Remember when we were optimistic about AI? Sure, healthy skepticism, but also pretty optimistic about devices like the Rabbit R1 potentially ‘killing the smartphone’ as we know it? The R1 moved 100,000 units and kept return rates under 5% in the initial phases, but those early reviews were brutal. Tech YouTube called it “dog water” and “barely reviewable,” which is basically the digital equivalent of being declared DOA. The device promised a revolutionary AI experience where you could just talk and have things happen, but what users got was a gorgeous piece of hardware wrapped around software that felt half-baked at best.
But here’s where things get interesting. Instead of pulling a Google and quietly killing the project, Rabbit doubled down. Over 16 months, they pushed 30+ over-the-air updates while building what they call a “very unique community” of users who apparently enjoyed being beta testers for a $199 device. Now they’re back with Rabbit OS2, claiming they’ve completely rebuilt the experience from scratch. The question isn’t whether they’ve improved things, it’s whether they’ve improved them enough to matter.
Design: Rabbit
The biggest change is how you actually interact with the thing. The original R1 was almost aggressively voice-first, which sounds cool until you realize that talking to gadgets in public makes you look like you’re having a breakdown. OS2 finally acknowledges that humans have fingers by adding proper gesture controls. Swipe down from the top for quick settings (brightness, volume, camera access), and you get bottom navigation buttons for muting conversations, typing follow-ups, or activating the camera. The conversation flow now appears on screen in real-time, so you can actually see what the AI thinks you said before it does something completely wrong.
But the real visual differentiator is the new card stack system (which feels a lot like the Windows Phone if you ask me). Remember how nobody could figure out what the R1 actually did beyond looking pretty? Rabbit clearly got tired of that question because OS2 surfaces everything through discoverable cards. Swipe up from the main screen and you’ll find your feature overview laid out like a deck of cards. Tap any card to jump into that function, or stick with the old push-to-talk method if you’re feeling nostalgic. Card management works exactly like you’d expect: swipe left to dismiss cards above the stack. It’s basic UI design that should have been there from day one, but hey, better late than never.
The core features got meaningful upgrades too. Magic Gallery now centralizes all your Magic Camera photos through the card stack, while Rabbit Hole (their cloud service) finally supports bulk export for both processed and original images. Translation transcripts sync automatically to your account, and you can actually play back recordings directly on the device now, with AI transcripts uploading to your Rabbit Hole journal. The intern tasks feature gets a dedicated card for enhanced on-device agent interaction, which sounds fancy but basically means you can chat with their AI assistant without jumping through hoops.
Here’s where things get sort of interesting: R1 Creations. Rabbit is positioning this as making the R1 the “first vibe coding device,” which is either brilliant marketing or complete nonsense depending on your tolerance for startup speak. The concept is actually pretty wild though. You have a conversation with the Rabbit intern, describe what you want built, and it creates custom apps, games, or tools right on your device within minutes. Their demo involved building a cyberpunk Pong game through natural language: “Build a Pong game with a cyberpunk theme,” followed by back-and-forth refinement about neon colors, scroll wheel controls, and scoring systems. The AI clarifies details, you provide specifics, and apparently you get a working game deployed to your device.
A vibe-coded version of Pong
The implications here are fascinating if it actually works reliably. Alpha testers have already created a bunch of apps available for free installation at rabbit.tech, with QR code sharing for social distribution. Rabbit frames this as an evolution toward a new kind of app store, though you need intern tasks (their premium service) to create custom stuff yourself. The free library approach is smart, turning early adopters into content creators for everyone else.
What’s most telling is that all these improvements come via software update. The hardware remains completely unchanged, that iconic orange design intact, which means Rabbit is essentially admitting they shipped unfinished software at launch. The question now is whether OS2 delivers enough to justify the R1’s existence in a world where your phone already does most of this stuff better.
The “what can R1 do that your phone can’t” question still looms large. Conversational app creation is genuinely novel, but how often do normal people really need custom Pong games built through voice commands? Rabbit seems to be betting on a future where AI-assisted creation becomes mainstream, positioning themselves as the hardware platform for that shift. Whether that future arrives fast enough to save the R1 remains to be seen, but at least they’re finally shipping software that matches their hardware’s ambition.