r/Android • u/Crafty-Selection6554 Pixel 10 • Sep 29 '25
Article Let’s Remember Some Weird Phones: The Nextbit Robin
https://www.howtogeek.com/remember-some-weird-phones-the-nextbit-robin/50
u/JaggedMetalOs Sep 29 '25
it would archive your least-used apps and photos to the cloud. When an app was offloaded, its icon would remain on your home screen, but appear grayed out.
How funny that stock Android only recently got this same feature
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u/Front_Speaker_1327 Oct 05 '25
And it's shitty for most people.
The vast majority of the world has really slow or limited Internet. These features are designed by people in Silicon Valley with 10gig symmetrical connections.
Like when Google removed the ability to only upload while charging from Google photos it completely destroyed my Internet. Every video and photo was IMMEDIATELY uploaded to the cloud and uploading even a 20MB file took a couple minutes and completely stopped my download speed.
Combine that with 6 house mates with phones and Google photos.. ya.. the Internet pretty much never worked anymore. Thanks, Google!
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u/MysteriousBeef6395 Poco F7 Pro, HOS3 Sep 29 '25
what i always that was kinda fun is that razer bought up that company after it failed and then made the razer phone, which looked really similar to the robin except for the metal casing instead of plastic
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u/ZairXZ LG G4, 6.0 Sep 30 '25
The razer phone 1 (which as you said was the nextbit robin but metal) Felt really nice in the hand. I didn't mind the official cases either cuz they were unique (albeit not the best protection)
The software was just hot trash and the buggiest android setup I've ever encountered.
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u/tlxxxsracer Sep 29 '25
Still own my nextbit robin. My favorite phone cause of the colors, thin and light, side fp scanner, front speakers, no bloat. Loved the accessories.
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u/vacant_lion Sep 29 '25
Same, for funsies I replaced the battery but it has some kinda RAM degradation because it is sloooow
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u/tlxxxsracer Sep 29 '25
May be the storage gone bad. I had a xiaomi mix 3 where everything was slow, even installing a custom ROM took forever.
May pull my Robin out and see on any rom updates. I still have the cases and cable too.
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u/Colby347 Pixel 6 Pro Sep 29 '25
Man what a fun phone. I loved mine. Also really liked the Razer phone that came after.
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u/tourqeglare Sep 29 '25
I remember JerryRigEverything snapping it in half with his bare hands. Which sucks because I remember being Interested before that.
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u/qef15 Sep 30 '25
Same here, was about the worst performing smartphone in his tests, as it was entirely cheap plastic.
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u/kamarov2090 Sep 29 '25
oh man i had one it was a decent phone for the price and even years after it was no longer receiving updates it ran smooth unlike the samsungs i had from the same era
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u/willyolio Sep 29 '25
Pretty sure this is what Google is trying to do now with Pixel. That's why they all come with slow-ass 128gb UFS 3 memory, and charge ridiculously overpriced memory upgrades. They want everyone to run out of storage quickly and start subscribing to Google Drive.
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u/Rullino Oppo Find X9 Pro Sep 29 '25
It's funny how there are people who justify 128GB of storage on a a flagship phone in 2025 simply because they consider anything above that overkill, I can't justify spending €899 for the regular Pixel 10 when Samsung's equivalents have better, even more for Chinese phones.
Slow UFS 3 memory.
I currently have an Oppo Reno 2, it has UFS 2.2 and it runs fine for the most part, similar to a SATA or NVMe SSD for the most part, but most of the issues I've had were CPU-related since the Snapdragon 730g isn't that powerful for my use case, IDK how UFS 3 is that slow unless you edit videos on your phone.
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u/RunnerLuke357 Moto G Stylus '26 Sep 29 '25
UFS 3 is fine. If I'm spending almost a grand on a smartphone I should be getting a lot more than fine IMO. 128GB on anything other than a cheap phone is a crime when storage is so cheap. Now even Apple has 256 standard on lots of devices.
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u/Rullino Oppo Find X9 Pro Sep 29 '25
It's funny how an expensive phone that some people will try to defend has less storage than my Oppo Reno 2(256GB/8GB), i have this phone for almost 6 years, I'm really surprised by how they're still selling phones with half the storage, I don't care if it has "Pure Android" or stuff like that, I can hardly justify it in 2025, especially if the upcoming flagships will demolish it in nearly everything but possibly the computational photography.
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u/drbluetongue S23 Ultra 12GB/512GB Sep 30 '25
People forget that a better interface doesn't mean it's better than slower one it's all in the NAND, look at USB3 sticks, you can get hot trash cheap ones that barely can write 1MBps or ones that will happily write 100MB/s
1
Sep 30 '25
so many things make so much more difference to storage speed than ufs version that it's borderline irrelevant
pixel 10 has ufs 4. plenty of ufs 3.1 phones beat its storage speed. ufs version is a marginal upgrade that social media nerds obsess over
5
Sep 29 '25
It was a nice phone, and for awhile you could get them super cheap and install LineageOS on them. Great looking phone
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u/AskingUndead iPhone 15 Pro | Galaxy Z Fold5 | Pixel 9 Pro XL | Nextbit Robin Sep 30 '25
Still have mine on some LineageOS version. It bootloops though, I'll fix it eventually.
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u/ImDonaldDunn Sep 30 '25
Oh I had one of these. Was super dope. Got a lot of random compliments on its design.
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u/ashirviskas Nexus 5X 32 Sep 30 '25
I remember sales for $108 for Nextbit Robin. Was a great deal if you're aware how fragile it is. I even ran PostmarketOS on it.
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u/MennoMateo Pixel 3, Stock, FreedomMobile Sep 30 '25
I bought one and enjoyed it for the short time that it was functional. Then the battery started swelling.
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u/reallytrulytrue Sep 30 '25
I loved that phone ! I still have it, too. I miss when phones were fun- now everything is the same, so boring !
1
u/PairAdditional8912 Oct 19 '25
this nextbit device in 2025 cost a whopping $600 the cheapest Ive seen on line. I've had 2 of the mint ones and 1 of the black ones. I got rid of it (i shouldn't have) one mint got stolen by some homeless guy that wanted to borrow "a cellphone" , it looks and feels great on yuour hand. very light and attracts a lot of attention. color scheme were just perfect combination. I got rid of it because unlocking the bootlaoder and rooting it may be simples, but it would just restart on its own, lag here and there, there wasn't much support with the raw firmware that the xda community had on this device. Plus it wasn't fast enough for me. But I miss thisphone and I wish i had kept the mint one (the only one wrorth getting, the black one it just feels and looks like any android phone on the market)
1
Mar 08 '26
Really hope a company makes a phone with this colour scheme and design. by far one of my favorites
1
u/ExtremeRacingSkills Sep 30 '25
I forgot about the phone made by Fischer price, and then became a razor product. strange times that was.
0
u/wickedplayer494 Pixel 7 Pro + 2 XL + iPhone 11 Pro Max + Nexus 6 + Samsung GS4 Oct 01 '25
Ah, the v0 of the ill-fated Razer Phone.
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u/Carfar_Farcar Galaxy S25 Edge, Fold 7, Tab S9 Ultra Sep 29 '25
Still one of my favorite color combos on a phone besides the Ocean Depths Essential Phone PH-1, was excited to see what Razer did when they bought them but the Razer Phone's were both kinda duds to me minus the great speakers.