The Nextbit Robin, we told you some time ago, is on its way to becoming the first cloud-based smartphone on the market. Most smartphones have local-based storage, with buyers often looking for cloud storage on their own to supplement local storage (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.). Now, thanks to Nextbit’s efforts, a cloud-based smartphone is headed to market that provides 100GB of free cloud storage out of the box as part of the package (no six-month or two-year trials here, folks).
Nextbit has taken its project to Kickstarter, where the company had raised $500,000 within the first few days but has now raised over $1 million. The “early bird” adopter specials for the Nextbit Robin are gone, and backers will now have to pay $349 to purchase the device. At the same time, however, as with all phones that are soon to arrive on the market, the question comes down to carrier compatibility. No smartphone, not even the Nextbit Robin, can survive on the market if it doesn’t have carrier compatibility.
With that said, AT&T and T-Mobile were confirmed right away with device compatibility, and even Verizon was mentioned by Nextbit as being in its sights, but there’d been no word on Sprint. Now, Nextbit has provided confirmation that even Sprint will be compatible with the new cloud-based smartphone. The company provided the confirmation for CDMA carrier Sprint via its Kickstarter page:
There were far more Robin true believers using Sprint than we knew about. After last week’s announcement, so many people spoke up asking for Sprint support. We listened. As of today, what used to be the Verizon version will now support Sprint too, so we’re renaming it the CDMA version.
In addition to this, Nextbit says that backers will get to choose between either 1) a GSM phone that works on AT&T and T-Mobile, or 2) a CDMA phone that will work on both Verizon and Sprint. The charging cable, SIM eject pin, and quick charger will come with the Nextbit Robin smartphone, out of the box. Keep in mind that the Nextbit Robin will keep thumbnails of old documents and apps on your device so that its cloud storage will download the old data as soon as you need it. In other words, cloud storage and local storage will work together, effortlessly, to keep the data you use locally and transition cloud data to local data when necessary.
The release date is still set for early 2016, though, so you’ll have to wait on this purchase. Still, though, it’ll be a cool experiment to live on cloud storage, to get to a world where you don’t need microSD cards and need not worry about compatibility issues between local storage and cloud storage. You can check the specs and features of the Nextbit Robin here.
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