The Gadget That Wasn't a Phone
The Rabbit r1 and the Humane Pin promised life after the smartphone. The smartphone declined to leave.
By Iris Coleman · 27 June 2024
For a few months in 2024, two small devices convinced a lot of clever people that the phone's reign might be ending. The Rabbit r1, out at CES that January for $199, and the Humane AI Pin both sold the same dream: an AI companion you talk to instead of a screen you stare at.
It is a seductive idea, and an old one.
It is a seductive idea, and an old one. Every few years someone declares the phone too distracting and proposes a calmer object to replace it. The objects keep arriving. The phone keeps not leaving.
The reason is brutal and simple. The phone is not one device; it is the camera, the wallet, the map, the messenger and the trust you have built with all of them. A newcomer does not have to beat one feature. It has to beat the whole accumulated habit.
Both devices struggled, and the autopsies were harsh. But the impulse behind them is not wrong. The winning move, when it comes, will not ask you to abandon the phone. It will sit quietly beside it and do the one thing the phone does badly: get out of your face.