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
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
Dude, maybe it was meant to be a joke, but that doom picture is so fake. C’mon.
Well doom can run on a freaking pregnancy test. At that point if it had any kind of processor and a screen, it can run Doom.
I’m pretty sure that story was faked by putting a separate display in the shell of a pregnancy test. They don’t even have real displays usually, let alone a full reprogrammable microcontroller
it wasn’t faked, but it was very much a ship.of Theseus pregnancy test. They replaced the microcontroller with one they could program (it might have been the reprogrammable version of the same microcontroller. And the screen was replaced.
Doom on a single LED light when? Asking for a friend
How many android apps are designed by teenage engineering?
At least this one:
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.
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.
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.
Even now they’re already leveraging their OS-level control. The Android Authority guys said in their report, “the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant”. I don’t work at Rabbit, so I don’t know exactly what modifications they’ve done to their AOSP fork, but they’re doing something.
If I had to guess, I’d say they’ve messed with the power management of AOSP and probably the process scheduling somehow? I say this because the Rabbit R1 is hands down the fastest way to access an assistant that I’ve used. I have a ChatGPT shortcut on my homescreen of my Pixel 8 phone and the ChatGPT app is constantly killed in the background, so often times I go to access the assistant but I have to wait for an app to load. The R1 is instant.
And that’s without counting the time it takes to face or fingerprint unlock the phone, then tap an icon.
No, I would have not paid $200 if Rabbit was an app. I have ChatGPT and Perplexity on my phone, I don’t like the experience compared to the R1. I paid $200 for the end to end Rabbit experience.
Btw, I get that some people don’t mind unlocking their phone, tapping an icon, waiting for it to load, asking a question, then getting an answer. That’s fine. If you’re happy with that experience, then the Rabbit R1 is not for you.
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.
Apps can absolutely listen for a wake word tho
What’s with the terribly shopped doom pic?
I was lazy to find the real picture. So, I just posted the first one I found.
You do realize that your statements now seem less credible than if you had left that picture out, right?
It’s not that deep…
It’s the internet. Nobody has any credibility.
I vouch for @foggy’s credibility. You can trust that guy
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).
Broadcom is also closed source (I think). I have to use closed source drivers for my broadcom wireless adapter on Linux.
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.
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.
We know it’s just ChatGPT (and Perplexity). That’s why we bought it. It’s just a fun frontend for a chat bot. That’s like the main point.
