US based start-up Nextbit has come up with their unique cloud based smartphone the Nextbit Robin in India. The smartphone is available on Flipkart.com at Rs.19,999, at which price it faces competition from the Lenovo Vibe X3, which is currently retailing at Rs.19,999. The biggest challenge that Nextbit faces is of brand recognition. It is not just the first phone in India but it is also the company’s first smartphone ever. What goes in its favour are some of the industry-first features such as the smart interlinking between cloud storage and physical storage.
Design
The Nextbit Robin is good-looking smartphone with a slab-like appearance. Despite the all-plastic exterior and flat back it feels handy and well-built. The other notable attribute is the phone’s light form factor and sleek profile. It weighs just 150g and is 7mm thick, which gives it an upper hand over the Lenovo Vibe X3, which is 9.3mm thick and weighs 175g. Both the device come with finger print sensors which means you can move from the lock screen to the homescreen instantly. Also, the Robin comes with a single nano SIM slot, while the Vibe X3 has dual nano SIM slots. Both support 4G networks.
Display
If you want a big screen smartphone, the Vibe X3 with its 5.5-inch full HD (1920x1080p) display is the better bet of the two. The Nextbit Robin offers a 5.2-inch display and has the same screen resolution as the Vibe X3. The only advantage that you get in the Robin is that its display is protected by Corning’s latest Gorilla Glass 4 while the Vibe X3 uses the less robust Gorilla Glass 3.
Software
The Nextbit Robin runs the latest Marshmallow (6.001) version of Android with a slightly customised interface known as the Nextbit OS. It looks a bit different to the stock Android interface and one needs some time to get used to it. On the other hand, the Vibe X3 runs a slightly older Lollipop (5.1) version of Android with two different interfaces. There is an Android UI which looks like plain Android and there is a Vibe UI which allows a lot of customisation options.
Power
This is a close contest as both the phones run on the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor with 3GB RAM. Even the internal storage offered by the duo is 32GB. The benefit with the Vibe X3 is that it can take in up to 128GB micro SD cards, while the Robin doesn’t supports expandable memory. Instead it offers 100GB of cloud storage. The unique bit heres is that it automatically archives apps and games that have not been used in a while and removes files which do not matter more to the cloud storage. These files can be downloaded again when you need them by tapping on the greyed out icon of the given app. This is a cool feature for freeing up your phone’s internal storage but you need seamless 4G connection or WiFi network for it.
