Our phones are great at many things, like snapping vacation photos, entertaining us with an endless stream of bite-sized videos and acting as our personal planners. But that’s actually problematic, according to Jesse Lyu, founder and CEO of AI tech startup Rabbit. He thinks the myriad apps and functions available on our phones have stripped away their simplicity, and he’s trying to change that with a new gadget called the R1.
The R1, which debuted at CES 2024, is a mobile device designed to answer requests and handle tasks rather than run apps. There are no actual apps on the R1; instead you press a physical push-to-talk button to launch a music playlist or book a taxi as if you were speaking into a walkie-talkie. The phone’s software is powered by a large action model, or an algorithm that can learn from how humans use apps and interfaces so that it can replicate and automate those processes. Lyu likens it to handing your phone to a friend to order takeout rather than doing so yourself. The R1 ships in late March for $199.
A close up of the Rabbit R1’s camera and scroll wheel.
The R1’s bright orange hue, relatively small screen and scroll wheel give it a nostalgic and almost retro look. The R1 physically shares some similarities with smartphones, such as a touchscreen display and a camera, but those parts are put to use in different ways.
The R1 doesn’t have a traditional phone operating system, for example, but instead uses that 2.88-inch screen to display cards in response to your requests. The camera isn’t really meant for documenting your days on Instagram, but rather is intended to assist with visual queries like snapping photos of what’s in your fridge to generate recipe ideas.
Although it’s not being positioned as a phone, you can certainly make phone calls with it since it has a SIM card slot along with WiFi and cellular connectivity. It runs on a 2.3Ghz MediaTek Helios P35 processor and has 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM.
