Normally when some new phone maker startup pops its head up, we sigh and maybe feel a tinge of sympathy for another young company entering a brutally competitive business.

But Nextbit has managed to drum up some real interest in media and mobile circles with its forthcoming phone, which it has called “the future of Android.”

Nobody has seen the device, which is scheduled to be unveiled September 1st. We don’t even really know if it will be shaped like a phone. It could be some kind of wearable, or come in component pieces. (I’ll be getting an early briefing on the hardware and software, but for now I know zilch.)

Part of the reason for caring is that Nextbit is founded by a couple of guys — CEO Tom Moss and CTO Mike Chan — who worked at Google on the Android team. Chan spent a few months at Apple. Product lead Scott Croyle worked at HTC. They’re pedigreed. So we assume they know what they’re doing and that they have some vision. Their idea was good enough to attract $18 million in funding from Google Ventures and Accel Partners.

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In the absence of real information, Nextbit has engaged in a social hint-dropping campaign to drum up and maintain interest in the product. And it’s worked. Here are some examples.

A new way of making phone calls?

A phone that learns as you use it?

They’re going to save Android?

Then there’s this little nugget tweeted by Croyle. If that’s the box the device comes in, it tells us something about the shape.

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 2.14.46 PMNextbit launched in 2012 and started out by creating a syncing software called Baton. The software automatically backed up and synced apps and data to the cloud, and made files or application states immediately available on other registered devices. So users could continue doing on one device what they’d started on another.

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 1.34.18 PM

  • CEO & cofounder, Tom Moss (ex Android 1.0 team, 3LM, Motorola, EIR at Accel)
  • CTO  & cofounder,  Mike Chan (ex Android 1.0 team, 3LM, Motorola, EIR at Accel)
  • Chief product officer, Scott Croyle (ex-HTC where he headed up all of product design)

“Two years ago, we left Google because we became infatuated with the idea [of] the cloud as a foundational part of the device itself,” Moss told VentureBeat in an interview last year. He recalled that they then “hired some of our smartest colleagues” from Amazon, Apple, Dropbox, and other major tech firms.

“The device itself” will almost certainly be optimized to carry out all the sharing and syncing functions built into Baton. It may also use the cloud to store, and learn from, call and messaging data. I won’t even venture a guess on the form factor. Let’s just hope it’s something new and useful.

Check back here on September 1st for all the answers to the tantalizing questions Nextbit has raised.

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