Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Nextbit’s Scott Croyle talks Robin and more at CES 2016”.
Hello guys we’re here at CES 2016. There is a big rock formation behind us, The Verge logo and, let’s have of your tech editor, and this here is cock-crow chief designer of next bit company that produces a new cloud smartphone. This is the Robin we’re seeing. These are the final versions of the Robin now on day. That’S correct! Well, pretty close. You know, there’s like a few weeks before in mass production, but yeah they’re they’re 99 % there – and this is what’s a this – is what you showing up here at CES. This is a debut of the final Robins will have it in black sort of graphite yeah.
We call it Midnight’s. Actually so it looks black, but when you put it up to a black t-shirt, it actually looks blue, that’s very, very deep kind of dark blue and we have this Minton white combo. The other thing is you’re running Android 6.0 marshmallow. That’S right and you’ve done Kickstarter campaign, and this is really the thing we we have a whole bunch of Android phones.
Am I actually my first question for you is. Why should people care about your Android phone because we have Android, we have marshmallow, but you have something different. So can you tell us a bit about what’s different about the Robin sure? Well, I think there’s a couple of things I think. First of all, you know if we were to put the iphone and every Android phone out here on this this great verge table. Oh you mean this huh, that’s right! Nothing really stands out. Actually, i think you know ever since HTC to the m7 and apple kind of copied that technology and then, like you, see kind of the industry, all kind of bringing that quality level up. You can machine metal. You can put chamfers on make it shiny.
What that’s left is kind of a sea of sameness out there nothing’s really breaking out of the pack, so from an industrial design perspective we wanted to create something for people that was cool like a really cool android phone, which I don’t think really exists out there. So it’s very fresh design: it gets its premium nature kind of kind of a kind of different value set and say: okay, we’re going to do the kind of traditional like machining chamfers and making it shiny, and so I think that kind of reduction in detail that Kind of kind of very fresh approach to kind of very approachable. You know a repeated motif of the the circles that you see on the product really creates something. That’S kind of modern and very fresh. That’S number one number two is: this phone is designed to never on a space, so it has 32 gigabytes of on-board storage, but we’ve integrated 100 gigabytes of cloud storage into it and that basically, when you traditionally or you’re at a concert or you’re at your friends, Your friends house and you were taking a photo you’re recording a video. You get that message that says: hey you know what you’re out of space you go delete some stuff.
You know, never believed to delete some photos or delete some apps. Those are the two primary things that people delete well now, actually because we actually integrated the cloud in. We can actually my great stuff on and off the phone dynamically yeah and allow you to.
Basically, you know, use that cloud kind of supercharged the phone. A lot of Android has been kind of it hasn’t been cohesive, mmm he’s be kind of piecemeal yep. So how do? How do you feel you’ve done on that front? Have you managed to do a Trudy, cohesive, OS and experience? I think so I think you know.
I think ever since you know we had material design come out with Android. Actually, I think that Andrew is actually a pretty good spot right now, it’s actually much more key see if that’s and it’s ever been yeah, and so really, if you look at the interactions, i would say that 99 % of the interactions are stock. Android you go to how you add widget to the widget panel, its stock. It’S got a slight visual design, tweak that we have, which is very clean, but its stock. If you look at the way notifications treated its stock, if you look at the settings area its stock, except for the storage tab, where we have integrated the cloud in and that just because I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel there, Google’s done such a Phenomenal job kind of bringing that up to a kind of what I would say, a pretty good quality level. Now we don’t need to reinvent the wheel from a visual design perspective.
We do want to create something that feels fresh and that’s harmonious with the design, and then we’ve made that simple tweak to the to the home screen, because I think that also speaks to the kind of simplicity message number one number two is to help people understand How we use the cloud it actually provides a very available feature. For example, I want to pin a nap. You know. I can’t actually do that in the stock Google launcher to show that an app is being restored from the cloud can’t show that sort of stuff. In another launcher, so that sort of ability, they’re doing a launcher – allows us to kind of help communicate people how a cloud-first phone works. Now, if you don’t like what we’ve done, this phone works with Google now launcher, you can download it.
You can download any launch. You want you just arrived here as he s. What are you looking forward to most from the other categories from the other yeah? You know it’s funny. We get asked that a lot and to be super honest with you.
It’S super hard for me to actually get out on the floor, because our primary focus here is to kind of tell people about Robin, but the things that I’m kind of most interested in is there’s a lot of stuff on automotive. There’S a lot of stuff on wearables that I’m kind of interested in seeing I’m still kind of like I look at wearables and I’m not quite convinced. You know that it’s a real category and so I’m kind of still looking well. Let me take that back.
Let me pull that back a little bit, I’m not sure it’s a mass-market product. I think it could be in the plea and, like you know, a bluetooth headset, where yeah fifteen twenty percent people have them great, they love them and the you know the another set of percentage. Actually, don’t don’t use them or don’t have them, but there are kind of unique kind of verticals that are very specific, maybe just particularly around sports like having a wearable. That’S particularly like you know what I want to measure, how much air i get when i go.
Snowboarding – and i did a jump and stuff like that, so I think there are our kind of like I think, more niche kind of applications which I think are very interesting just recently I was you know looking at some VR stuff and I’m like okay, I get Kind of sick doing it. So it’s kind of hard for me, but I’m just trying to like beyond gaming like what is it is it this VR become the thing that you go to the mall and actually experience or is actually something that will drop and get to a price point in The home that we’re actually all going to do and we’re all going to experience. So I’m sounding kind of curious to kind of see how these kind of early technologies transform and move into a place where they can be more ubiquitous. And I just want to bring that back to the Robin.
What I know with Samsung is they’ll, try something you won’t work and they’ll leave it, and there won’t be that much support so for people who might be interested in getting a Robin. How do we know? How can we trust that the company will keep supports yeah? No, I think that’s you know what I Mac. I can promise you all day long that we’re committed to that stuff. We absolutely are. You know one of the benefits of not going to carriers.
It allows us to basically move much faster on doing Android updates we’re launching with marshmallow, which is something that we’re super proud of and we’re. You know we’re already starting to work on six point. 0 point one and and hopefully we’ll be able to do that in the latter – half a first latter part of first quarter.
So so I think that you know the goal. Is that try to get people’s security updates and software updates, so they get the features and functionality as they want as early as possible and we’re committed to doing that. But you know, like the proof, is in the pudding again, I’m not going to sit here and promise you all day long, let’s see how we do. You know we’re going to be shipping pretty soon and you know we’re committed to delivering speakership harder units.
Yet can I squeeze out a date from you yeah? Absolutely so you know it we’re Kickstarter campaign was in September and what we told our early bird, our early backers, which was limited to a thousand people on the gsm side, was that we would ship it in january and actually we’re not actually going to hit january. However, we are new. There is good news, we’re actually about two weeks late, so we will ship the early backers on februari 16th. We will ship all the other gsm phones a couple days after that, and i think the last bit of news is right. Now the phone is available for pre-order we’re actually going to close that pre-ordering down on Feb on january 15, so just in about a week and whoever whoever basically pre-orders the phone by january, fifteenth we’re committed to shipping that, by the end of februari, understood.
Thank you for much free time. Scott yeah, thanks for having me .