[shwoopdiwoop]

I ordered one since it cost exactly as much as a 1 year stand-alone perplexity license that it comes with.

I don’t know how they can possibly make money with this but i’m looking forward to having a new toy on my desk and I really like the teenage engineering vibes of it.

[svantana]

The math works out because they're most likely paying per API call and are banking on the near-certainty that >90% of devices will end up in a drawer within a week, never to be used again.

[kstrauser]

Same and same. I don't know if I'd have bought a year of Perplexity, but the R1 plus that year for $200 was worth it to me for the experimental nature of it.

[kajecounterhack]

Same here. $200 for an artifact of the times / more or less a little piece of decoration. Occasional question answering, maybe.

Definitely not hooking it up to Spotify or any personal accounts after hearing how they handle security.

[__m]

Not just the vibes, they worked together with teenage engineering on it

[echelon]

> i’m looking forward to having a new toy on my desk and I really like the teenage engineering vibes of it.

I want more companies to try hardware!

To quote the title,

> a thing that should just be an app, is just an Android app

Except the company doesn't own the hardware for distribution by being an Android app! People want developers to be subservient and taxed forever, as if Google and Apple own all of non-desktop computing. It's an unfortunate place we've arrived at.

We need many more hardware options. The cellphone duopoly is harming and taxing innovation.

[axelthegerman]

Agreed, would love more hardware options. But not sure how a gadget based on AOSP helps with the smartphone duopoly.

From the first looks of it those will just end up in the drawers or landfill in no time which is a little sad.

[elif]

Yeah Google not allowing 3rd party apps to be used as the voice assistant is 100% reason enough to release as hardware. I don't want to unlock my phone and type and click buttons just to ask about a task I'm working on.

[StackRanker3000]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40225838

”Android lets you choose which digital assistant app to use. Settings > Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app. Stock Android will have this preconfigured to Google Assistant, but it's designed to be swappable.”

[dagmx]

How does Bixby work then?

My point being, they’re already releasing an Android device with cellular. Why not make it a bespoke Android phone and/or partner with someone like One Plus to be a differentiator?

The number of people who’d carry two devices around is vanishingly small when the use cases all can happen on their phone anyway.

[paxys]

They aren't paying retail price for the subscription. The basic idea behind the business model is – you pay wholesale rates to the provider, charge all users a set fee, and hope that they collectively don't use the service too much.