For all the hullabaloo around AI this year, the consumer products that feature AI seem a bit lackluster. They’re either augmenting existing designs (like “AI PCs”) or they’ve flopped hard.
Take the Rabbit R1, which was such an instant failure that it made its way into mainstream news. But one modder is determined to make the thing useful—with a bit of old-fashioned Android ROM power.
If you missed the feeding frenzy that was the Rabbit R1 launch, here’s a quick recap: the Rabbit R1 is a handheld gadget that claims to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to replace some (or all) of the functions of a smartphone, automatically performing the tasks that you’d normally do yourself via apps and texts.
At launch, the barebones hardware (basically just a front-end for APIs and a lot of ChatGPT-style voice interfaces) was blasted as essentially useless, with almost all of the promised near-magical functionality either broken or unavailable until an unspecified date. It was so bad, the makers of the Rabbit R1 have been accused of running a multi-million-dollar scam.
Despite all its problems, the Rabbit R1 is actually kind of cute. With its squat orange case and prominent scroll wheel, it looks like one of those experimental smartphones you would’ve seen ten years ago (like the Blackberry Passport).
Maybe that’s why smartphone modder Facundo Holzmeister of the HowToMen YouTube channel decided to get a custom-baked version of Android running on the thing.
Unsurprisingly, the Rabbit R1’s mobile hardware already runs Android under its hood. The open-source OS is, after all, the easiest way to customize any kind of small gadget with a touchscreen.
But in order to turn the thing into something closer to a conventional smartphone—a small, goofy-looking one—Holzmeister needed to get a slightly customized version of the Lineage custom ROM on the thing, building on initial work done by others since the device’s launch.
Running a more fully-baked version of Android 13, the Rabbit R1 becomes a tiny, functional phone that’s a bit slow and janky. The rotating camera is now working, which is more than you could say for the “AI detection” functionality of the original software.
You can even use the chunky scroll wheel as a volume dial, and you can send and receive texts with the device’s SIM card. (Sadly, phone calls aren’t working at the moment.) But perhaps most impressive is that many apps from the Google Play Store can run on the 2.8-inch screen.
The $200 Rabbit R1 likely won’t be a favorite of Android modders like other oddball hardware, such as the old Barnes & Noble Nook Color or the HP Touchpad. Its tiny size and abysmal battery life when running a more fully-fledged OS make it impractical for everyday use.
But if you’re a fan of weird, doomed gadgets, it might just get a spot on your shelf next to, say, the HTC First “Facebook Phone” or the OUYA.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.