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Comment by cdme | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what this device does better than — say — any 5 year old smartphone.

In theory, it's a better and quicker experience than pulling out your phone and using the ChatGPT app for questions and other apps for other things. In practice, the things it does worse might offset the things it does better.

Agreed, a device with less function that does the same thing as a smartphone, something virtually everyone has, seems like an odd business idea. There’s a reason most people do not have, nor carry a digital camera anymore.

In the same way the Apple Watch doesn’t do anything better than an iPhone

Wearables are not supposed to be an app or beat the iPhones processor. They’re supposed to be small and always on

Would you wear an iPhone pro max on your lapel?

The Rabbit R1 is not a wearable device; you might be thinking of the Humane AI Pin.

Another unnecessary piece of hardware.

> In the same way the Apple Watch doesn’t do anything better than an iPhone

I don't own an Apple Watch, but even my basic little Fitbit Charge has quite a few things it does way better than my phone (some of which my phone can't do at all, due to not actually having the required sensors).

It's a little weird to me how common a sentiment this has been in all this. Do y'all not actually use the wearables that already exist? They all have something clear and useful that they do excellently compared to the weird little Android box that the r1 currently is - even little sleep rings like the Oura ring.

And that's beside the fact that the r1 isn't even a wearable.

That is the thing. Not using the smartphone has a point when it propose better ergonomic. Having to carry and get another device out of your pocket is not better ergonomic.

It would make sense not being just a smartphone app if the device was wearable or could be used hand free, it is not.

What does it do better? Extract money out of idiots' wallets.

I'm not really sure what modern smartphones do better than 5 year old smartphones.

Just eyeballing Geekbench scores for iPhones, CPU/GPU/NPU are all about 3x faster, and RAM capacity has doubled.

Do you need all that extra power? I dunno, but it's a pretty big difference.

The latest iPhones are not actually 3x faster, or even 2x faster, for many common tasks such as opening a pdf compared to a 5 year old iPhone on iOS 12. Even for unusually intense workloads, like exporting dozens of pdfs at the same time, it doesn't get anywhere close to 3x.

So most of the gains are purely on paper.

Satellite SOS calls and .. ehh .. number go up?

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