2024: The Beginning of the End of the Mobile Phone?
A replacement for the mobile phone has been desperately trying to be born this past year and will be soon. There are a number of contenders out there but two of them rise to the top of the proverbial heap for me. Each of these pieces of tech are a true glimpse of our not-so-distant future.
About a month ago, the Humane.AI Pin was announced, now it’s the Rabbit R1 which debuted at CES a few days ago. Both of these devices run an insanely powerful, cloud-based LAM (large action model) AI operating on proprietary operating systems.
Humane.AI Pin
What these devices have in common is they are trying to replace the complexity of apps, and tactile UI with all of its clicking and swiping with only words. The Humane.AI Pin is smaller, meant to be clipped on the body, and comes in at an eye-watering $699 plus $24 per month for the subscription fee.
The Rabbit R1, however, can be preordered for $199 with (they claim) zero subscription fees and will be shipped in March or April.
Each of these devices take a slightly different approach to the same end goal, to eventually make our mobile phones obsolete. The Humane.AI Pin has no screen; you can interact with it only via voice commands. The design is sleek, akin to an Apple device. I nearly bought one of these when I watched the keynote but the lack of screen and subscription fee made me pause and really think about it.
Rabbit R1
The Rabbit R1 includes a small touchscreen on the front for those of us who are visual people. It encourages you to train yourself to use voice commands but the screen is there if you want it. I think this was smart on their part as the R1 feels less of a leap of faith into the voice-only UI realms. Add the price of $199 to the equation and it feels like the perfect device for this early stage in the AI personal assistant/mobile phone slayer evolution. I like the design as well, it strikes a cool balance between retro and futuristic. In fact, I usually steer clear of any 1st Gen devices but I preordered one today and can’t wait to try it out when it’s delivered in March/April. The R1 includes a sim card slot so I imagine an announcement will be made in the coming weeks about its ability to make/recieve calls.
Concerns
Do I have concerns with LAM? Yes I do. I’m worried that having an AI agent picking things out for us, blindly, might open us up to even more monopolies like Google. Here’s an example: Imagine we give a command like, “Book me a morning flight to London.” If the LAM is biased it will just automatically whichever airline pays the AI company the most money then the consumer loses. Privacy, also, is always a concern. I see a future where we’re all running our own OS that is decentralized and it will somehow interact with these LAMs.
Conclusion
What I’m almost sure of is these are the kinds of devices that will, someday, replace our phones. What I can’t wait for is a return to the world I remember from my younger days where ninety percent of our attention isn’t consumed by our mobile phones every waking hour. I look forward to a time at some point in the future where people are actually present and paying attention again. I think these kinds of devices are certainly a step in that direction.
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When you consider the price of most flagship phones is over $1000 that's actually not too bad. This seems pretty cool, but I really think it is going to be a stretch for people to re-learn delayed gratification. I look forward to seeing what you think of the Rabbit when you finally get one in your hands!
I agree, $699 isn't bad for a true mobile phone replacement but what caused me to pause on the AI Pin was it's not tried and true tech. What intrigued me about the Rabbit was it seems like a "bridge device" that will help to ease the user from mobile phones to something different (and hopefully better). I can't wait to play around with it and will be sharing my results!
Looking forward to it!
Heard about this just yesterday on Rogan. Scary stuff. Even scarier to me that so many people are willingly oblivious to all this, and pretending they can carry on same as usual. Imagine how that will hit.
Oh my!! Congratulations on the website!! It looks wonderful. Very minimalist and chic, I love it. I think it suits you. And I love the photography page, it's a very nice touch, my friend. So happy for you :)
Oh, I'm going to have to check that episode out! Do you know the Ep number? It's going to be different, for sure. I hope we evolve this in a proactive way where personal privacy is guarded more than it is now with mobile phones.
Thank you very much! I was so frustrated at first but about two days into the work it all just seemed to "click". I have big plans for this. : )
I hope you keep us updated 😊 sounds exciting. Yeah sure, the episode is #2082 with Debra Soh. Only listened to half but it was a pretty good one so far.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2UOSTM1YCl71ybja9wUiVZ?si=VOYDl8HJSoym0NmlXKo5Dg
I certainly will. The device doesn't ship until March/April so it'll be a little bit yet. Thank you! I have something to listen to today now! Enjoy your weekend.
true
I don't sincerely see them replacing mobile phones in the near future, partly because of the exorbitant price and the downsides some of which you mentioned. But still, LAM is a laudable tech invention and I look forward to owning one whenever it becomes convenient to do so.
I really do think a device like this will win out, for some people, only because the I can see a backlash against mobile phones (and how much of our attention they consume) coming.
You can buy access, but you'll never own it. It stays with the company
Technology is growing fast and fast day by day. I agreed soon these phones will be replaced
This will be like the old video tape war in the 1980's BetaMax vs. VHS. Hopefully the better of the two wins out this time instead of what happened with video tape. Lol.
I didn't know anything about these devices: they look really cool, but what if I find myself in a situation where I can't talk or where there's a lot of noise? In cases like these, still having a screen looks almost essential and, just for that, R1 seems a better option.
They're Bluetooth compatible so wireless headphones will connect.
It would be useful if one could use the headphones controls to interact with the Rabbit, to avoid having to use the Rabbit button when you are driving.
Reasonable, there might be commercial relationships between them.
I don't believe that these devices should replace mobile phones, maybe they can act as fashion gadget or add on for phones but that's all. I mean, mobile phones didn't replace laptops...
Time will tell!
Yes, that's true.
I was fascinated with everything! When you get it in your hands, you must show us everything it does to see. One of the incredible, and not so good, things about living in this day and age is that every day human beings seek to perfect their ideas, inventions. Every day there is a new invention that surpasses the other. When you are saving to have a high-end cell phone, this appears and you don't want to buy anything. Although the price may be, for the average person, a bit high, if this manages to surpass the cell phone, we will see the Chinese making their own version. hahahaha.
Is it my impression or even the advertisers look like sci-fi characters? They look so perfect, impersonal and serious!
Anyway, this is the device we should use when we meet each other. It will know how to translate us and we will be able to communicate. hahahaha. A hug and good Thursday.
I see these kinds of devices as having a learning curve but once we're accustomed to using them there could be a HUGE time savings. Scrubbing the web, clicking apps, and doing research is incredibly time consuming and it seems like these devices can do all that (and then some). At $199, if this Rabbit R1 can really replace a cell phone and take a decent photo I can see myself saying au revior to my iPhone. Yes, the keynotes are highly polished, for sure! I'm sure this could handle realtime translation. Have a great weekend Nancy!
Without a large screen, I don't see how it could replace the modern smartphone for most people. I could see it as a complementary device (kind of like the Apple Watch or Android equivalents). In fact, it might make more sense in a watch format anyway. I mean you could implement this same functionality in a watch/phone combo anyway.
A smaller size would definitely be better. Maybe the next gen will fit on the wrist?
I have also seen from the internet where a robot is serving customers food and drinks in a restaurant, in 2022, they even made female toys for sex pleasure and they inserted an engine that makes them talk like real human being. I won't be surprised when our phone will be replaced for something else, of a truth we are yet to see the beginning of the end of a mobile phone.
Yeah, I think robots will soon be a part of our lives (like it or not), probably in the next decade. The world is finally catching up to the science fiction of our youth, let's just hope it doesn't turn dystopian!
I hope so too..
Leap of faith indeed! It will take me awhile to wrap my head around that one. It seems reasonably priced given the 1st gen status though.
Congats on the website! It looks great on a preliminary thumb-through and I will be checking it out further this evening!
It took me a while to fully grasp the advantages of this. I've been letting the Humane.AI keynote ruminate in my brain for the past month. I can envision it now and the R1 seems inexpensive enough at $199 (and no subscription fees) to give it a shot. There's no way I'd spend $699 plus $24/month on tech that isn't tried and true.
Thank you! I had a few moments of frustration/despair while working on it but an satisfied with it now. I plan on including blog and merchandise pages at some point in the future...maybe selling t-shirts with short poems or quotes.
We live in a world where things are advancing on a daily basis and as time goes on more of this will be replaced.
It's probably still a long road to that, but one day ... who knows, mobile phones might really be history.
I really hope phones evolve into something less intrusive and all-consuming. I don't think using them as we are is healthy.
sure, trade your brain for some "AI" device and expect more attention
lol
How is this different from a mobile phone running an AI assistant that 99% of people use every day? In my mind a device like would require less of our attention, no?
yeah - how is it different from a mobile phone running an AI assistant that 99% of people use every day?
why changing the device people put their attention to would change anything ?
When I see and hear something about this, I only become more certain about the limitless imagination of human beings in both ways (for the good and for the bad).
It's going to be a wild future! What a time to be alive, truly.
This is to show how the world is really evolving at a very fast pace and this is getting evident in the new gadget getting made. But wait, how will it be convenient to be used without the screen
This starts to show more clearly how people will gradually (quickly) replace their own will and consciousness more than ever before - I advise strongly against participating.
Both really cool demos. Honestly I don't think either one is advanced enough to win over smartphones yet. A lot of what they show I already do with my Apple watch, even as crappy as Siri is (Apple promises they are upgrading Siri to be actual AI in the next version of their OSes). But I do like their ideas and for a couple of first generation products, they have done well. I hope they will both be successful enough to be able to iterate on their ideas with future versions.
This is what I hope the future will be. What I fear it will instead be is everyone wearing AR glasses, so that not only do they have the screen in front of them 24/7, but everyone will be pressured to do the same if you want to experience the world—for example, imagine that your friends have a really cool outfit, but it's virtual and you can only see this outfit if you put on your AR glasses. Maybe for you and me, we don't care, but can you imagine the peer pressure for kids?
Be sure to give a review when you get your R1 after you get used to it. I like how it looks. It reminds me of Mother Box, actually, if you are a Kirby fan.
Interesting stuff! The future will be pretty cool!
I think Apple is going to surprise everyone with a highly advanced Siri. That's kind of their forte, perfecting things before releasing them. It often leaves them being last to show up at the party but the tech is usually impressive. I can see them possibly charging a premium for the most advanced version of Siri.
I really hope we escape a world where we're wearing our screens. I think this would be infinitely worse than mobile phones. That's one reason this LAM tech got me so excited. We become straight up cyborgs at this point, I'm afraid, or way closer to it.
I definitely will review the R1 here when I have a chance to use it for a while. I got in on the second round of the presale so mine should be delivered in March/April.
The future is going to be insanely cool and interesting. If managed wisely this next wave of tech will help us in ways we can't even imagine. I, honestly, as someone looking at the elderly phase of life in 20 or so years am thankful to have been born. Cars will drive themselves by then and those who can afford them will have a personal robot to help them out around the house.
I'm totally with you. The exponential curve of growth is speeding up: we are close to going vertical, where our technological progress in just one year will be greater than all of human history. Then double that for the next year, and so on. In 20 years I think things will look so different than today. I'm excited to see where things lead. Provided we don't kill each other (a war or mad scientist doing something) or a extinction-level natural disaster doesn't kill us (like the yellowstone supervolcano), I think we are near a Star Trek type future.
I agree. It's going to be a race against time, I think. The tech will need to solve a lot of huge problems for us in a very short period of time. This might allow humanity to survive the century. The way it's going I'm afraid we won't do it on our own.
Nice to hear about it. I must say, technology is going much advance now and every day new inventions made our lives easier.
Mobile phone made our life easy and shortened the distance. In the same way, now this short device limits the space and have some advance technologies too.
Very interesting these devices. I've always hated mobile phones with all the apps not working together at all. There are some great apps for specific uses, but I don't think mobiles are very productive at all, just time suckers mostly. however, I do use a phone for ready emails/documents, which I think would be pretty difficult with this device, only having text to speech. As a dev, I need to see apps and webpages while on the go, so this device would not help with that. Interesting none-the-less.
I can relate! I would absolutely love for apps to fade away into the background and not even have to interact with them but have the AI be the intermediary. I think this is where computing is headed. The AI will be an agent or personal assistant that will navigate and use that app-layer for us. The R1 does have a touchscreen but I'm not sure how capability it is. I'll find out in a few months when it's delivered.
Yes Cool. The one thing I don't like is having RF near my body, so I keep my cell phone on a table or desk away form me. Wearing that RF device on your chest right at the heart is a big NO for me. I guess you could still drop these on a desk/table but they seem meant to be right on your person, which I get. Most people wouldn't care I guess.
I'd never see myself using one of these in the near future, nor the elder people who barely got used to mobile phones. I know technology evolves fast but I think this might be closer to reality in maybe a few decades from now on, or at least I hope so, lol
My curiosity got the best of me with the R1. I can't wait to see if I feel more or less free with it.
Hello, @ericvancewalton
Wow, it's amazing how artificial intelligence applications are driving the new generation of devices, of course, to the detriment of our best tool, our brain.
Don't get me wrong! I'm not a hater of technology, on the contrary, I'm a fan as long as it empowers you and doesn't stunt you. In any case, it is up to you to decide. I agree with your well-founded fears. It is very likely that the technology companies will abuse and the government will invade even more our privacy.
However, the changes do not stop and one must adapt. By the way, I like the minimalist style of your web redesign.
Greetings.
I think the threat to our privacy is a real concern unless we do things drastically different that we've done in the past. Each iteration of tech erodes our privacy a bit more.
Thanks! Minimalism is what I was going for. I eventually want to integrate this blog into the site somehow. I haven't been able to find a way to pull the content from Hive into the site but I haven't given up yet.
This is too much for my well-matured brain but would certainly give our eyes some rest. It would be great if we could stop staring at our screens and go back to really listening to a conversation. We'll see what the future holds, but nothing seems impossible anymore!
I love your website Eric, nice to see your sweet Amstel there <3
Have a great weekend my friend!
I can't wait to try it out. I hope there's a way I can use the R1 as my mobile phone for a few weeks to really get a feel for what it would be like to shed the iPhone.
Thank you, Lizelle! I'm glad I stuck with it. I got so frustrated at a few points I nearly quit but when I got to that point I took a break for the day and that seemed to help. The site is almost exactly what I hoped it would be now. Yes, I had to include my little buddy. Hard to believe it'll be a year since he's been gone on the 19th of this month. We miss him so much. I hope you enjoy your weekend. It's getting into the double digits below zero (F) here. My least favorite time of the year.
It will be interesting to see how that pans out, my phone is almost like a baby's dummy, I'd feel lost without it!
I have to update our little website again, it was quite a challenge for me, but the site builder my ISP offers, is quite user friendly.
Have a wonderful Sunday Eric, time for comfort food. We're sweltering here, it's really awful!
I'm having my hernia fixed this week, not looking forward to it.
I'm the same way, Lizelle. As wonderful as the peace and quiet would be without a phone it's hard to imagine a world without some version of it. They're just so useful. Traveling, especially, is 100x better with a smart phone.
I'm glad your site builder is user friendly! That makes a huge difference. Squarespace is decent too but they changed how their site builder works since I dabbled the last time so it was like relearning all over again.
I hope you enjoyed your weekend. We're double digits below zero now at 10am but it will be warming up into the 40's in a week. I kept myself warm with a delicious chicken pot pie yesterday and a nice glass of red wine.
Good luck on your hernia repair! I wish you a speedy recovery my friend. Take care of yourself and have a wonderful week.
I really don't know how we managed without cell phones. I still remember laughing the first time we saw someone sporting their 'bricks' thinking how stupid it was, can you just imagine? Next, we'll be saying the same about one of these new devices!
I remember how I rebelled against going from hand drafting to computer-aided drawings. I was not happy as I felt our 'personal stamp' would be lost, but how wrong was I with that as well ;)
It was the same with masks, we initially thought it stupid until the reality of Covid hit!
I cannot imagine how cold that must be! Our current UK guest has been here for nearly 3 weeks and has to go back home, so while we're complaining of the heat, he last night said he's loving it, not looking forward to going back home this weekend.
Chicken Pot Pie and a glass of wine are the best remedy for surviving that kind of extreme cold!
Thank you for the good wishes, I cannot wait to have it done now, it was still ok until the last two weeks. I think seeing to the bnb without staff on the public holidays days did not do it any good.
Keep warm Eric!
Sometimes it takes a huge shift in mindset to see things from a different perspective. This is how I feel about these AI devices. Our mindset blinds us to the potential. I think what I'll do with the Rabbit R1 is see if I can live with it and not the cell phone for a week and then write about the experience.
Oh, it's so brutally cold. The air hurts your face or any exposed skin. We are warming up in the next few days and 20 degrees will feel like summer in comparison.
You're welcome! You'll feel so accomplished once the new site is done. Thank you, stay cool! : )
The world is really advancing and developing at a very fast pace and this is getting evident in what we see daily. But it will be difficult to use it actually without screen
https://twitter.com/lee19389/status/1745831288706404676
#hive #posh
Modern age is going on, everything that is quantity is being modernized by making it smaller and smaller
Simply wow!! the more I read about this here the more my eyes widened. Technology is indeed taking the world by storm.
Hello Eric congratulations on your website, I went through it and I love it, more grace man! 😃
It's going to be a very interesting year. This kind of tech will be evolving so quick from here!
Thank you! Persistence pays off. : ) I'll be adding features to the site in the coming months but am happy with this at the moment.
Ohhh yes I can feel it already!
All the best Eric!
What I hate about all these is the requirement to speak. I am not one who will ever get an Alexa or other such thing and really dislike them. There will end up being options but the cellphone will be upgraded to keep pace so we still have tactile capacity and not strictly voice.
Having to talk to it is going to be a huge stumbling block for me too but I want to experience what it's like. Siri is like a 1940's version of this new AI so I hope the R1 does a 1000x better job at interpreting and understanding. If not, the R1 might end up being a $200 projectile. : )
Not sure I will be selling Apple stock short on these offerings. I think the first thing the young folks will ask is does it TikTok?
I hear that Apple's close to releasing a new version of Siri that will compete with these more advanced AIs. What I'll be curious about is if they charge a subscription fee for it or not, something like Siri+. If they offer it for free it will decimate the competition.
As somebody else pointed out... things that are smaller aren't going to replcae phones. We've tried it a dozen times with clamshell phones, miniature phones, smart watches, smart glasses.
The very point of the screen is something we want, so we can play games and have some kind of tactile relationship with a device that holds everything dear to us (photos, videos to name an obvious pair).
You can imagine a hyper futuristic situation where you have contact lenses that display photos and videos in front of you, with some wireless conection to a pin on your shirt or something but it just doesn't hit the right balance.
It's like how people on Kickstarter constantly try and make scammy campaigns to improve things that are essentially as good as they can get: batteries that charge in 10 seconds and last 5 years, solar panels that are 90% efficient, roads that use recycled material.
It's all inferior to what we actually have, people are just trying to appeal to the idea of a utopian breakthrough.
I can't see these phones being replaced as they are - that's why every single brand across all price ranges look identical, because nothing beats it.
Futuristic fiction writers always imagine really dumb replacements: Holograms, transparent, glassy phones with projections popping up off the screen. None of it will come to fruition outside of a brief gimmicky moment like the recent folding phone gimmick.
Some things just aren't as good as they're told to be. Like Flying cars. Who wants them? Horrible idea lol
Yes, I guess time will tell what happens. I think a lot of folks are underestimating the power of AI in the equation. I would have a really hard time swapping my phone for a voice-only device but I'm starting to wrap my head around how it would work and when I think about it it seems a bit freeing to be untethered from something I have to stare at, even if it doesn't do 100% of what phones currently do. The future rarely pans out as we predict it will but I think whatever replaces mobile phones will appear soon.
I've made a few habits in life to reduce my screen time. I'd support AI if that was the direction it would take, but it definitely wouldn't - maximizing usage is maximizing profit, after all.
I just try and take some steps back and have some habits to reduce screentime - have a watch on my wrist, phone permanently on silent (I miss every phone call lol).
I can only see a future where AI expands screen time, or complements it (such as a watch/glasses). I'd bet money it could not replace screens. It's like the idea of food pills, where one pill gives us all the energy and vitamins we ever need in a day.
But... why would we want that? We enjoy eating.
I do agree something big will be happening right around the corner though. 2024 is the year of AI, for sure.
With the passage of time, the way we saw that earlier computers were the size of a room, then slowly everything has been miniaturized and now we are thinking that nothing can replace the mobile. Time is moving very modern so within the next few years something like this may come which may force us to forget the mobile too.
It seems like the world is getting more modern. Cell phones are increasingly sophisticated and provide many conveniences for humans. Have a nice day, Eric.
The next five years will be crazy, there's so much advanced tech soon to be released that it will blow people's minds. I hope you enjoy your weekend, Eliana! Take care.
this device has blown me away. their presentation is awesome.
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