Rabbit R1 - What could have been better?

8 things that will make Rabbit R1 a better product.

The eye-catching bright orangey, LAM-based Rabbit R1 device is great on looks but short on features. Once the allure of the smooth plastic surface, the rotor and the pinhole like camera is off then the actual product falls short of the hype. Is it a wasted opportunity or Is it the iPhone 1 which will get better with time?

It is not all downhill as it is widely made to sound.

At $200 and with no subscription it is worth a try and that is why I ordered one. After almost 4 months of waiting what I got feels more like a toy than an AI-based assistant. The form factor is small and it is light to carry, but there are not enough reasons for me to consider it, especially given what my phone can do, and that is critical.

The device responds quickly and with time it can understand the queries better. The quality of response on assessment of a code snippet, a paragraph, or even summaries is as good or sometimes even better than what you get from Gemini. The lack of distracting elements like apps, social media, or internet browsers is a plus. That unfortunately may not be enough for me to encourage carrying another device.

There are a few things that I thought would make the Rabbit maybe hop a little further.

• The battery needs a quick fix. On active usage, you can see the battery losing almost a percentage point every couple of minute. Tell me about the range anxiety.

• It has a touchscreen but that is hardly ever used. At least the roller could have had a press option so that you do not have to use two hands to select a menu. The touchscreen should be enabled at least when using menus.
• The menu itself feels frustratingly antiquated, resembling the nested submenus of early Nokia phones. In today's world of intuitive touchscreens and powerful search functions, this approach feels like a step backward. For a voice-enabled device, relying solely on physical controls for basic tasks like adjusting volume or brightness seems particularly archaic. A more user-friendly interface, perhaps incorporating voice commands or a hybrid touchscreen/scroll wheel approach, would be a welcome improvement.
• Who creates a personal assistant and no provision for a reminder, Alarm clock, etc.? That looks so basic that its absence stands out. Maybe it would have helped to keep the phones away from bedrooms. Well, will you pay 200 dollars for an alarm clock?
• The camera input is pretty unintuitive. You are not sure as to which part of the screen or text is the camera capturing. There is also no clarity on how it is processing the input - is it an image grab or is it reading it live? Maybe a pointer or selection box might help to know what it is seeing or reading. Fortunately, it is fast. I could get it to read a long WSJ article and provide me a summary in under a couple of minutes.
• The most important miss is the external integration. I cannot export the content that I created or get the summary of an article to be sent to a notepad or an email so that I can retrieve it later. It seems like a big miss. An integration to an external environment is a bare minimum. What about a “file drop” if not anything else?
• The speaker is good enough for the purpose. Of course won’t recommend it for listening to music but good enough to hear responses to prompts. A bit creaky on high volumes but bearable.
• The biggest sales pitch of Rabbit R1 was a "device for an appless world". Compelling vision. But today it can only access four apps. There are issues with the actual app connections. The experience is not consistent. I was prompted to tap button five times to refresh but that did not work. Access to the app world should be like accessing a mobile network while roaming. It should be smooth once the basics are addressed.

The Rabbit still looks like an extension and not as an independent AI device. The camera/voice interface works very well. For instance, Gemini app could not read the same WSJ article using the camera and give me a summary. Rabbit took less than two minutes to do that. That might indeed be its biggest challenge also. It has to be a few miles ahead of Gemini and Chat GPT to survive as an independent appless device.

The Rabbit still has a lot more to improve, but I might keep it for some more time, as I find the voice and camera interface quite endearing and easy to use. However, significant improvements are necessary, particularly on app integration and feature depth, before it can truly be a product worth carrying around.

Dr. Pandian Angaiyan Bharath Patil Krishna Gopal Daniel Mutch Charlie Hills #RabbitR1