Rabbit R1 and other ‘AI-first devices’ are in the pager era, far from replacing our smartphones yet

It may seem anti-smartphone to some, and that’s what Lyu’s Rabbit R1 is trying to be. The R1 is not another smartphone wannabe with a different shape and form; rather, it is a completely different product with a unique DNA and purpose. Designed to be a pocket companion, the R1 responds to your voice, and your voice becomes the user interface, setting itself apart from how we use a modern smartphone. You are not googling a query or opening a website like you do on your phone, but you can order food, book an Uber, and make flight and hotel reservations.

After all, all the heavy work is being done by AI, and the R1 uses what Rabbit calls a Large Action Model, or LAM, which works similarly to an LLM. Instead of learning from a database of words, it learns from human actions and can use any website or web apps, then interface with those websites or web apps and tell you about the result. Essentially, it replaces the phone for tasks such as playing music, buying groceries, or even sending messages, all through a single interface. It is compact in size with a retro-inspired enclosure, has an LCD display, packs a 360-degree camera, and even supports 4G LTE.

It is a phone, but also a device that’s not a smartphone in the traditional sense. You won’t be able to watch movies or see your LinkedIn feed as you would on a smartphone, but there will be far fewer distractions that bother us all the time, like targeted ads that follow us on the web. Lyu wants the R1 to be a modern version of a walkie-talkie that completes tasks that 90% of us use a smartphone for via a push-to-talk button.

Pager Motorola (1995) pic.twitter.com/pdqeSpWaCl

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With the Rabbit R1, Lyu is taking on Apple and Samsung, who are the top smartphone makers in the world with the market power, sheer resources, and the R&D muscle to make or break a trend. Both companies wouldn’t want smartphones to be replaced with new age, AI-powered mobile computers so easily. On top of that, you have players like Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Qualcomm who are also in the race but would rather demonstrate what AI can do on a smartphone first, rather than shifting to a new product category with an unproven track record. Samsung earlier this week launched its latest flagship Galaxy S24 smartphone, touting new artificial intelligence features as a defense mechanism, proving that phones are far from being dull and boring despite the market being stagnant and headed for maturity in recent years. Similarly, Apple is also rumored to add AI features left and right in the iPhone, and we will probably get the first look at the Worldwide Developer Conference when the company unveils the next version of iOS.

The smartphone ecosystem, which involves phone makers, chip companies, OS providers, and developers, is mature to a point that it wouldn’t be easy to imagine a phone being replaced with any other device because of the stickiness of the smartphone. Even a product like the Apple Watch, which is now a mature product after a decade in the market, is still a companion to the iPhone and not a replacement. The Vision Pro, Apple’s next big bet, may follow the same trajectory as the Apple Watch despite the Cupertino company wanting the mixed-reality headset to eventually replace the iPhone in years to come.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is Samsung’s top-end flagship smartphone. (Image credit: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express)

Clearly, phone makers are under pressure to add artificial intelligence smarts – including new generative AI processing power – built into smartphones to be ahead of the curve and maintain their dominance. But the truth is, even with Gen AI capabilities, a Galaxy S24 or the next iPhone won’t be fundamentally different from what we have today. That’s where the new age AI-first hardware devices like the Rabbit R1 or Humane AI Pin that use AI as the foundation lays the groundwork for what’s about to come.

Lyu said in his keynote that the R1 isn’t meant to replace your smartphone. He may be right, or he is intentionally taking a conservative approach to a different kind of mobile computer that has a rather affordable price of $199 – no subscription needed. We don’t know yet. But we do know that Lyu’s Rabbit R1 or Humane AI Pin for that matter is going against the idea of apps, which are the backbone of a modern smartphone. A lot of people interact or live inside a mobile app. Think of how people spend hours on Instagram or how they pay their bills and top-up their mobile plans using Paytm. Modern apps are designed to take advantage of the screen, and while the Rabbit R1 does have a display, the device doesn’t behave like a smartphone. The elephant in the room is how average users respond to a device like the R1. You already have a smartphone and a smartwatch that go with you everywhere, but there could be a third device to use with voice commands.

Vision Pro is Apple’s premium mixed-reality headset. (Image credit: Apple)

It’s refreshing to see devices like the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin that have ambitions to change the status quo and offer a different take on smartphones, but they are still in the infancy stage, mimicking how the pager once was. The pager became a symbol of social status in the 1990s, allowing messages to be transmitted via radio waves across countries. It took several years for pagers to be refined to reach mass public adoption. Expect something similar with the new wave of devices that are designed by Generative AI, instead of a familiar user interface and support for app stores. Despite the hype, AI-focused hardware that aims to reduce our reliance on smartphones is still at a very early stage. No matter how they are pitched, it will take generations to get the AI-driven interface right to offer an alternative to the app-based model that Apple and Google have championed. But it’s also a question of whether we will really see a spate of AI-first hardware devices like the R1 from different companies in a similar way as smartphones boomed years ago, or is it just a trend?

Apple may have reinvented the smartphone with the iPhone and created the app-store model, but it was Google that brought smartphones into the hands of billions with Android. Who will be the next Apple and Google in AI-driven hardware? Arguably, the biggest question that needs an answer is what will replace the smartphone, if at all? Is it going to be a headset that takes over your face, or will that be an AI-based handheld? Only time will tell.