Gadgetory

we finally have our hands on the kickstarter-funded device that quite literally has its head up in the clouds this is Joshua car from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the next bit Robin we have changed up the review format a bit you are watching the video review right now made by yours truly of course but then you can head on over to Andrew authority comm to see a full written review by an arab Gandia that puts together both of our perspective so you can get even more comprehensive look at this the next bit Robin so before we even get into the video review why don't we get all of the specs out of the way you design is a wonderful beginning calling card for the next bit Robin as you can see this is the mint color right here that has the white all around and accenting baby blue colors now if this color is not necessarily a cup of tea there is a midnight version that replaces all of the white with black and I've already asked a few people and they would prefer that version over this one but I do think that this makes the phone quite different from pretty much anything else but the other thing that we really enjoy about this phone is its shape it's very unapologetic about its form there are really no curves whatsoever on this flat device all around even the flat sides top and bottom and to the front and back everything about this is just a rectangular slab and we think that is actually playing in its favor the volume buttons over on the left side have a very sturdy click to them and the power button which has a fingerprint reader embedded into it actually makes the power button a little bit more concave into the body now it takes a little bit of getting used to to actually press down hard enough and to leave the finger there in order to trigger the fingerprint reader but once you get used to it it is pretty sublime but what this phone does have in spades is symmetry now you already see that the colors are on the top and bottom here and also on the backing but we also have the front-facing dual stereo speakers which are completely centered on the top and bottom of the device the circle motif is very prevalent as well as the front-facing camera the light sensor are circles as well as the rear facing camera and it's flash and then speaking of symmetry you have the USB type-c port which is over on the side on the bottom and I might get a little bit of getting used to but it is directly below the headphone jack symmetry is definitely the name of the game when it comes to the design language of the next bit Robin and of course on the back there you see that iconic cloud for next bit and the LED indicators underneath that show you when it is accessing your cloud storage handling is also very great mostly because of this flat design it is easy to grip the flat sides and going from side to side is not much of an issue though if you're trying to get to the top to bring down the notification drop-down it might require some hand gymnastics when it comes to the display it's kind of what you would expect for a phone of this price 1080p is a pretty standard resolution and it's exactly what we expected the phones have it is an IPS screen that does do a good job in broad daylight though we do have two crank up the brightness all the way in order to make everything legible but even then colors are still quite nice on this display and provide just what we need to enjoy media games and text all over the Internet performance is actually a pretty big story for the next bit Robin because on paper its spec sheet is similar to another phone that we are familiar with the Nexus 5x we have the Snapdragon 808 and the adrenal 418 with this time 3 gigabytes of RAM now we're not comparing this phone to the Nexus 5x obviously in this video but we wanted to use that as a bit of a benchmark because the Robin has shown us that that extra gigabyte of RAM actually makes all the difference performance is very smooth all around and even though the 808 might be that half-step behind the Snapdragon 810 and it is noticeable for us we think that the general user won't really notice it at all on the daily the only app that has actually crashed on us from time to time is the camera but it wasn't really because we were overloading the device multitasking is also pretty good as you go through the recent apps screen and you're opening pretty much anything that's in the background one quick note on gaming we do have longer loading times in certain games especially in this case we have Final Fantasy 9 but once the gameplay is actually loaded up and you're into it really it doesn't provide any slowdown that we've seen and then one final notes the next bit Robin actually does get quite warm NORAD was actually able to get the phone to be way too hot for his comfort and I haven't had that kind of severe experience but we did find that when plugged in and multitasking or even when gaming which was my case the phone does tend to get quite warm and it mostly is centered up here on the upper half where the cloud would be located Hardware actually has a lot to offer on here as this phone is capable of taking a sim from any popular GSM network and we've had a good time on here with AT&T Mobile at least for me and calls came in loud and clear with no drops on either end NFC also is installed on this device so you're not going to be missing that feature on the next bit Robin but we'll go ahead and move on to the sound you have the front-facing speakers which are on the top and bottom of the device up on front and they are actually really loud that clip you saw earlier of me playing Final Fantasy 9 was actually shot outside so let me turn up the volume on that real quick and you will get an idea just how loud this was even outside the fingerprint reader we already mentioned is quite good and it does a good job of unlocking the device without any extra input you just leave your finger on the power button after you press it now the placement does make it so that it's more for right-handed individuals but it wasn't that hard for me to register my index finger or even my middle finger on my left hand to easily unlock the device using my left hand I'm going to change it up a little bit and talk about the battery before we get into the cloud storage now with the battery we have a 2680 milliamp hour unit that actually provides I guess just decent longevity in my case I used this phone quite heavily throughout the last week and I was able to get three hours of screen on time throughout the day but even then I was having to plug in the phone before the end of the day on a couple of occasions now the USB type-c cord does provide somewhat faster charging than normal micro USB constituents but there is no fast charging involved here now before we even get into the cloud storage we have 32 gigabytes that is already onboard in the next bit Robin and actually think that that is enough for many general users the average user is not going to fill up all of that space very quickly and even then it will take a lot of pictures and a lot of applications to fill all of that up but if those two things do end up filling up the space you have a hundred gigabytes of included cloud storage with the next bit Robin and any app stats are not really being used anymore and very old pictures will be uploaded automatically in the background when the phone is plugged in and on Wi-Fi but of course you can change those in the settings now all of that sounds well and good and I think that it does do its job quite well we just hope that in the future we can get even more access to that 100 gigabytes of storage after all that's a pretty sweet deal to have but you get no access to pretty much any of that getting into the application or the option for smart storage only shows you how much has been taken up and not what apps or what pictures are up there you are able to access whatever has been archived by hitting the greyed out icon in the home screen and yes this also works in third-party launchers and you are able to call back those applications about having full access maybe through some sort of next bit application that you can install from the Play Store would provide an even better steal for this phone because that 100 gigabytes is really enticing the main camera of the next bit Robin is a 13 megapixel Samsung ISO cell camera at F 2.2 aperture with a five megapixel front facing shooter that accompanies it now if that camera specs sounds familiar is because we already had it in the samsung galaxy note 4 and if you remember we actually thought that that was a very decent and actually really good camera for its time now given that this is a test unit more modes are going to be put into here as we were missing in particular a panorama mode but you do get auto manual and video modes now the manual mode is actually quite nice because I think that this is one of the most intuitive ways that it has been put together now first of all it's not a full manual mode because you don't get access to the shutter speed and the white balance is of that incandescent cloudy type but when you access let's say the ISO or the manual focus on the left side a slider appears right next to the shutter button on the other side of the phone easy for you to access and move with your shutter finger video does include recording in 4k and it for the most part does do a good job of providing some nice videos but there is no optical image stabilization found on this camera so shaky hands will show and we finally get into the picture quality and it's actually very similar to the good performance we had in the note for a while back we do have very detailed photos but some noise reduction is going on here so when you actually zoom into the photo you see that the lines aren't quite as crisp and sharp as they should be but when zoomed out everything looks really nice and I got some wonderful photos out in Arizona with this phone HDR is actually a pretty good performer on here but it does more to bring up the shadows rather than to bring down the highlights so if you have blown out areas of your photo they're not going to be that evened out when compared to just how bright the entire image becomes when using HDR the camera has really proven itself and it's more than a decent performer and we do enjoy what we see when we use this phone on the daily taking pictures low-light performance could use a boost it's kind of decent but the F 2.2 aperture isn't doing it any favors and actually the only other issue that we've had with the camera is that it's kind of slow actually pressing the shutter button when not using HDR in and of itself provides one to two seconds of delay and then when opening HDR it actually doubles that amount of time finally when we talk about software we have the next bit Robin experience and this is on the backbone of Android 6.0 marshmallow now it actually is a very stock like experience except for the main area and that is the home screens that's because there's no app drawer now I know some of you are already getting your pitchforks out but the ability to actually see a bird's-eye view of all of your applications gives you easy access to any ones that have been archives and even then you can swipe down from any of the applications in order to pin them so they aren't going to be uploaded to the cloud and then if you actually need access to your widgets you can pinch on the display in order to access them in this nice-looking ethereal overlay that goes over the home screens ethereal is definitely the word I would use to describe the software on this device because well there's a cloud motif on everything the live wallpaper in the background has that effect and when you have dialog boxes come up everything gets a little bit blurred out in the background and everything has a light color to it there's only really one place that I didn't really enjoy this motif and that was a notification drop-down which in and of itself is already a pretty light color and then it tries to give you a transparent look at everything behind it which I thought was just redundant so there isn't a whole lot else to say about the software on this device except that we still think we should have gotten more control over the cloud storage for example we could have just swiped up on an app and it would have offloaded to the 100 gigabytes of cloud storage included that would have been one nice little addition and probably would have been a nice way of knowing exactly what applications are going to be put up there and again we do think that an actual application that gives access to the storage for any uploading would have made this a very very good deal the next bit Robin is available on their website for three hundred and forty nine dollars which is a pretty standard price point for what we would call an affordable flagship but it also comes with that 100 gigabytes of cloud storage and a lot of ways this feels like the kind of phone that everyone wants unique in its design and provides everything that an affordable flagship should provide this definitely feels like the kind of phone that the Nexus 5x should have been and it definitely feels like the phone the oneplus 2 should have been because it provides everything and even puts in 100 gigabytes of cloud storage but the only real grab we have with this phone is that you don't have a whole lot of access to that cloud storage there's a lot that you have to do in order to finally get it to trigger and even then you don't know what's going up there until it actually happen having access to that cloud storage for actual uploads much like a Google Drive for example would have really sweeten the pot for what is already a pretty great phone in general this is a phone that does great on the daily and as a phone that's supposed to be cloud first we were really happy to see that it is still really good at being fallen forward so as always thank you guys very much for watching and hope you enjoyed this review of the next bit Robin don't forget to check out even more content from my colleagues in Android and stay tuned for even more about the next bit Robin itself keep it tuned here and listen to the Android thority podcast and head on over to Android comm to access our forums and you can also download the Android thority app so you can have easy access on your phone to all of our content and once you're done with all of that subscribe to our channel if you haven't already because we are your source for all things Android