EDIT: 4/9/15
Nextbit has reached out to us to advise that they have heard the feedback from us and the community and will be supporting the Australian market, advising that you can now ship to Australia.
Nextbit announced their first phone into the market today and you can now get it on Kickstarter. Check the shipping option when you do because right now, there’s no “Australia” option. There is however a New Zealand option… 😉 (UPDATE: NOW available in Australia too!!)
The phone itself is purported to be a smarter smartphone. Keeping everything you need right now on your phone, and everything else in the cloud.
You can get your own for $299 plus postage (which is extremely high…) currently with around 630 devices available in that category.
https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/projects/1950514/photo-original.png?v=1440789081&w=640&h=480&fit=crop&auto=format&q=92&s=9f5454dd406fd207b130fbf3d3957dae
Here’s the specifications:
- Processor: Snapdragon 808
- Memory: 3GB RAM / 32 GB onboard / 100 GB online
- Screen: 5.2” IPS LCD 1080p
- Rear Camera: 13MP with phase detection autofocus, dual tone flash
- Front camera: 5MP
- Battery: 2680 mAh
- Dual front facing stereo speakers
- Fingerprint sensor
- NFC
- Quick charging
- Bluetooth 4.0 LE
- WiFi A/B/G/N/AC
- GSM 850/900/1800/1900
- WCDMA 850/900/1800/1900/2100
- LTE Bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/17/20/28
It doesn’t have the LTE band 40 that Optus uses, but it covers the 3, 5, 28 that we use.
The phone ships with no 3rd party apps, vanilla Android Marshmallow, if it is out before the Robin ships, or will be updated via OTA to Marshmallow after it’s released. It ships with an unlocked bootloader and you can run any ROM on it without affecting the warranty. Even if you brick it, it’s covered. It drops with 100gb of free cloud storage and will learn what you use most and least. Unused apps, photos etc. will be uploaded and will be accessible to you in the future. The phone also sports NFC (take that Oneplus two), a fingerprint scanner and front facing speakers. It does come with a rather small battery, but it does have quick charging.
Personally I like the idea but it hasn’t been a popular opinion in our ranks. It feels like a direction we will end up moving into soon anyways. I would embrace it. We’ll keep you posted on the phone and how it transpired when released. At the moment the Kickstarter campaign is at $130,000 of the $500,000 goal.
Just a heads up, the nextbit Robin is now shipping to Australia postage is $65
Kickstarter at $477k of $500k as at 08:50 on 02 Sept. 29 days to go so this will be funded.
It’s a pretty decent looking phone with what appear to be competitive specs at a great price. Disappointing that they won’t ship to Australia. Indeed, Australia isn’t even listed in the “Where will Robin be available?” FAQ. I wonder if that is linked to the lack of coverage for band 40?
I have a reply from Nexbit in regards to why Australia was missing. “Robin doesn’t have full support for 4G networks. We didn’t want to offer you a less than optimal experience”