No one is surprised. People are saying that this _could_ be an Android app, and _should_ be an Android app -- and now it's been shown that it _already is_ an Android app.

Android seems to be the go-to choice for most devices requiring a touch screen. You could get away with a lot less in most cases, but why bother when you can just throw together a quick Android app and use some industrial Android ROM to take care of all the hard parts? Everything from portable supermarket self service scanners to TVs has been running Android for ages. Sony has been putting Android on TVs since before Android TV was even a thing.

The only thing Android sucks at is native support for keyboard interaction, anything big screen or touch screen related may as well be presumed Android until proven otherwise.

There's one exception, which is Samsung, who is still pushing Tizen to its products, though their smart watches switched from Tizen to Android not too long ago.

It makes sense, but also the Rabbit barely uses the touchscreen. Almost all the interaction is via the scrolly wheel.

I’m in the same boat. It feels like they either use Android or they end up re-implementing half of Android, probably at early Android quality.

Bonus points because then they get to re-implement Spotify integrations et al instead of using an existing APK.

I don’t really care that it runs Android, but it seems like it runs on Android _and_ locks you out of said OS which I don’t love. By all means, build on Android, but then let people use Android. Let me slap a SIM in it and make calls, or install a stupid clock face or something.

I’d say the same thing of most appliances. I don’t care what OS it’s built on, but I want access to that OS as much as possible. Eg I liked that Bluecoat devices have a custom SSH shell for managing them, but you can drop into a regular bash shell with the root password. Can’t say that I used it, but it was reassuring to know that I could get vi or something if their shell fell apart.

I don't think people (well outside of some clickbait headlines) are surprised it is running Android. But more that it is an app.

Personally I figured it was running Android but likely a heavily modified fork.

Especially after how many times they seem to have buckled down on it not being possible as just an app.

(Unless I am misunderstanding and it is indeed a fork and not just an App? ).

There is no need to get anything more complex than needed; the Rabbit R1 is just an Android phone, pre-installed with only one app, with an action button bound, and that's it.

I agree to a point, there is no reason to over complicate it.

But if you are going to make claims about how its impossible to be an app, maybe you should be making sure that it isnt just an app and you are going down the route of it being its own distro.

I am not saying it should have been its own android distro, but it was my expectation given how they were talking about it.

I mean did they really not expect people to dig into it once it was in the wild and find their exaggeration (lies)?

The surprising part isn't that the device is running Android OS, but that the whole thing is a single Android app.

Haven't used (or even seen IRL) Rabbit R1, but is there anything that requires it to be something more than an app? Isn't it just a thin layer with access to microphone and camera that translates everything to the backend?

Well, it's technically a system-level launcher which means it has more permissions and access than a standard app.