought.
On
the back of the Robin is the circular camera elements alongside a
rather nifty cloud logo, which has LED lights underneath that light up
when the Robin is connected to the cloud; it’s a cool design feature
that makes the Robin feel ever more unique. The back is made of plastic
but, as we’ll touch on later, it can get as hot as a metal smartphone
does; that being said, the phone feels sturdy and quite comfortable in
the hand.
As you can see by the plethora of images used in this
review, the unique identity of the Robin is also largely down to the
colour scheme; rather than the more-traditional black and white colours
we see on other smartphones, the Robin is available in this rather
quirky mint colour. This is also where Josh and I agree and disagree;
while Josh prefers the midnight colour, I rather quite like the Electric
Blue version, which is exclusive to those who backed the Robin on
Kickstarter. Both of us agree that, while the mint colour is certainly
unique and quite nice, the other colour options are more likely to
appeal to you and, when questioned, Josh’s brother had no hesitation is
saying the midnight colour was the one to buy.
Despite
a few elements that do take adjusting to, there’s no denying that the
Nextbit Robin is a striking smartphone in every sense of the word and,
in a world full of devices that blend together – much like the clouds in
the sky – the Robin certainly stands out. HTC have a considerable
pedigree in making stylish smartphones and now – no doubt thanks to the
influence of Scott Croyle – Nextbit does as well. If there’s one area
that Josh and I definitely agree, it’s that the Nextbit Robin is one of
the nicest smartphone designs we’ve used in many years.
Display
In
between the bezels on the front, the Nextbit Robin has a 5.2-inch Full
HD IPS display, which is acceptable given the price tag. Full HD has
become the standard for affordable flagship devices and the Robin’s
display is on par with the current crop of Full HD devices at the same
size.
In actual usage, the display proves to be satisfactory, but
not amazing. When testing the display in the Arizona sun, Josh found
that the display remained legible when the phone was set to full
brightness, which is somewhat surprising as other devices do struggle in
direct light. Many of you may be contemplating whether QHD would have
been a better choice to make the Robin stand out more from other
affordable flagships, and while it would have helped, it’s unlikely the
phone would have remained as affordable.
As Josh eloquently puts
it, the display is absolutely fine and – when you have the right
expectations of it (remembering that it’s a device that costs $399) –
the display is actually great. If you’re coming from a more expensive
device that has QHD resolution, you might find yourself a tad
disappointed, but for the most part, the display on the Robin is
certainly more than acceptable for an affordable flagship at this price.
Software
Aside
from its unique design, the Nextbit Robin truly stands out from the
rest of the smartphone market thanks to its unique selling point; the
innovative cloud-based smart storage provided by the Nextbit cloud.
However, before you rush to buy the Robin, it’s worth keeping in mind
that this isn’t cloud storage in the traditional sense, and the
experience vastly differs from cloud backup solutions such as
Google Drive or Dropbox.
Why
it differs so vastly is solely down to the implementation of cloud
storage into the OS; while the Robin does run stock Android in its
entirety, Nextbit’s Smart Storage features have been baked directly into
the OS so it’s able to intelligently manage your storage. To do this,
the Robin automatically offloads the apps and photos you’re not using to
the cloud when your smartphone is running out of space, but this comes
with its own set of issues.
For
example, when we received our Robin smartphones, they had been set up
as if they had been used for many months as it showed the smart storage
in action. However, when you use the phone from new (or after a reset),
and subsequently run out of space (if, for example you take thousands of
images when travelling for a week), the smart storage features won’t
offload any apps or photos as you’ve only just taken / installed them.
Furthermore,
there’s no way to force a backup to the cloud as you, the user, have no
control over the cloud storage feature. This is where many users are
likely to be left disappointed and both of us are no different; the key
selling point behind the Robin is the cloud storage feature, but as the
user has no control over the storage – whether it’s being able to force a
backup or use the storage as you see fit – the cloud features do leave
you wanting.
With that being said, the smart storage features
do
have the potential to be incredibly useful. For the average consumer,
who keeps a smartphone for two to three years, the cloud backup will
come in handy after around 12 to 18 months, when you’ve filled up the
phone and the lack of storage is becoming an issue. In its current
state, it’s unlikely you’ll use the smart storage features too often in
the first 12 to 18 months but with a simple tweak to the experience,
Nextbit could make the Robin truly stand out.
What should Nextbit
do? It’s simple; give users access and greater control over the cloud
storage, whether it’s allowing them to force a backup or even use it as
traditional cloud storage (like Google Drive). How could Nextbit do this
without having to put considerable resources into building it into the
next update? Josh has the perfect solution; build an app, ask users to
login with their Nextbit account (which you have to sign up for to use
the smart storage features) and you can manage all the cloud features
from there. Will this happen? At the moment, it’s unknown but we
honestly believe they’ll adopt this approach by the end of this year.
The
cloud storage features may be a key selling point but what about the
rest of the Nextbit software experience? For the most part, the company
has stuck to stock Android, which is unsurprising as Mike Chan, the
co-founder and CTO at Nextbit, was a software engineer at Google and
worked on Android from its inception until Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
The
changes to stock Android are minimal and mostly visual, with the key
changes being the colour set and the launcher adopted by Nextbit. The
company’s launcher is key to the cloud storage experience as apps that
have been offloaded to the cloud are represented by a grayed out icon
and restoring an app is as simple as tapping on it (although, there’s no
way to offload a particular app or an app you’ve restored by accident).
The launcher also supports pinned apps, which will
never
be offloaded to the cloud and there’s also an omnipresent menu button,
which gives you quick access to various lists: your pinned apps, apps
that you have archived to the cloud and all your apps.
You
might be asking why you’d need a list for all your apps and the answer
is somewhat simple; the Nextbit launcher comes without the app drawer
found in the traditional Android experience. What is good however, is
that if you choose to change the launcher to one of the excellent
third-party launchers available,
icons for archived apps are still grayed out and you’re still able to restore apps with a single click. This is crucial as – at least while running
Nova launcher
– you get the benefit of the smart storage features without being bound
to Nextbit’s launcher. For those who do use the Nextbit launcher, you
can easily pin an app by swiping down on it and we’d like to see Nextbit
add the option to swipe up on an app to offload it to the cloud, as the
ability to force a back up would really improve the smart storage
experience.
There’s a particularly good reason you might choose to
use an alternative launcher and that is the colour scheme used by
Nextbit. The company has clearly attempted to make an ethereal
experience using light colours and for the most part, the experience is
mostly positive.
That
being said however, there are a few areas that Josh and I agree could
be improved; in particular, the notification menu is a light grey and
semi-translucent colour that looks sloppy, especially when used in a
light app. The translucency of the notification menu is quite nice when
used in an app with dark colours, but the experience is strange when you
pull the notification menu down while using an app that has
predominantly light colours.
Despite a few changes to colour
scheme, the Robin is stock in almost all its entirety and if you’re used
to stock Android, you’ll find the Robin easy to use. I’m personally not
a fan of stock Android, but the Robin feels like a smarter version of
stock Android and is surprisingly enjoyable to use.
Camera
On
paper, the 13MP camera on the back of the Robin should be average at
best but the company has really surprised us with the quality of this
camera. The sensor itself is the same one used by
Samsung in the
Galaxy Note 4 and, although it doesn’t have all the features included in the Note 4, the camera is certainly impressive.
The
Robin’s camera comes equipped with Phase Detection Auto Focus and f/2.2
aperture and most images captured are usually quite vibrant and,
despite the lack of optical image stabilisation, low light performance
is much better than expected. It’s not without its flaws however, as as
there is a fair amount of noise reduction happening in post-processing
meaning images aren’t the sharpest on the market and in particular,
noise is apparent when zooming into a particular image.
By
far the biggest disappointment with the camera is the camera app
itself, which is bare and leaves us wanting more. Firstly, this build of
the Robin is lacking in camera modes, including panorama mode, which
Nextbit say will be available in the next software update. Both, Josh
and I, have also found that the camera app is rather slow with a
noticeable lag when taking an image; when taking a normal image, the
Robin takes between half a second and a second to take the image, while
there is 2-4 seconds lag when capturing a HDR image. Nextbit have told
us that they are working on a software update to remove this lag, but
it’s unclear when this update will be released.
That being said,
the camera app does come with a few modes and by far, the most
interesting of these are the HDR and manual modes. When capturing a HDR
image, the Robin does well to brighten the image with less shadows, but
it does fail to have an effect on blown out areas of the image.
Below
you’ll see the effect of HDR on the Robin, with images on the left
captured without HDR and the ones on the right, captured with HDR.
The
other mode that you may use quite often is manual mode, which is nice
but is not a true manual mode. For example, the first setting Josh
changes in manual mode is shutter speed but this option isn’t available
on the Robin. Furthermore, the white balance options are presets – such
as cloudy, daylight, incandescent etc – and there’s no option to
configure the white balance to a particular Kelvin figure. With that
being said, the manual mode is really well designed as – if you’re
holding the phone with two hands – the various settings load next to
your left hand and, once selected, the control sliders load next to your
right hand.
Overall, the camera is certainly impressive on the
Robin and despite a few flaws, it’s actually rather impressive. From an
affordable flagship that costs $399, you could be forgiven for expecting
a less-than-stellar experience, but the camera on the Nextbit Robin is a
pleasant surprise and is a lot better than it actually should be.
Performance & Hardware
Under
the hood, the Nextbit Robin is certainly on par with most smartphones
at the same price (and several that are more expensive as well). It’s
powered by a Snapdragon 808 processor with Adreno 418 GPU, 3GB RAM and
32GB storage, and the performance of the Robin mostly lives up to the
powerful internals it possesses.
On the software side, Josh and I
haven’t found the handset to slow down and mostly, the performance is
above average and definitely more than acceptable for an affordable
flagship. The Robin does have the half-step of lag that is found on
other Snapdragon 808 devices but, unlike the Nexus 5X, 3GB RAM does
serve to make the experience almost-always snappy and responsive.
However,
there are a few areas of performance that the Robin leaves us wanting;
in particular, the heat management. I’ve personally found the handset
can warm up considerably, and on one occasion, it even overheated to the
point I wasn’t able to hold the phone without it burning my hand.
Granted, this was while the phone was plugged in to a charger, the phone
was running low and was trying to offload apps to the cloud while also
downloading new apps from Google Play, but it was a major concern.
As
covered earlier, the smart storage features don’t work as you expect
them to and the actual performance of the automatic backup does seem to
be a little hit and miss. It’s worth noting that Josh and I agree that
it will take a while for you to fill the internal storage before you
need to rely on the smart storage features, and it’s quite likely the
cloud backup will be vastly improved by then.
Alongside
the impressive hardware, the Robin also comes with NFC, which is
missing from other smartphones at a similar price, and can be used with
Android Pay that comes preloaded on the phone. It’s worth noting
however, that when I tried to set up Android Pay, the Robin failed
Google’s authentication checks; we’ve reached out to Nextbit and they’ve
said the Robin is still waiting for certification from Google for
Android Pay, and while these review units don’t work with Android Pay,
the final units shipped to backers will support Android Pay.
By
far the most surprising part of the Nextbit Robin is the dual front
facing stereo speakers, which are absolutely fantastic and some of the
loudest speakers on the market. HTC’s BoomSound feature is known for
leading the way in terms of audio quality and the Robin does seem to
imbibe the quality of these speakers. As an example, Josh was able to
watch a YouTube video in a crowded restaurant and hear the audio
clearly, with no issues at all.
Overall,
the Robin features some impressive hardware that, while being older
compared to the new chipsets of 2016, does offer a flagship experience.
The company certainly needs to improve its smart storage features and
implementation, but for the most part, the Nextbit Robin delivers an
experience that is worthy of most flagship devices.
Battery Life
The
area that the Robin most disappoints us is the battery life; under the
hood, the Nextbit Robin is powered by a 2680mAh battery, which, coupled
with Doze Mode in Marshmallow, should offer ample power for a full day’s
usage. In actual practice however, the Robin does fail to deliver in
the battery department.
Although the battery isn’t a 3000mAh unit
like many other smartphones, there is the expectation that it will last a
full day but it does struggle to do so. While testing the Robin in the
Arizona sun – which included taking lots of photos and the phone was
constantly searching for coverage – Josh found the phone struggled to
make it to the end of the day, with around 3 hours’ screen-on-time.
One
of the best features in Marshmallow is doze mode, which is meant to
offer vastly improved standby time and, as we found in the Nexus 6P
during Best of Android last year, it can be very effective when
implemented correctly. On the Nextbit Robin however, doze mode is very
ineffective and in some of my testing, the standby battery time is worse
than on Lollipop. During day to day usage, I’ve found the Robin battery
can drain to almost empty in less than two days with very minimal usage
and, on one occasion, I’ve even had it drop 35 percent in less than
three hours with no use.
Throughout our testing, Josh and I agree
that there is something preventing Doze mode from being effective and
this is most likely due to something running in the background. Given
the Robin runs almost-stock Android, it’s likely that the company’s
smart storage features are preventing doze mode from being effective and
it’s a shame, as the battery life on the Robin definitely leaves us
wanting more.
In effect, the Robin is a smartphone that runs Marshmallow, but with the battery life of Android Lollipop.
Although
the Nextbit Robin only has a 2680mAh battery, the presence of doze mode
gave us hope that the battery would make it through a day but it
certainly struggles to do so. If you’re someone who uses your phone even
moderately, it’s likely you’ll need to keep a portable charger with
you, as you’re likely to be searching for a power outlet by the end of
the day. In effect, the Robin is actually a smartphone that runs
Marshmallow, but with the battery life of a smartphone running Lollipop.
Related: honor 5X vs honor 7 quick look If
you’re interested, the offer runs from now through June 8th and who
knows, if it’s successful, maybe we’ll see other manufacturers provide a
similar policy. What do you think of the policy and is an extended
returns period enough to entice you to buy either the honor 5X or the honor 7? Let us know your views in the comments below!
