Gadgetory

welcome back to see that slide coverage of CES 2016 I'm Roger Chang executive editor of C that news we have something cool to show you it's a fully funded Kickstarter project that is a cloud-based Android smartphone the next bit Robin and with me to talk about this is the company's chief designer and product officer Scott Coyle Scott thanks for being there good to see you again right so for those of the many of you out there who don't know who next videos want you talked about what this what this company is what this phone is and we'll go from there sure you know next bit started with this idea our thinking about the connect cloud future that's gonna come 10 years off and there's ubiquitous 5g speeds right enacted all the time and bringing some of that thinking into today's world you know you have the power of the cloud but today you still get these messages that say when you're if I got a concert or you're recording a video or taking a photo that says oh you know what you can't take that photo or we can't save that photo cuz you're out of space on your phone right so basically we use the cloud integrated into the operating system to dynamically move stuff on and off the phone so what I don't for folks who don't know what the cloud is break it down simply what what does that mean for this phone for the rather yeah so basically what it means is this is a 32 it has 32 gigabytes of on-board storage on the phone but we've integrated 100 gigabytes of cloud storage into it so when you're basically connected to the cloud the phone looks feels and acts like a hundred gigabyte phone all right well that's great but you know you're not always connected to cloud right cell phone coverage from these spotty at best in a lot of places especially on the show floor how does that work if I don't have that coverage yeah sure well I think first of all when we're actually freeing up space what we do is we look at how you've been using your phone so let's say it's six months after you've gotten the phone you filled up the 32 gigabytes of storage we look at how you've been using your phone and we're gonna pick the app that you're least likely to open and it's just a simple queue we basically can just we look if you use an app it goes to the bottom of the queue if you look at a photo it goes to the bottom of the queue so we're gonna pick something you haven't used in six months or nine months right and then what happens the app or photos it just sort of sure shipped off to the cloud then so actually so from the time you get the phone we're already synchronizing the phone so actually from day one when you're on Wi-Fi and you're plugged in by default everything your apps and your photos are all synchronized to the cloud so actually in that moment you free ups when you were freeing up space yeah you can actually be an airplane mode because everything's already already synchronized well why don't we check out the phone sure so I think that nice color yeah so I think one of the things about the design of the phone is that you know we wanted to create something that was unique something that stood out you know if I were to put the iPhone out with every Android phone we pull one out if we were to put all that stuff here you go if we would have put all that stuff out here on the table nothing really stands out anymore it's something we've talked about before is like where and where's the excitement in the industry and then I think if you look at from a software perspective you know you look at Apple and Google basically playing tennis they're copying each other features and they're not bad features but there's nothing super exciting so with the design of the phone we want to create something that obviously was iconic yeah but also something that was fresh that was that was modern they kind of traded on kind of design equities that's different than what everybody's else doing and in case you don't know Scott I mean he's got a lot he's got a good pedigree in terms of design and he was the guy behind the much-beloved HTC one smartphone did the first all-metal device for for HTC secures what design cues did you take from that to bring to robin well you know it's funny I didn't really take any design cues in fact if you think about the m7 which subsequently which had the all metal unibody which subsequently Apple did after HTC how you know if I were to kind of put a critique at what's in the market nowadays everything feels like a derivative of either what the m7 or an Apple iPhone and so that means so great the quality level the execution level has kind of caught up across the board but it also means that everything feels the same right which I kind of wanted to jettison kind of everything that I knew about the design of smartphones to come up with a different kind of different set of parameters and kind of create the phone that that I wanted to have something that stands out from the crowd you know I was at a party last night and I was actually looking at my phone somebody came up to me is like what is that and that feels great you know it feels great to kind of first of all to kind of have something that you've worked on kind of recognize but but I think I think the point is that people are thirsty they're hungry for something that's new and they kind of sets them apart from the rest of the crowd I mean you know this is a long way from HTC you're doing things a lot differently going through Kickstarter go into consumers directly talk about how that went I mean this is most people buy their phones from a Verizon 18t store right they don't necessarily go online and back a project talk about you know what what made us do that it's supposed to go work with an 18-2 yeah you know we're a venture backed based company so for us you know we had we had money but what kick-started allowed us to do is start a conversation with people and so it was super powerful cuz that's the company we want to create we think that era of you know you create a product you have a beautiful purse beautiful person hold the product on TV we all look at that and say I mean you're gonna hang out with those people or I'm gonna be beautiful if I get that sir so we think that's kind of old-school marketing we think there's a new way of marketing where people want to have an authentic conversation with people right in fact on Kickstarter one of the things that was unique was that if you look at like the top 25 tech products that were on there we had 10 times the engagement of the average of those which was super powerful you know people are super excited about what they're doing and having a conversation with us and giving us feedback on what we did right what we did wrong and we can take that and internalize it and actually it affects our roadmap and we can build and we can build software features kind of response to Communion and we can add for you know other features in as we move forward to the next products and so how the Kickstarter close you got about 3,600 backers there how sales big I know you're in pre-orders now right yep so sales have been great we know there's no reviews out yet so we're I think people are kind of waiting to see we're still trying to get our hands on actually exactly so they're coming soon and we've announced this week that pre ORS are gonna close down January 15th but I think that I think the important thing there is that for anybody that orders a pre-orders a phone by January 15th we're gonna ship those in February okay the other thing that we've announced is that we're going to ship the early the early Kickstarter backers is first thousand people that bought a GSM SKU we're gonna ship those February 16 so those are gonna go out the door all the other Kickstarter backers or at least for the GSM SKU will go out we'll go out a few days after that okay and you told me you got a little news to share with us today yeah sure so the other thing that's going to happen on that six days we're gonna go lie with the ecommerce store okay and on that as basically you know like a super in-depth kind of presentation the product how the cloud storage works what the specs of the phones are so you can kind of go super deep as a consumer that's number one number two is obviously all the accessories that we have from screen protectors to cases and all that stuff and then also support what a support looked like for us so the forum's you know it's funny there's kind of two different types of customers people that love to go deep on the forums we saw that on Kickstarter and then people that want to contact us through social so looking at our you know next bit sis handle on Twitter or Instagram you know we had there's kind of all these different avenues where people want to have conversations with us well why don't we take a look at the phone itself the india i guess what's unique about it as you told me some of those apps when you're they're not being used often actually get taken off the phone putting this cloud why don't we zoom in there the skype app is actually right now it's grayed out well yeah that's grayed out that's right so the Skype app is grayed out here that's means it's actually been offloaded can I have it use it in six months or so well let's say I want to be Skype I don't Skype actually you know we're we're Andrea the phone is any Android so we use hangouts a lot but I do you Skype occasionally anyway so if I tap that what's happening now is we're pulling down Skype back from the cloud and when it actually gets pulled down you can see that the icon is becoming going from that shadow icon back to being the kind of normal sky park icon that you'd expect and once it's brought back down we reinstall it we hook back up the credentials and app data and so when I actually launched it it's like it's never been removed you can see here now this dot is blinking that ones were actually installing the application now yep I mean you don't have to sign back in it's basically as if you've never did touch like it's never been removed that's right you know the alternative for people nowadays is what I'm gonna go delete that yeah and not only that is when I've missed that run when I've taken a photo and I have to go through my okay which app do I want to remove I don't I haven't used that but I might use it and so basically it eliminates that it eliminates that issue well look thanks so much for joining us it's time for a quick break but when we come back we'll roll some video the latest products over our editors have seen on the show floor then we're gonna hook you up with Brian Tom for an extended tour stay with us