Do you hate apps? Jesse Lyu hates apps. At least, that was my takeaway after my first chat with the founding father of Rabbit Inc., a brand new AI startup debuting a pocket-friendly machine known as the R1 at CES 2024. Instead of taking out your smartphone to finish some activity, trying to find the appropriate app, after which tapping round inside it, Lyu desires us to simply ask the R1 by way of a push-to-talk button. Then a sequence of automated scripts known as “rabbits” will perform the duty so you possibly can go about your day.

The R1 is a red-orange, squarish machine in regards to the dimension of a stack of Post-It notes. It was designed in collaboration with the Swedish agency Teenage Engineering. (Lyu is on TE’s board of administrators.) The R1 has a 2.88-inch touchscreen on the left facet, and there is an analog scroll wheel to the appropriate of it. Above the scroll wheel is a digicam that may rotate 360 levels. It’s known as the “Rabbit Eye”—when it’s not in use, the digicam faces up or down, a de facto privateness shutter—and you’ll make use of it as a selfie or rear digicam. While you should utilize the Rabbit Eye for video calls, it’s not meant for use like a conventional smartphone digicam; extra on this later.

On the appropriate edge is a push-to-talk button you press and maintain to present the R1 voice instructions, and there’s a 4G LTE SIM card slot for fixed connectivity, that means it doesn’t must pair with another machine. (You may also join the R1 to a Wi-Fi community.) It has a USB-C port for charging, and Rabbit claims it’ll final “all day” on a cost.

The R1 prices $199, although you’ll must think about the price of a month-to-month mobile connectivity invoice too, and you need to set that up your self. Preorders begin at the moment, and it ships in late March.