Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shawnj2 | Hacker News Reader

The biggest downside I see is that 1. according to reviewers the battery life is utter garbage. Using Android probably isn’t helping that much. And 2. There is no actual purpose for this device, there’s nothing it does you can’t do better with a phone.

The target market for this is presumably the same as the Playdate but any of the normal AI apps would be better for most users tbh

View on HN

The Playdate at least has games and apps, even if they are all vaguely reminiscent of simple flash games (just due to the limited capabilities).

The R1, like any "AI hardware" that has no local AI, is just a bad smartphone doing a subset of things you can do with your phone.

> The target market for this is presumably the same as the Playdate

I don't think "this could be an app on my phone" works as an argument for the Playdate the way it does for the Rabbit R1. A dedicated gaming device with real buttons is better than a touchscreen any day and the constraints of the hardware make the games unusual and highly creative. It would diminish the experience considerably if it was just a mobile app.

Contrast with the R1 which seems to want to be a general purpose device that just does everything worse than the supercomputer you already carry around in your pocket.

I agree the playdate is definitely the “quirky $200 teenage engineering designed device” to pick up between the two

Sometimes it's not about what it can do at first but what long term potential the creators see. Perhaps this is the MVP they could make and release but they made design choices that aren't apparent due to a vision for a future iteration that is more capable.

An MVP for this device would be an app, there’s no demonstrated capabilities the playdate has that a phone can’t do. I actually think the Humane pin “””succeeded””” in that they actually produced a device that has capabilities a 5 year old smartphone loaded with the same software doesn’t.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com