Nextbit Robin has been one of the most interesting smartphones launched in the past year. If you aren't aware of them yet, Nextbit is a small company in US built by former employees of HTC, Google, Motorola etc. This team also includes HTC designers and engineers who worked on android for ages. That is why Robin is a very remarkable smartphone with very unique and industrial design that surely stands out from the heap of iPhone or HTC clones.
Initially launched on Kickstarter, Robin is a device which brings smart to smartphones by introducing smart storage, it virtually promises you to stop worrying about free storage space on your device ever again. The cloud integrated Android version for Robin intelligently adapts the to the storage needs but automatically offloading stuff from your device to cloud without even prompting the user. It does this by analyzing the usage patterns of the user and removes apps and photos that haven't been used for a while. They are backed up on cloud and only a small shadow of them stay on the device which can restored to its full version right away by just tapping on it.
The campaign on Kickstarter was started in September 2015, and within one month they were fully funded and pouring with extra backers. 6 months later Nextbit started shipping their first batch of Robins to their backers and soon started releasing in wild on their website for anyone to buy. Come today, the Nextbit community is strong and growing. The Nextbit team is working passionately to keep improving their version of Android and adding new features requested in the community directly by their users.
Every month, Nextbit releases the security patch released for Android by Google for Robin with some bug fixes and new features of their own. Earlier patches included some minor bug fixes and the much needed camera app improvement. But this time they are working on something huge as they did with introducing the Nextbit OS with smart storage.
The company believes that other manufacturers are focusing on more efficient processors and larger batteries to solve the battery life problem but no one is thinking unilaterally to improving the battery technology itself. The company announced that they are working on improving the battery technology in smartphones in a same way their nextbit OS works.
We can apply the same intelligence we've used for smart storage towards making your battery last significantly longer. In Q4 we will launch a new version of Nextbit OS that gets to know your habits and optimizes functions at the system level to ensure you get the most screen time possible. Just like with smart storage, we can apply this on top of the features Google has implemented in Marshmallow and even on what has been announced for N, compounding the power savings to offer you true peace of mind.
The company didn't give any more information on how and what exactly they are working on but they promised it won't be just turning ON/OFF some settings which most people can do manually to save battery. Nextbit OS right now is on the latest Android version Marshmallow (June patch) and the team is actively working on Android N too. If you are a Robin user and want to be the first to know and use the latest of Nextbit OS, they recently launched a beta program for Robin users(rebels) to apply.
Android M already has a Doze feature which promises to conserve some energy while your phone is not in use. But the Doze feature only kicks in 30mins of inactivity of smartphone and only helps with the standby time i.e. it won't drain much of the battery while on standby as it used to before.
For anyone interested in buying the Robin, it comes in two colors(mint and midnight) and possibly a third color option soon ( teased here). The availability is a bit of problem for some but here is the list of countries it is available now.
Source : Damn, Nextbit. At it again | Nextbit Community
