Rabbit R1 is Just an Android App
See, it turns out that the Rabbit R1 seems to run Android under the hood and the entire interface users interact with is powered by a single Android app. A tipster shared the Rabbit R1’s launcher APK with us, and with a bit of tinkering, we managed to install it on an Android phone, specifically a Pixel 6a.
Edit: Someone also got doom and Minecraft running on this thing
Dude, maybe it was meant to be a joke, but that doom picture is so fake. C'mon.
what else would it be? it’s a pretty common embedded target. dev kits from Qualcomm come with Android and use the Android bootloader and debug protocols at the very least.
nobody is out here running a plain Linux kernel and maintaining a UI stack while AOSP exists. would be a foolish waste of time for companies like Rabbit to use anything else imo.
to say it’s “just an Android device” is both true and a mischaracterization. it’s likely got a lot in common with a smartphone, but they’ve made modifications and aren’t supporting app stores or sideloading. doesn’t mean you can’t do it, just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work 1-1
You are missing the point. The point is that there is no need for such a device, a simple android app can do everything that rabbit r1 does.
Yeah, but everyone could see that as soon as they released it.
It doesn't matter how it's implemented, it could have been done as an app from day one.
But they made it a device instead because it makes it easy to raise funds and to get journalists to talk about it. As simple as that.
i didn’t think people would really be surprised. but maybe i’m jaded by my experience in the industry.
if we’re arguing whether or not it’s objectively stupid, i think that’s up to the market to decide.
kinda seems like a toy to me anyway, and it’s kind of priced that way
nobody is out here running a plain Linux kernel and maintaining a UI stack while AOSP exists.
Wrong, that's even why I bought a SteamDeck (edited to add the most famous), PineTab2, PinePhone, and a reMarkable and use them pretty much daily.
Are there a lot of these compared to Android? No, but please do not say "nobody" when you mean "most" or "the vast majority" because by doing so you are reducing the perception of choice. Some people, like me, DO prefer plain Linux when they can. By hiding the fact that commercial solutions do exist this is helping an already dominant solution.
I saw the Marquess Brownlee review of this thing last night and I wonder why companies make this crap and who is fool enough to fund it. It's obviously doomed to fail, as are most "smart" gadgets & devices. The best that can be said for it, is at least there is no subscription to use it and it's not outrageously expensive but that's damning it with faint praise.
This is the second time I've read about this specific reviewer having a sane perspective on way overhyped gadgets. Sounds worth checking out. I'm used to videos being completely worthless because they are usually trying to get product affiliate money and YouTube ad revenue at the same time.
I don't remember a single occasion where he was sponsored by the company he's reviewing. He gets sent products all the time, but it seems to always be with the stipulation that if he thinks it sucks, he'll say so.
He's my go-to for tech reviews. He'll happily gush about what he likes, but he isn't shy about what isn't good.
For a counterpoint, I ask you to see his Cybertruck review, he definitely put his kiddy gloves for it.
It's 200 USD contrary to the 700 USD humane pin, I think it's ok as a niche toy, it's why Marquess was also much more forgiving of it.
I heard about this thing but couldn't really tell what the idea was. I think I want to carry less, not more on me.
Do you not carry 3 phones already? Just swap one out.
Do you guys not have 3 phones?
Wait until people realize that it’s just ChatGPT.
It’ll be cool when the concept of “Large Action Model” works well. But def not worth it to tie your money to a single horse this early; a lot of people want that concept to work well, so I’m sure there’s a lot of work being done in that area. Rn I agree that it’s just a worse ChatGPT.
Rabbit is paying for processing those Ai requests. If everyone starts to download it to their android devices they will literally go bankrupt
lol
Haha can’t run R1 on an iPhone. Take that Apple. Absolute gamechanger.
Challenge accepted. I’m going to get an IPhone, load up an Android cloud emulator, upload the Rabbit R1 app, then use it to access its orange version of ChatGPT.
gpt4kids. It has a rabbit!
As a former Android developer, you can't just do anything in an android app on a modern smartphone. The system is fighting you for resources the whole time. It makes sense to have something like this running as root on a device that you control.
Not that I'm sold on it, just saying..
Isn't that more non standard implementations by OEMs? Because pixel and stock-ish Android devices don't have such issues afaik.
Note that this is mostly due to the closed source drivers and nonexistent Linux support for smaller SoCs. Some manufacturers are quite good in that front (e.g. Broadcom/Raspberry Pi, Rockchip), with others you're lucky if they allow you to use Linux at all, with no GPU drivers (which you often have to pirate the binaries, thanks ARM for making Mali a completely closed source project from its open source origins).
Note that since it's just an Android app, there is no purpose in selling this e-waste device other than increasing the price, since it does nothing you can't already do on your phone.
Broadcom is actually terrible, the Rpi foundation just had an in.
NXP deserves some credit for good board support packages and documentation.
Broadcom is also closed source (I think). I have to use closed source drivers for my broadcom wireless adapter on Linux.
Watched a review of this thing. Don't see the appeal. Especially don't see why it needs to be a separate bit of hardware.
It needs to be separate hardware because Google and Apple have a strangle hold on their respective OSes. No way in hell Apple/Google would give a random app deep integration with AI. Although not currently present, it seems like Rabbit (and Humane) want to give a ton of control over the system, data, and apps to the AI.
All of the apps on the rabbit run in the cloud anyway, as well as the AI bits. Nothing is running locally on the device. There’s nothing the rabbit device does that couldn’t be done via an app or web portal to those cloud services instead.
At least with the Humane AI Pin it was an attempt to create a new class of device. The rabbit r1 however is effectively just an oddly shaped Android phone locked to running a single app. The only reason it seems to exist is to allow an existing hardware company to jump on the AI bandwagon.
Makes sense, they can do whatever they want with AOSP as long as they don't want to cert it as 'Android' to have access to Play Store.
What would prevent an Android app from having "deep integration with AI"? If the AI is in the cloud then it's all done through normal web requests, which don't even require a permission, let alone so special allowance from Google.
One amendment, I'd say it's because existing phones won't let an app have access to listening for a wake word or phrase, and a phone hard codes that to the phone vendor code. Having passive access to microphone and camera and activating and showing what they want to the screen without contending with a platform lock screen that won't play ball with them, that sort of thing. "AI" access wasn't really going to be the challenge.
It's not that they didn't run on existing phones, I could see that, I find it more stupid that they stopped short of just making their device a phone capable of traditional interaction. As it stands it's going to be a subset of capability of phones coming out this year that will likely offer similar "AI" features while also continuing to support traditional hand held usage. If they didn't want to sign up for all that, they probably could have teamed up with someone like Motorola, who might be hungry enough to let Rabbit do their thing on a Moto G variant or something.
How many android apps are designed by teenage engineering?
At least this one:
Yeah in the presentation of it was clearly idiotic. I often wonder how seriously these silicon valley people actually take themselves privately.
Don't these people just pitch wild ideas constantly knowing it won't work in the hopes they can live off of someone's venture capital until they can end up with better jobs?
Fake it until you make it.
Anyone have a hacked APK? I wanna test it out.
It's just chat gpt dude
Yeah that's the function, playing around with it would still be fun though? Especially data mining and seeing what else there is apart from the LAM server leak.
So? I wanna fuck with their implementation of it.
"Duh"
Big whoop. MediaTek eval kits offer either Linux or Android AOSP. Why is this news?
Any link to the r1 running doom or Minecraft?
Well, looks like rabbit is taking down these videos 😂. All of the videos of rabbit r1 running doom or Minecraft are now private. Still found one on twitter. https://twitter.com/i/status/1784224319557730722
Thanks! It looks like that they aren't happy with them.
I thought we always knew that the device was going to be Android.
It's crazy you can just download and run it on any other android device though. I'd have thought they'd have locked it down somewhat.
I never really understood who these products were for. I can’t help but think the only end result is a small number of people getting rich off of VC money and some misguidedly optimistic folks getting ripped off by buying these devices.
These products male no sense on the age of smart phones. They will end up just being an app we download or free features of our phones at some point.
R1s statement in response from the article:
So there's literally no reason for this to have been a device at all.
But it's android, so linux, so GPL2, so they have to share these modifications (if they really exist). It's bootleg until soneone sues them.
You'd be surprised how many companies ignore GPL. Providing broken links to the source code tarballs, telling you to send an email request to get the code then proceed to ignore the requests, etc. Only the most famous case got sued, the rest simply got away with it.
The Linux Kernel is GPL2, the Android OS is Apache.
AOSP is not GPL
Was that in question? I thought it was clear from the beginning that it does pretty much everything in the cloud.
Yeah, if you weren't convinced this was a waste of money before finding out that it's like this, you're not going to be convinced by this.
No rea$on at all, except for that one little rea$on that we alway$ $eem to keep coming back to...
Except that some people may like this form factor for these features. Of course it can be delivered in phones, but it does seem at least possible to me that some may prefer a device like this.
I love the dumb little form factors those guys do. The only thing stopping me is that I know it is overhyped bullshit which I will be bored of in a week. If it were easy to develop my own software to completely replace what's on it I might be convinced.
They're possibly complimentary but not mutually exclusive. I think if they sold the form factor of the device over the phone that that would have been more honest marketing.