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Comment by echoangle | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to criticize a cool project but why do people feel the need to create new hardware for AI things? It was the same thing with the rabbit r1. Why do I need a device that contains a screen, a microphone and a camera? I have that, it's called a smartphone. Being a bit smaller doesn't really help because I have my phone with me almost all the time anyways. So it's actually more annoying to carry the phone and the new device instead of just having the phone. I would be happy with it just being an app.

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I can answer to this, having worked on an assistant that is always on, from your phone.

The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting. It is hard to have something always on and listening. Especially apple is aggressive with apps running in the background.

You need constant permissioning and special privileges. The exposed APIs themselves are not enough to build deep and stable integrations to the level of Siri/Google Assistant.

Oh, I didn't get that it's supposed to always be listening. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I wouldn't want that anyways. If that's important, that might be a good reason. I think this needs to change in the future though if AI agents are supposed to become popular, I can't imagine buying separate hardware every time. Either the integration in the OS needs to become better or Google/Apple will monopolize the market and be the only options.

> Oh, I didn't get that it's supposed to always be listening. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I wouldn't want that anyways.

I don't know about this project, but generally when a voice assistant is "always listening" they mean it's sitting in a low power state listening for a very specific trigger like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" and literally nothing else. As much as they would probably like to have it really listening all the time, the technology to have a portable device run actual speech recognition and parsing at all times with useful battery life doesn't really exist yet.

You are right, “always listening" they mean it's sitting in a low power state listening for a very specific trigger like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" and literally nothing else.

Yes, I thought it was button-triggered.

Yes it does. A Nvidia Jetson Nano with a microphone running Whisper with a banana sized battery will give you 8 hours of transcription.

If you have a separate -dedicated- Android smartphone for this task, why wouldn't the app run in the foreground?

In some sense this is what, Rabbit R1 tried to do. they just shipped a low end custom android skin in a new formfactor so that they own the platform. Didn't go well for them

> The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting.

I'm not sure what that "etc" is supposed to mean, but GNU/Linux phones run desktop OS and impose no artificial limits on you.

I don't think you're their target audience. I'd love something like this for my kid (who isn't ready for a smartphone).

Other problems are persistence. Have you looked at how hard it is to keep an app running in the background on an iPhone? on a Samsung phone? For an app that needs to be always-on, it's a non-starter unless you're Apple or Google respectively.

We definitely need an alternative to the duopoly iOS/Android

Librem 5 and Pinephone already exist.

>why do people feel the need to create new hardware for AI things?

Because people have agency and hobbies, and they're free to decide what to spend their money and time on.

He means why do they think it’s a good idea not why do they think they have the right to.

You missed this part:

"Because people have agency and hobbies"

More attention next time.

Apple would stop you from scooping up all that delicious delicious data. Google probably would too. Always-on listening requires building e-waste.

because these devices are intended to be always on, which is not possible with iphone?

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