Team no days off
over 8 years ago – Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 11:29:29 PM

We're not so cruel as to force everyone to come into work over the holidays, but some of us have given up some free time to make sure that Robin is ready on time.

Saro spent Christmas in China to make sure Robin's assembly is going perfect. Mike worked on the ROM while visiting his family. Shankar brought his family into the office so he could make sure the camera and processor are performing at their best. And the marketing crew has been working to make sure that Robin makes a splash at CES. (So have Mike and all the engineering and QA team.) 

We've got you covered

When Saro returned, he brought you a special holiday gift: new case prototypes. Scratches is pretty close to final. Bumps is looking and fitting good, but we're still working on the colors. And Bruises is nearly ready, we just need to make a few color decisions on the hard plastic section. 

Remember these are prototypes, that's why everything is clear plastic. Although, that is the right color for Scratches. One thing you can't see here is that Bumps and Bruises wrap around the front of Robin enough so that if you place it face down, it will protect the screen. Scratches does too but it might be too thin to keep the screen off a rough surface.

A beautiful finish

We've been making significant progress in the camera department. We think you're going to be very happy with how it performs. We took this picture just today, with Robin running the latest camera build.

Happy new year Rebels. Here's to an unlimited 2016.

We're getting close
over 8 years ago – Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 10:37:40 PM

Last week was busy here at rebel base headquarters, sorry for the delay in getting an update to you guys! Even though the engineering team cut the first software build, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Activity level is still pretty high around here. What can we say? We’re perfectionists.

We’ve also had some exciting deliveries here in the office that we want to share with you.

Better prototypes

We’re getting close to actual mass production units of Robin. This morning, we received a highly-anticipated package. We now have our DVT units. We can definitely see the differences between units from earlier in the production stages. You can also see Santhosh here flashing them all.

Oh Sheep!

For our Holiday Special, we had a whole bunch of our sheep mascots mailed to our rebel base. Thanks to help from our team of rebels, we were able to get all the sheep for the Holiday Special mailed out last week. Check out your first look at the Nextbit mascot. Thanks to our friends at Dead Zebra!

How’s production going?

We know you’re all excited to receive your Robins. Last Wednesday, we had a meeting to go over the production schedule and progress. Saro has practically moved to China to keep the hardware on track. The software is progressing as expected. We are feature locked and on track to be code locked. The most important update to come out of this meeting is that we are on track to ship Early Adopter specials in late January. We will have another update at CES with specific dates.

It's about damn time
over 8 years ago – Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 11:00:40 PM

When we walked into the Nextbit offices today, we had a little bit of a surprise. The power was out. Some of us headed to Mike’s apartment for WiFi - truly a startup experience. After scurrying around in the dark for a little bit, we’re back up and running to release this week’s update.

Some snapshots

You’ve been asking and we’ve been promising some camera samples. We’re so excited because we finally have the first photos from the Robin camera! Yes, all these pictures are outdoors, we’re almost done with camera tuning outside and have started working on indoor and lowlight shots. We’ll release those pictures next time.

A stand for Robin

One of our engineers, Mike C (not CTO Mike. It’s ok, we get confused too), made a 3D printable stand for Robin. For those of you who have already 3D printed Robin, you now have a snazzy little stand for that model. And you can all rest easy knowing that your Robin will have a cozy seat ready for when it arrives next year. Download the stand file. Download the Robin file.

Another Periscope on the horizon

On Monday, Scott will be hosting a Periscope at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Tune in to see some updates on packaging and initial bootup on a Robin!

The rest of the team has been working hard once we recovered from the power outage. The engineering team put some finishing touches in to make the launcher extra snappy. This afternoon, they got the whole company together for a flashing and bug bashing party. (It wasn’t as fun as it sounds. This is hard work.) We’re all dogfooding like crazy and squashing bugs left and right. Saro is in China doing some checks on production. Shankar is finally back, which is why we have those amazing camera samples to share with you all.

Be on the lookout for more updates, Rebels!

A couple of announcements
over 8 years ago – Wed, Dec 02, 2015 at 10:38:13 PM

We’re back from Thanksgiving! Some of you have had the chance to meet up with Scott, Eric, and Kay in Europe. The Paris meetup is going on right now and the Berlin meetup is tomorrow; here’s hoping we’ll see even more of you.

Meanwhile, those of here at rebel base in SF are as busy as ever. And we’ve got some announcements for you all.

BackerKit extension

We’ve pushed the lockdown date for BackerKit surveys to this Friday, December 4th. We wanted to be able to give those of you we’re seeing at these meetups a fair chance to change your minds if you need to. Thanks to all of you who have already filled out your survey!

You can enter your email address here to re-send your survey. You can edit your choices, add/remove add-ons, and even change your shipping information until December 4th.

Our Holiday Special

Today, we’re announcing our Holiday Special. Even though Robin won’t be ready until next year, you or your friends can still give Robin as a gift this season. Here’s how it works. We’ll send one of our adorable vinyl sheep mascots, specially gift-wrapped, by December 20th so you don’t have to show up empty-handed. Then, in February, that special someone will receive their very own Robin. The special is the phone and the vinyl sheep mascot all for $399. It’s only available in the US and there are only 100, so you’ll need to act fast.

Spread the word, Rebels!

Something to snack on
over 8 years ago – Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 11:38:11 PM

It's Thanksgiving holiday this week in the US. San Francisco is quiet; everyone went home to spend time with friends and family. Except Nextbit. That's right Rebels, we're here working harder than ever. and there's more of us than ever. Today for the first time we had more Nextbytes than chairs at our lunch tables. 

More pictures!

After last week's updates, everyone asked for more pictures. So we got all the Robin colors out of their secure vault again for another shoot. Here they are flat on our neutral grey table:

One thing we noticed at the meet up last week (If you showed up, thanks, it was great to meet you.) was that midnight shows much more blue when you look at it from an angle, so we took a picture of the line up from the side so you can tell:

You can really see the blue in midnight along the edges.

What are we up to?

Shankar is still China working on the final hardware drivers, but the rest of us were back at rebel base SF. Mike is working on tweaking the build, but it's finally solid enough that we can use it to dogfood. Meanwhile, Scott, Kay and Eric are about to leave for Europe to meet with press and meet with you. If you live in London, Paris or Berlin, you'll be at our meet ups, right? We will have working models for you to hold, and to try. We're even bringing the coveted electric body with us so you can see what that's like. Other than that the team is insanely busy squashing bugs so we can lock the ROM in time.