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
R1s statement in response from the article:
“rabbit r1 is not an Android app. We are aware there are some unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there. We understand the passion that people have to get a taste of our AI and LAM instead of waiting for their r1 to arrive. That being said, to clear any misunderstanding and set the record straight, rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service. rabbit OS is customized for r1 and we do not support third-party clients. Using a bootlegged APK or webclient carries significant risks; malicious actors are known to publish bootlegged apps that steal your data. For this reason, we recommend that users avoid these bootlegged rabbit OS apps.”
So there’s literally no reason for this to have been a device at all.
AOSP and lower level firmware modifications
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.
Yes, I know, but that shouldn’t be a norm.
There was a case this year, where SFC, a nonprofit organization won against Vizio for LGPL violation. It’s important, because SFC was just a normal consumer, not the owner of the original code. So now just a random user can sue this Rabbit company, and they should win, more details here: https://blog.lukaspanni.de/2024/01/09/the-significance-of-the-vizio-judgment-for-open-source-compliance-programs/
Edit: the case is not settled yet, but ongoing since 2021: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
And there are other funny solutions, like when a Chinese “tech influencer/diy maker” Naomi Wu aka SexyCyborg just simply walked into the office of a Chinese manufacturer, and requested the source code in person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The Linux Kernel is GPL2, the Android OS is Apache.
AOSP is not GPL
They wrote “lower level firmware modifications”, AOSP runs on Linux kernel, and firmware modifications usually mean they modified the Linux kernel. This device seems like a regular Android phone, and afaik this rules apply to all Android phones, that’s why Android rom cooking can exist.
They may be compelled to release any driver code associated, however firmware is not covered by relation to kernel. Linux runs on mostly proprietary firmware. The “linux-firmware” package in many distributions that contains hot plug firmware is mostly proprietary blobs.
That said I doubt they had much significant firmware work, it may just be logo and some tweaked configuration from their SoC vendor. They likely had to modify AOSP a bit more to allow their launcher unfettered access to the device in ways not modeled by standard AOSP, but that’s user space that isn’t GPL.
This was a marketing post, not a technical one. Unless we see any git branches or ROM teardown we won’t know what they were doing. I highly doubt that they did any kernel patches though.
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.
I completely agree. If they take another swing, I hope they’ll make it much more open for development. Or just update these.
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.
Technically you can’t call it “Android” without paying Google for certification and play store/gapps license. It’s AOSP.
Just so you know, AOSP is short for Android Open Source Project.
They should just do it recursive like GNU and make it the AOSP stand for the “AOSP Open Source Project.”
The term “Android” itself is trademarked and can’t be used by hardware manufacturers without passing certification and paying Google.
doesn’t mean it’s not running Android, they just cannot use it for marketing/branding 🥴
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Dude, maybe it was meant to be a joke, but that doom picture is so fake. C’mon.
His point still stands as the image in the thumbnail is as fake as it gets.
Hehe, thumbnail.
Ironically the fakeness is covering a thumbnail.
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.
So it was faked. The ship of Theseus was still a ship with the same capabilities at the end. They didn’t add an engine to it.
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Some pregnancy test have a small LCD screen
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
I’d still expect a lot more from a toy at $200. That’s cheap drone money or a decent RC car.
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.
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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.
VCs will just follow the hype of the day and invest in anything that spouts the right buzzwords. But they’re aware of course, that most of those will fail. It takes just one out of ten to make it for it to be worthwhile.
If they weeded out some of the shittier ideas they’d be one in nine or eight.
I’ve met them they seriously don’t think like that. They have so much money that they can afford to be completely irresponsible with it. From that standpoint it is easier to just throw money at the wall and see what sticks and go through the effort of actually working it out.
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.
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.
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.
I watched this review to check him out after writing that. I think he’s pretty great. YouTube is fucking awful, I’ll have to catch him somewhere else.
For a counterpoint, I ask you to see his Cybertruck review, he definitely put his kiddy gloves for it.
Oh, thank you. Damn, you hate to see 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.
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.
It’s more just a waste of resources. This thing has no reason to exist.
It’s the ‘this could have been an email’ of consumer devices.
Lol. “Why are you all happy?! Stop having fun!” I bought it and I’m satisfied with it. If you don’t see the appeal, that’s ok. Just don’t buy it.
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.
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 the internet. Nobody has any credibility.
I vouch for @foggy’s credibility. You can trust that guy
Trust me, I’m a credibilianist.
It’s not that deep…
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.
there’s nothing the rabbit device does that couldn’t be done via an app
Currently, the Rabbit does 2 things for me that can’t be an app on my phone.
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It’s not my phone. I value this enough to pay for it. I spend more time than I would like on my phone. I’m happy when I can use another single purpose device to help me stay focused.
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The push to talk hardware button has been more pleasant for me to use than the ChatGPT shortcut on my Pixel phone.
In the end, the ChatGPT + Perplexity in a box fills a space in my life that I can’t find anywhere else—given my criteria.
I understand your criteria is different and you value different things. That’s ok. It just means this device isn’t for you.
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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.
You brought up advantages of it being a device, which I don’t disagree with. Nothing you said explained the “allow deep integration with AI”. That’s the only part I was questioning.
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.
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
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.
