 Hello guys, we're here at CS2016. There is a big rock formation behind us, the Verge logo. I am Vlad Savov, your tech editor, and this here is Scott Croyo, chief designer of Nextbit, a company that produces a new cloud smartphone. This is the Robin. We're seeing these are the final versions of the Robin now, aren't they? That's correct. Well, pretty close. They were a few weeks before we were in mass production, but yeah, they're 99% there. And this is what you're showing off here at CES. This is the debut of the final Robins. We have it in black, sort of graphite. Yeah, we call it midnight. It looks black, but when you put it up to a black t-shirt, it actually looks blue. It's very, very deep, kind of dark blue. And we have this mint and white combo. The other thing is you're running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. And you've done a Kickstart campaign, and this is really the thing. We have a whole bunch of Android phones. And 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, if we were to put the iPhone and every Android phone out here on this great Verge table... What, you mean this iPhone? That's right. Nothing really stands out. Actually, I think ever since HTC did the M7 and Apple kind of copied that technology, and then you see 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 a different value set than say, hey, we're going to do the kind of traditional machining chamfers and making it shiny. And so I think that kind of reduction in detail and that kind of very fresh approach, the kind of very approachable repeated motif of 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 run out of space. So it has 32 gigabytes of onboard storage, but we've integrated 100 gigabytes of cloud storage into it. And that basically, when you traditionally, you're at a concert or you're at a friend's house and you're taking a photo, you're recording a video, you get that message that says, hey, you know what, you're out of space, you need to go delete some stuff. You know, inevitably, you have 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 migrate stuff on and off the phone dynamically and allow you to basically use that cloud to kind of supercharge the phone. A lot of Android has been kind of, it hasn't been cohesive. It's been kind of piecemeal. So how do you feel you've done on that front? Have you managed to do a truly cohesive OS and experience? I think so. I think ever since we had material design come out with Android, actually, I think that Android is actually in a pretty good spot right now. It's actually much more cohesive than it's ever been. 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 widgets to the widgets panel, it's stock. It's got a slight visual design tweak that we have, which is very clean, but it's stock. If you look at the way notifications treated, it's stock. If you look at the settings area, it's stock, except for the storage tab where we have integrated the cloud in. And that's just because I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel there. Google has done such a phenomenal job kind of bringing that up to a kind of, what I would say, a pretty good quality level now that 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 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 valuable feature. For example, I want to pin an app. You know what? I can't actually do that in the stock Google launcher. To show that an app is being restored from the cloud, you can't show that sort of stuff in another launcher. So that sort of ability, doing a launcher allows us to kind of help communicate to 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 launcher you want. You just arrived here at CES. What are you looking forward to most from the other categories? Yeah, 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 that it's a real category and so I'm kind of just I'm 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 like a Bluetooth headset where yeah, 15, 20% of people have them. Great. They love them. And another set of percentage actually 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. I think being a wearable that's particularly like, you know, 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 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 does VR become the thing that you go to the mall and actually experience or is it 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 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 Robin. What I know with Samsung is they'll try something, it won't work and they'll leave it and there won't be that all 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 support? Yeah. No, I think that's, you know what? I mean, 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 the 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 already starting to work on 6.0.1 and hopefully we'll be able to do that in the latter half of first, latter part of first quarter. So I think the goal is to try to get people 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 we're committed to delivering the Kickstarter units. Can I squeeze out a date from you? Yeah, absolutely. So you know, our Kickstarter campaign was in September and what we told 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, there is good news. We're actually about two weeks late. So we will ship the early backers on February 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 January 15th. So just in about a week. And whoever basically pre-orders a phone by January 15th, we're committed to shipping that by the end of February. Understood. Thank you so much for your time, Scott. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
 Hello guys, we're here at CS2016.
 There is a big rock formation behind us, the Verge logo.
 I am Vlad Savov, your tech editor, and this here is Scott Croyo, chief designer of Nextbit,
 a company that produces a new cloud smartphone.
 This is the Robin.
 We're seeing these are the final versions of the Robin now, aren't they?
 That's correct.
 Well, pretty close.
 They were a few weeks before we were in mass production, but yeah, they're 99% there.
 And this is what you're showing off here at CES.
 This is the debut of the final Robins.
 We have it in black, sort of graphite.
 Yeah, we call it midnight.
 It looks black, but when you put it up to a black t-shirt, it actually looks blue.
 It's very, very deep, kind of dark blue.
 And we have this mint and white combo.
 The other thing is you're running Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
 And you've done a Kickstart campaign, and this is really the thing.
 We have a whole bunch of Android phones.
 And 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, if we were to put the iPhone and every Android phone out here on
 this great Verge table...
 What, you mean this iPhone?
 That's right.
 Nothing really stands out.
 Actually, I think ever since HTC did the M7 and Apple kind of copied that technology,
 and then you see 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 a different value set than say, hey, we're going to do
 the kind of traditional machining chamfers and making it shiny.
 And so I think that kind of reduction in detail and that kind of very fresh approach, the
 kind of very approachable repeated motif of 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 run out of space.
 So it has 32 gigabytes of onboard storage, but we've integrated 100 gigabytes of cloud
 storage into it.
 And that basically, when you traditionally, you're at a concert or you're at a friend's
 house and you're taking a photo, you're recording a video, you get that message that says, hey,
 you know what, you're out of space, you need to go delete some stuff.
 You know, inevitably, you have 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 migrate stuff
 on and off the phone dynamically and allow you to basically use that cloud to kind of
 supercharge the phone.
 A lot of Android has been kind of, it hasn't been cohesive.
 It's been kind of piecemeal.
 So how do you feel you've done on that front?
 Have you managed to do a truly cohesive OS and experience?
 I think so.
 I think ever since we had material design come out with Android, actually, I think that
 Android is actually in a pretty good spot right now.
 It's actually much more cohesive than it's ever been.
 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 widgets to the widgets panel, it's stock.
 It's got a slight visual design tweak that we have, which is very clean, but it's stock.
 If you look at the way notifications treated, it's stock.
 If you look at the settings area, it's stock, except for the storage tab where we have integrated
 the cloud in.
 And that's just because I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel there.
 Google has done such a phenomenal job kind of bringing that up to a kind of, what I would
 say, a pretty good quality level now that 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 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
 valuable feature.
 For example, I want to pin an app.
 You know what?
 I can't actually do that in the stock Google launcher.
 To show that an app is being restored from the cloud, you can't show that sort of stuff
 in another launcher.
 So that sort of ability, doing a launcher allows us to kind of help communicate to 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 launcher you want.
 You just arrived here at CES.
 What are you looking forward to most from the other categories?
 Yeah, 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 that it's a real
 category and so I'm kind of just I'm 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 like a Bluetooth headset where yeah, 15, 20% of people have them.
 Great.
 They love them.
 And another set of percentage actually 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.
 I think being a wearable that's particularly like, you know, 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 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 does VR become the thing that you go to the mall and actually experience or is
 it 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 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 Robin.
 What I know with Samsung is they'll try something, it won't work and they'll leave it and there
 won't be that all 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 support?
 Yeah.
 No, I think that's, you know what?
 I mean, 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 the 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
 already starting to work on 6.0.1 and hopefully we'll be able to do that in the latter half
 of first, latter part of first quarter.
 So I think the goal is to try to get people 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 we're committed to delivering the
 Kickstarter units.
 Can I squeeze out a date from you?
 Yeah, absolutely.
 So you know, our Kickstarter campaign was in September and what we told 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, there is good news.
 We're actually about two weeks late.
 So we will ship the early backers on February 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 January 15th.
 So just in about a week.
 And whoever basically pre-orders a phone by January 15th, we're committed to shipping
 that by the end of February.
 Understood.
 Thank you so much for your time, Scott.
 Yeah, thanks for having me.
 Appreciate it.