Gadgetory

what do you get when you combine years of design prowess with automated cloud computing and an unlocked friendly mindset you get the next bit Robin I'm hi Otto Hugh's been reporting for Pocket now at CES 2016 let's take a look I know we already saw the Robin last year but the version we saw today was a much more finished product than what we had demo before in fact it's the version that will ship out to next bits Kickstarter backers on February 16th next Fitz whole philosophy in creating the Robin is to eliminate the need to ever manage your storage when it notices that you're running out of space it does an online archive of your least use apps and leaves only shadow icons in their place when the orange hits you to give that app another shot just touch its icon and the Robin starts redownload it and it even applies your credentials store locally of course so you don't have to sign back in you can even pin certain apps to make sure they never get offloaded to the cloud though you can't manually archive apps in the same manner it'll take a little while for most users to fill it up too it's got 32 gigabytes of internal storage and next fit offers a hundred gigabytes in the cloud for your apps and photos we've been told video support is following closely behind one of the Robins biggest bragging rights is in its open nature the phone is unlocked right out of the box and next bit promise is an unlockable bootloader that won't void your warranty you can flash CyanogenMod to your heart's content though be mindful in doing so you're losing all the Robins best features the cloud operations are built deeply into the core OS and even installing a new launcher like the Google now launcher will lead to some loss of finesse like losing the progress bar when restoring archived apps glancing for even a split second at the Robin it's easy to come to the conclusion that this is no run-of-the-mill smartphone design next bits design team wanted to break away from the rounded corners and derivative aesthetics that cast all of their smartphones into monotony the circle motif found throughout most of the accents on the phone and the square off corners care to the Preferences of the designers themselves and stand as a testament to the phones interesting physique once the Robin reaches its official launch you'll be able to pick one up for 399 in either mint or midnight finishes or if you're one of the 3600 who pre-ordered a unit you can even snag the Kickstarter exclusive electric variant a personal favorite of ours will undoubtedly have much more coverage on the next bit Robin once a review unit hits our doors pocket now CES 2016 coverage is made possible by D brand it's more than phone skins it's unlimited customization at your fingertips from Kevlar to carbon fiber to mahogany all of it custom cut for the most precise fit on earth so whether you're skinning your newest Android changing up your dull SmartWatch or putting life back into your old console choose D bram D brand saving the world from inferior skins one device at a time of course this isn't all there is to see at CES so be sure to check out the rest of our event coverage on YouTube and at pocketnow.com follow PocketNow and all the usual social channels and don't forget to subscribe i'm layout to houston on twitter and IRL and until next time thanks for watching we'll see you again soon