- Rabbit R1, AI gadget, runs on Android app, not requiring “very bespoke AOSP” firmware as claimed by Rabbit.
- Rabbit R1 launcher app can run on existing Android phones, not needing system-level permissions for core functionality.
- Rabbit R1 firmware analysis shows minimal modifications to standard AOSP, contradicting claims of custom hardware necessity by Rabbit.
I don’t really care for this product. It’s another unnecessary AI assistant. What I’m struggling to understand is why it matters which platform it’s been built on. What difference would it make if they wrote an entire OS from scratch only for this device instead of using Android, if the end product would be the same?
Because the main criticism of this class of products is “why in the fuck would I need a device for this? my phone already has a data plan, a microphone, and a camera. Make it an app” and the response is some vague “oh well it’s so advanced (it’s not.) it couldn’t possibly run on a phone”.
The vision is that once TPUs become affordable enough to run these models on-device, you would need a device that has such a TPU and you would go to them. But this is completely overlooking the fact that all snapdragons and the like would also have the same TPUs integrated, and also we’re not there yet, so for as long as you need to send the query to openAI’s API, why is this not an app?
It just drives the point home that it should have, and could have been an app on your phone. If they hadn’t sold this as some sort of revolutionary new product and instead were honest to themselves and us about what it was this would be a different story.
Just like all tech bs it’s just a bunch of lies to make initial sales that they never follow through with.
But maybe people would like a standalone device, without the distraction a regular smartphone brings.
I’m not defending this thing as AI in its current state is near useless, bar some niche applications. But the decision to make it a standalone device isn’t really controversial in my opinion.
I think that you’re in the minority with that opinion then. I don’t want another thing to carry around. And I don’t see how this would be less of a distraction seeing as it doesn’t do anything useful. To me that makes it more of a distraction. If you want to not look at your screen to perform tasks that’s already an option with your phone using Siri or Google’s assistant.