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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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. twitter.com/i/status/1784224319557730722
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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