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.
Edit: Someone also got doom and Minecraft running on this thing
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.
Not that I’m sold on it, just saying…
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).
These products male no sense on the age of smart phones. They will end up just being an app we download or free features of our phones at some point.
How many android apps are designed by teenage engineering?
At least this one:
