The smartphone business is brutal. Apple makes 92% of the industry’s profits, and Samsung, LG, Motorola and dozens of others battle for relevance. So why would Nextbit, an app-making startup, want to try and enter the fray?  “Right now, most every smartphone looks and works pretty much the same and we see that as an opportunity,” Tom Moss, Nextbit’s CEO, told me in an interview. “The iPhone owns the high end. It’s basically a luxury item. We’re not going for that. Instead, we think there’s a new high-end for Android around the $400 price point that can be just as compelling for consumers, if the ideas behind the software and hardware are right.”  Nextbit’s debut device, the Robin, is only just reaching prototype stage, though from what I’ve seen, it promises to be a phone unlike any other you can currently buy.  The styling of the phone is fresh. Rather than trying to hide speakers behind small slats, the Robin has a circle of drilled dots, which made me think of speakers designed by Dieter Rams. The square design is also a departure from the norm. Most smartphones these days have rounded edges and work in curves around rectangular displays. The Robin’s design embraces the rectangle by making the phone, essentially, one thin block.  Its fingerprint sensor is built into the sleep button, on the side of the phone, as opposed to the larger circular buttons found on Apple and Samsung’s fingerprint sensors. Its other hardware features are flagship worthy, too, such as quick charging, a USB Type-C port, 3GB of RAM, Qualcomm’s speedy Snapdragon 808 processor, a 13 megapixel camera and NFC connectivity for mobile payments. The Robin’s 5.2-inch 1080p display looks great, though it isn’t as pixel packed as the Samsung and Motorola flagships which offer four times the resolution.  The company is using a version of Android that looks and works very much like the stock Android found on Google’s Nexus devices, but the company is promising 100GB of free cloud storage paired to every phone it sells.  But this cloud storage won’t be a folder to shovel files into a la Dropbox. Instead, the Robin will notice what apps you use and don’t. When the 32GB of local storage on the phone is used up, it will free up space by moving unused apps and files over to the 100GB cloud allotment tied to the handset. The login credentials for the offloaded apps will remain on the phone, so if and when a user decides to go back and download their neglected apps again, they can pick up where they left off. “We’ll never move what you use most to the cloud,” Moss said. “But the photos you took six months ago and haven’t looked at in six months can go to the cloud. That game you downloaded and stopped playing three weeks ago, that can go to the cloud, too. And when you want any of it, you’ll get it back just it was before.”  Moss argues that his team has put together the right mix of tweaks to the Android operating system and unique hardware to build a smartphone that will be coveted by consumers. But Nextbit’s phone won’t be sold through carriers. Instead, it’ll sell its phones themselves on its website in January. On Tuesday, the Robin is going up for pre-order on Kickstarter. Moss says his company is making that move not for the sake of crowd funding, but rather market research.  “We have funding, we have investors and manufacturing partners on board, but we really don’t know how many phones to make and this will help us figure that out,” Moss said. “We also have a lot of ideas on how Robin’s software should change and improve over time and we want to create an engaged community that offers feedback so we can help build the phone they want.”  Though a January launch is ambitious, Moss and his team have better credentials than most ventures that appear on Kickstarter. Moss ran Android business development at Google from 2007 to 2010. At Google, Moss met Mike Chan, who helped build power management and system security features on Android versions 1.0 through 3.0. Chan co-founded Nextbit with Moss in 2013 and is the startup’s chief technical officer. Scott Croyle, who is Nextbit’s chief design and product officer, designed the HTC One M7 and M8 as head of design and user experience at HTC. Google Ventures and Accel Partners are investing in the company, and Foxconn, which assembles iPhones for Apple and Xboxes for Microsoft, is Nextbit’s manufacturing partner.  Nextbit will sell Robin for $400, but Kickstarter pre-orders will get lower prices. The company is running a 30-day campaign with a goal of selling $500,000 worth of phones. The first 1,000 backers will get Robin for $300. After that, backers will be able to get Robin for $350. That pricing puts the Robin at the sweet spot of a new class of high-grade Android phones that are selling below the $400 price point, including the OnePlus 2 and Motorola’s latest Moto X.  The timing couldn’t be better, now that carriers are shutting down two-year contracts in favor of lucrative, pay-over-time phone purchase plans. Soon, people will start caring about the real price of their phones, and they may balk at paying $700 for an Android flagship when there are so many attractive, lower-priced alternatives.  ______________________________________________________ Follow WSJ.D on Twitter, and get our Personal Technology columns delivered right to your inbox. And like us on Facebook to get our news right in your feed:
Former Google and HTC employees have come up with a new take on Android smartphones. And they're calling it the Robin.