Nextbit today announced that it will not be bringing its first handset, the Robin, to Verizon and Sprint’s network. After initial pre-orders for the handset far exceeding the young startup expectations, it announced that it would be releasing a CDMA variant of the handset for Sprint and Verizon’s network.
The startup’s CEO announced in a message to the handset’s backers on Kickstarter that the carriers timeframe and cost estimate to launch the Nextbit Robin was wildly inaccurate, with “weeks” turning into “months” and “hundreds of thousands of dollars” turning into “millions.” Due to this, the Nextbit team has decide that it is best to cancel the launch of the CDMA variant of the Robin, rather than continue going forward with no clear answers in sight. Nextbit will be refunding the money of all the backers who opted for the CDMA variant of the handset, and will also be giving them a 25% discount code that they can use to purchase any item from their store. Considering how notorious U.S. carriers are, this really should not come as a surprise. Since Sprint and Verizon continue to use CDMA network for voice calls, it makes the process to launch a phone on their network even more tedious. Thankfully, it is now just a matter of a year or two before Verizon completely switches to VoLTE allowing non-CDMA phones to work on its network without any issues.
