Kickstarter Smartphone

The main information that Google will keep is:

-Anything tied to your Google account (Gmail, docs, map locations, all of your search history)
-What apps you’ve downloaded and any registration/purchase information for those apps.
-In some cases, the application data (this includes your solitaire scores).
-System settings and preferences
-Images/video

Things like your social security #, and banking info are not local data (unless your app gives you an option to save your ID) - that’s all held on the cloud and just being displayed to you when you are in the app.

Music AFAIK is not synced to the cloud either, those are just local files. This is why if you drop your phone in the toilet and restore from your Gmail, it will look and feel just like your phone used to - because almost all of that info is coming back down from the cloud.

Goal is to not make paranoid, simply informed. I recommend you watch the South Park HumancentiPad episode about what happens when you don’t read the terms of service agreements. :wink:

Well, my second sentence was “the world is not ready”.

Think about how much we’ve moved to the cloud already.
I used to have a 60GB iPod with all my music. Now I have Spotify.
I used to burn DVD’s, buy empty boxes and print covers. Now I have Netflix and 2-3 other alternatives.
I used to remember passwords, buy paper tickets, print boarding cards, save receipts, receive bank statements… now I have Gmail.
I used to lose touch with half of my friends every time I lost a mobile phone. Now I can pick up a brand new phone and have all my contacts back in under 60 seconds, not asking a single one what their number is.

Next step is unloading the computing power. It has been happening on workstations and terminals for a long time now. I can run photoshop elements, word, excel, powerpoint on my cellphone by logging into a virtual desktop through Citrix. That is what I’m getting at with the inevitable way forward, also on mobile platforms. But for me to cut the cord and rely on the cloud the network coverage should be 110% reliable, 110% coverage, much faster, and much cheaper. We’re far far from there.

Regarding sensitive data… It’s a big issue. But that is one thing that could actually be stored locally. In some way that the data is useless without the app (if you lose you phone) and the app is useless without your data (if someone hacked the cloud storage). The data could be stored at some third party you trust - your bank perhaps? Or maybe the encryption will improve dramatically? Again - the world is not ready, yet.

Whats the difference between gmail having all that info in there vs this version of “the cloud”? Just the perceived protection Goggle offers in their cloud?

Correct.

Performance and security. Not there yet and I don’t think this phone will advance the cause in any way.

My gmail does not have any sensitive data. At least I don’t consider addresses and phone numbers to be sensitive. Maybe if I had Donald Trump’s number …

But if you are asking if my bank’s server is more secure than google’s, the answer would be no. I figure the less I am out there the better. I like anonymity. I have no need for strangers to know anything about me. I don’t think using my phone to unlock a door is any easier than using a key. And if I am out of milk, I won’t drink milk. I won’t be purchasing a shack in Montana with a typewriter, but I not willing share everything with everybody either. I don’t see what’s in it for me and I see a lot of potential downside.

Performance issues I agree with but, do you really believe your data on any internet connected device or cloud server will ever be secure? Marketing departments are just waiting to make such claims (without being laughed out of the market) for new future phone designs.

It appears the silicon valley has been busy in the last few quarters trying to push the next wave of hand held computing, tracking, communication and monitoring devices/systems. Ex-CEO of Apple John Sculley and SF based design firm Ammunition have put together a competitive <US$200 price point that will go head to head with this kickstarter play.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3050406/how-ammunition-and-apples-ex-ceo-plan-to-disrupt-the-design-center-of-the-smartphone-world#2

The only thing new being offered here on the Kickstarter Robin phone that does not already exist is the bloat ware management feature. If they can pull that off without upsetting my day trading, share economy and group communication apps when I really need them, then this is a feature that I want in a phone that has a higher degree of form sophistication.

It is very interesting to see how these large American tech company guys leave their firms and start ventures like this hoping to create a new market. This would be sacrilegious here in South Korea land of the Chaebol monarchy firms.

I think performance and security of any cloud-based device is horrible. And a phone will never fix the underlying architectural problems.

But that is the problem with innovation, it does not come all at once. I just want to mutter something to myself in my flying car and then have what I want just appear. Too much to ask?

You young folks, get on that please. :slight_smile:

Halfway to go and the phone has already doubled its target.

Interesting that they are announcing the product will be in short supply, and blaming the Chinese new year (like it came out of the blue).

I’ll still hold on to my skepticism, that this is a very complex model to scale and that no one in their right mind should be “Giving” away cloud services when it’s a known monthly cost.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the phone does well and then every backer or new buyer is forced to buy it with a monthly subscription on top of their carrier costs - you simply can’t give data away for free in 2016.

I’ll still hold on to my skepticism, that this is a very complex model to scale and that no one in their right mind should be “Giving” away cloud services when it’s a known monthly cost.

Well, but what’s the problem with known monthly cost? They are not giving away data for free. You pay $399 for the phone. Of course the cloud storage they probably just buy from some “supplier” is included in that price. The cloud storage is tied to the phone I guess. You also can assume that in 2-3 years 95% of your customers won’t use the phone anymore. Now you can actually calculate very well how much it will cost you.
And it is not like that’s the only “known monthly cost” when you sell a phone. Think of the people you have to pay that take care of software updates. Or storing all the spare parts for repairs… etc… All monthly costs that are just factored into the retail price beforehand. Nothing new in the world of selling products. And cloud storage will probably just get cheaper and cheaper anyway.

That’s also how “life long warranties” work. You just assume that almost no one will actually take advantage of that promise. But the handful of people that do - you can probably take care of them.

  1. I just bought a Microsoft phone online. I think it’s a good model, it just requires a little marketing to let people know they can do it.

  2. Does anyone pay for cloud storage? I just got 20-30 gb taken away by Dropbox. I have no plans to pay for it. Especially at $10+ a month. Someone has to do this for $.99 / mo. (come on Apple!). That would be reasonable.

If you take a look at the rapidly crumbling tech bubble, a consistent theme is people realizing that giving away these cloud services and the reality is the pricing structure is not properly designed. Box.com and Hulu are great examples. Apple gives away a much smaller amount (5gb) for free and does charge $.99 for their 50 gig plan, but they have a lot more leverage given their scale and island-loads of cash.

If you’ve worked with Cloud services you’ll know you’re not just paying for storage, you’re paying for the usage of that storage. So even if I’m only storing 5gb, if I regularly recall that data then I may be transferring 25gb over the course of a month.

You can PLAN on baking that in - however you absolutely can not predict on a new product the utilization of that service. You can make an estimate (to your point, you can estimate how long a suitcase will take to break, cost of repair, and then calculate who will fix it vs buying a new one, then offer a “lifetime” warranty) but the issue with that is this is a new field, and a fundamentally new model they are proposing.

Assuming ~$2 of incremental cost per month suddenly means you are burdening your device with ~$50 of expenses over 2 years. If you build all of your products and assume a $100 BOM, $50 worth of services, and you can sell it for $399 that’s fine, but what happens if the product really takes off and people realize they no longer need to delete their 20 gigs worth of selfies? Now you might be using $5 per month worth of storage and now you’ve taken an extra $75 dollar hit on your margins - but you aren’t making a cent on that income.

Anyone who looks at the warning signs of the tech stocks can see that private investors are starting to realize their gold rush into the tech startup world may have been based on a lot of hype and potential that never materialized, and I don’t see a company who is launching a few thousand smart phones having the scale or business model to do anything other than hope they get absorbed by someone before people realize it’s not a sound business strategy.

We can revisit this thread in 12 months when the stock market has tanked and we’re all wondering what happened to the dot coms…again.

/nostradamus

Mike,

You talked me into an iPhone! hehe I only back up to the cloud, I rarely access the data.

I don’t follow the market too much, but I was just reading about venture capital drying up too. Not surprising considering how over-valued everything was.

I think the secret though is in reality, your phone will backup to the cloud every night (assuming you leave backups turned on and keep wifi enabled) so the transparent use of cloud data is where things like this get lost in translation.

Now the phone is smart enough to know the difference and only backup whats new, but if you record a few videos a week that turns into gigabytes very quickly.

Given the nature of their approach and the small initial investment in the hardware I can’t see them not wanting to get absorbed ASAP as a software play for a larger Android player.

You can PLAN on baking that in - however you absolutely can not predict on a new product the utilization of that service. You can make an estimate (to your point, you can estimate how long a suitcase will take to break, cost of repair, and then calculate who will fix it vs buying a new one, then offer a “lifetime” warranty) but the issue with that is this is a new field, and a fundamentally new model they are proposing.

Hm, I see your point. It is true, it COULD backfire horribly. So my guess is they are betting it won’t and people don’t need as much storage as they think they do. The 6000 units are to prove or disprove exactely that.

Maybe they are betting that bandwidth and storage costs will decline quickly enough to make their price point viable?

The company has been sold;

Ha, I should be a VC, not even 1 year later the prophecy comes true.

Interesting to see that they got absorbed by a hardware manufacturer though. I suspect their in house talent was probably more biased to the hardware side and Razer might be looking to get into the Niche mobile space. Possibly a Shield-like gaming device or a standalone VR headset.

Word is Nextbit was running out of time and discounting prices to move inventory.