Cloud-Based Robin Smartphone Fails Bend Test Miserably

The Nextbit Robin, a cloud storage-based Android smartphone, was put to the bend test — and failed spectacularly.

The Robin was bend-tested by YouTuber JerryRigEverything in a video released June 15. The phone bent in seconds when he put a fair amount of pressure on it. In fact, it looked like the phone snapped like a cracker.

“Even budget phones normally survive this bend test,” JerryRigEverything noted during the video.

The problem with the Robin’s build quality seems to be the fact that the phone has no metal parts in its interior. Even the phone’s motherboard is drilled directly into the plastic casing.

The all-plastic construction probably reduced the manufacturing cost — and weight of the phone — by a significant amount, but the lack of any internal metal parts also had an obvious impact on the phone’s durability.

But YouTuber JerryRigEverything notes that the phone’s lacking durability doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad phone. In the video, the phone’s screen and glass camera lenses stood up fairly well to scratch tests, and the phone’s pixels recovered fairly quickly when subjected to a “burn test” with a lighter.

The main thing that separates the Nextbit Robin from other phones on the market is the phone’s cloud-based storage system. When not in use, the phone will backup app data, photos, contacts, messages, and much more straight to the cloud. It will archive data that’s not in use, and recover that data when it’s needed, according to the company’s website.

The phone features a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 5.2-inch, Gorilla Glass 4 screen, and 32 GB of onboard memory — with an additional 100 GB of cloud storage.

The phone retails for $399 on the company’s website, and all models include an unlocked SIM card.