The one thing that disappointed me about the Robin was the state of its software optimization. Nextbit hopes to ship out the first handsets to preorder customers and Kickstarter backers in late January, but it still has a long way to go until its software is up to the task. The Robin’s current Android build is slow, in spite of the capable Snapdragon 808 processor within, and unfortunately buggy. The camera app, for example, is not yet functional, so there’s nothing to judge one of the phone’s key components on.
This phone would be a lot more interesting if they cut the cloud nonsense, and just focused on delivering this unique design as a high-quality, affordable pure Android phone.
Amen.
This phone, without the cloud-nonsense, would never have made a single sound in the wood among all the other massive trees.
Yes, the cloud-nonsense doesn’t make much sense to me. Moving apps back-and-forth to the cloud when you run out of space is a good idea but just add an SD-Card so you don’t run out of space. I run out of a data-plan much before I run out of diskspace. Don’t all phones already move old photo’s to the cloud?
What is taking up storage on my phone?
3 GB for the OS (Windows 10 Mobile)
3 GB for Apps & Games (about 50 apps and 10 games)
5 GB for offline maps (most of Western Europe)
1 GB for Mail & messaging
…and dozens of GB’s for Music, Pictures and Videos that are all stored on a 40 Euro, 128 GB SD-Card.
They should either;
Focus on making this cloud-software available to other phones (plenty of 16GB phones without SD out there)
Focus on making this phone run fast and have a working camera. Having a phone with these kind of specs and having it run slow is a big problem in their software that is supposed to be minimalist
Agreed. They asked me for feed back on their services, but the TOS and Non disclosure was too scary.
Part of the problem with new cloud companies, is that I don’t trust them at all with any of my data for any reason. They have no track record. I don’t trust them to keep it private, I don’t trust them to keep it secure, I don’t trust them to provide a reliable service.
Ditto. And from experience, I’d also add: don’t trust that they’re still going to be around in 5 years (the big killer these days seems to be other companies in the same space buying up smaller competitors just to shut down the service), or that they’ll give you any kind of reasonable forewarning if they do shut down and/or that they’ll give you any way to export your data.