There’s no denying the chokehold that smartphones have on the tech world (and our attention spans), and this dominance has resulted in a new market of tech that’s designed to be out of the way. A new California-based tech company, rabbit, tapped Teenage Engineering to create an AI-powered device specifically to execute the important functions of a smartphone, without distracting you from what’s important.
Using an LAM (a Large Action Model similar to Large Language Models, but takes the language processing and generation further by executing actions based on inputs), the r1 is equipped with rabbit’s own OS that’s been trained on existing apps we all use, but is an app-free device that uses the internet and your inputs to execute actions like ordering food, calling an Uber, and much more. The r1 has already been trained to act as a human would when interacting with apps, and rabbit has stated that users will be able to train their r1s to tackle specific tasks on more apps. It’ll also have a training mode at launch, which will let you teach the device multi-step processes in different apps.
Getting into the hardware, this little device is touted as half the size of an iPhone, and equipped with a 2.88-inch touchscreen display, a push-to-talk button, and a scroll wheel. It’s running on a 2.3GHz MediaTek processor, with 128 GB of storage and 4GB of RAM, offering both Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity. The rotating camera (or “rabbit eye”) is also powered by AI, allowing you to make calls and use apps that need a camera. The battery life is advertised as “all day”, and you get a USB-C port and an empty SIM card slot.
Pre-orders for the rabbit r1 are live now for $199, and shipping is slated to begin towards the end of March this year. At the time of writing, it looks like the Luminous Orange colorway is the only option.
