Do you hate apps? Jesse Lyu hates apps. Not less than, that was my takeaway after my first chat with the founding father of Rabbit Inc., a brand new AI startup debuting a pocket-friendly machine referred to as the R1 at CES 2024. As an alternative of taking out your smartphone to finish some job, trying to find the suitable app, after which tapping round inside it, Lyu needs us to only ask the R1 through a push-to-talk button. Then a collection of automated scripts referred to as “rabbits” will perform the duty so you’ll be able to go about your day.
The R1 is a red-orange, squarish machine concerning the measurement of a stack of Put up-It notes. It was designed in collaboration with the Swedish agency Teenage Engineering. (Lyu is on TE’s board of administrators.) The R1 has a 2.88-inch touchscreen on the left facet, and there is an analog scroll wheel to the suitable of it. Above the scroll wheel is a digicam that may rotate 360 levels. It is referred to as the “Rabbit Eye”—when it’s not in use, the digicam faces up or down, a de facto privateness shutter—and you’ll make use of it as a selfie or rear digicam. Whereas you need to use the Rabbit Eye for video calls, it’s not meant for use like a conventional smartphone digicam; extra on this later.
On the suitable edge is a push-to-talk button you press and maintain to present the R1 voice instructions, and there’s a 4G LTE SIM card slot for fixed connectivity, which means it doesn’t have to pair with every other machine. (You may as well join the R1 to a Wi-Fi community.) It has a USB-C port for charging, and Rabbit claims it’ll final “all day” on a cost.
The R1 prices $199, although you’ll should think about the price of a month-to-month mobile connectivity invoice too, and it’s a must to set that up your self. Preorders begin at the moment, and it ships in late March.