Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the debate over the correct number of folds in a foldable phone. I'm your friend David Pierce, and boy, is there a lot going on right now. So let me just lay some newsy stuff out, because a lot of you are curious when we're going to talk about certain things. There's a lot going on. There's a lot happening, like right now this week. So let me just sort of lay out a bunch of newsy things going on. So, over the last few days, there's been a lot of information coming out about Anthropic and OpenAI and the Department of War in the United States. That is a really important and complicated topic that we're going to get into, but it felt like that's worth giving a little bit of time. So we're going to talk about that a bunch on Friday's show, and then we're going to have Hayden Field on to talk about it next Tuesday. This is an important moment in the AI story, and it felt worth, you know, taking a minute to get it right. There's also a bunch of Apple stuff happening this week, potentially by the time you've ever heard this on Tuesday. We're expecting new iPads, new iPhones, new MacBooks, potentially maybe a touch one. I'm not holding my breath for that. But what we're going to do is Apple is having an event on Wednesday, and Nilay and I are both going, and we're pretty sure that that's just going to be to like touch the things Apple has announced. And so we're going to go, and then we're going to come back and immediately do a podcast about that. And I think, don't hold me to this, but I think we're going to do it live. We've been wanting to do more sort of emergency podcast type things. We've been wanting to do more live shows. We're just going to test a bunch of stuff on Wednesday, and if it breaks, so be it. We'll see what happens. And then the other one going on is the Paramount deal to buy Warner Brothers, which is now no longer the Netflix deal to buy Warner Brothers. That is a big ongoing thing that broke after we recorded the podcast last week. There is just a ton going on. Expect an awful lot of that on Friday's show. But every once in a while, we have to just make a cast about phones. You know what I mean? There's been a lot of phones. Samsung had an event last week. Mobile World Congress is this week. So we're just going to talk about phones today. We're going to do two things. Allison Johnson from The Verge, who was at the Samsung event and is now at MWC, is going to come on and talk to us about all the phones she's been seeing and what it means for 2026. Then, The Verge's Jess Weatherbed is going to come on and talk about a new accessory that is not that new in some places, but is very new in the United States and might change the way that we think about our phones. After that, we have a really fun hotline question about the metaverse, because this is the Vergecast after all. What else do we talk about here? All that is coming up in just a second. But first, I just dug out this Pixel Fold, and I have to charge it and use it because people keep telling me flip phones and foldable phones are the future. We'll see. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.
All right, we're back. Joining me now, The Verge's senior reviewer Allison Johnson. Allison, describe your physical location in Barcelona right now?
I am in Barcelona in the Fira conference center. I'm in a tiny little hut in the press lounge, and just for authenticity, I brought a ham sandwich.
Okay. So you've been doing all the phone news for the last several days. You're at MWC, and I think so far the theme of MWC is a lot of companies trying new things on a phone to see what works. So I want to play a game with you that I have not prepared you for.
Because I just want to get your gut reaction to some stuff here.
Basically, I have you think of a spectrum from one to five. And one is like this is pure science project, silly concept. This will never see the light of day outside of a convention center. And five is this is coming to your phone for sure next year. Does that make sense? One to five.
Okay. I'm just going to throw a bunch of things that are happening at MWC and in the phone world at you right now, and I want you to put them on this one to five scale for me. Does that sound good?
All right. The first one, we just have to start with 6G. 6G is apparently we're doing 6G again. I can't figure out if it's everywhere at MWC or if it is just like being whispered about in back corridors. But where are we with 6G right now?
6G is what, five? Definitely happening, right? It's definitely happening. But with the disclaimer that it is at least five years out. They're working on the standard. I talked to a bunch of people to get them to explain what it is to me. There's satellites, there's AI, you know, all kinds of things. I don't know if it's not quite as pervasive here as I was sort of prepared for. But there is a lot, I feel like, of laying the groundwork where, you know, everybody is saying agentic AI and we're an AI company now. We make AI phones. And I think that the messaging is going to start bleeding into this like 6G talk. So I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, honestly.
So I was actually thinking about this reading your piece, that it seems like the whole argument for 6G is going to be that it makes AI things faster, which is like a slightly more sensible argument than the 5G argument, which is that it will make unknowable things faster. But I still, I confess, I do not find that particular argument for 6G to be super compelling.
I know, that's the one I have the most trouble with. There's like satellites, you know, your phone is always connected. It can switch from a tower to a satellite up in space. Great. That sounds good. I'm on board. We need AI compute inside of the cell towers. You know, inside of base stations. Sure. I guess like they're just lying around anyway. There is a lot of that's where it feels like the 5G kind of chicken and egg thing where they're like, well, we think there's going to be a lot more of this AI, you know, we're going to need all this uplink and we're going to have to spread out the compute between the device and the network and the data center. But yeah, it is one of those like that doesn't exist yet and they're sort of like planning for a future where it does slash getting us hyped up for it. So that's where... Yeah. Not my favorite use case, I think.
Wait, so where did you put it on the scale? One to five. Did you give me a number?
Okay. All right. I buy it. All right. Next one on my list. Modular phones. And before you laugh at me, I would like to just quickly point out a couple. Honor has a robot phone, which is basically a phone with a little gimbal camera on top. I'm counting that as a modular phone, even though it's baked in. It's a phone with an extra part is kind of what I'm thinking about this as. Vivo is launching a phone with an entire professional camera rig. You and I like to make fun of the people who are like, "We shot this on iPhone." And then it's like the iPhone plus $35,000 of additional equipment attached to the iPhone. But that's modular-ish. Lenovo is out here doing modular laptops. Like there was, I think, a Tecno concept of a modular phone that people got excited about. Is the one to five, are modular phones happening? Is this finally the year David gets a modular phone?
In my heart, I want it to be a five. I love a modular phone. I want it to be real. I think it's maybe at a three right now. Like the Tecno thing sounds so super cool and the idea of like we have magnets in the back of our phones. Why don't we put some things on them and you can add things when you need them and you can take them off when you don't. Like we do this with battery packs already. So I just saw the Honor robot phone. I can confirm that a robot phone exists and it moves and works to some extent. And it's kind of like the idea of a gimbal camera on your phone. Yeah, that's cool. And it tucks away when you don't need a gimbal camera. Love it. Yeah, I think there are aspects of it I really love and seem really like, yeah, we should do this. Bring back Moto Mods like yesterday. But then there are other aspects that seem kind of a little far-fetched and I'm like, well, we'll see when that happens. So a three in the real world and a five in my heart.
Yeah. My theory with this has always been that if Apple or Samsung, and probably only Apple or Samsung, decided to do this, they could brute force enough of an ecosystem to start to pull this off. That if they were like, you know, now we have a camera module that you can build things for. I think those two companies, and maybe Huawei in obviously other parts of the world, but there's a very small number of companies that I think could just do it and enough people would show up that it would be something.
Mm-hmm. No one. Sorry to Vivo. Vivo is not that company. You know what I mean? It's not happening. But I admire the effort. I really do.
Okay, next one. I think three is right and honestly feels like slightly more optimistic than I was even hoping for. So I'll take a three. Next one on my list is Samsung's Pixel Flex, which is the technology inside of the privacy display. This tech I think has been around for a minute but is now shipping in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. And suddenly I'm starting to think maybe this is a thing we're going to start to see in lots of other phones because Samsung makes displays for lots of companies. What's one to five? Are we going to start to see the Pixel Flex everywhere?
Ooh. Well, it does exist. It's on the phone that I'm using. I'm carrying the S26 Ultra around here. So that's a five. Is it going to be everywhere? I mean, it's been kind of universally like everybody sees the appeal. You know, it's all over the Samsung display booth and, you know, there's people looking at how the notifications can be the only thing that you have, you know, obscured on the screen. I keep forgetting that I have it on the phone and I shove my phone in someone else's face. I'm like, "Look at this." And they're like, "I don't see what you're showing me." I think it could catch on. I think I give it like a four. It gets an extra point for existing right now.
And maybe an extra point for being like cool as hell. So I'm going with four.
I guess it sounds like it works. That was going to be my next question is does this thing kind of work as advertised? And I feel like I don't notice it's there, but no one else can see my phone is kind of the ideal outcome for this technology.
Yeah. And I wonder if it's maybe when I turn it on and I'm just using the phone normally, you notice a little shift right at first where the screen is maybe a little less contrasty or a little dimmer. I'm not like a, you know, TV guy. I'm really bad at judging these things. I can see a little shift at first and then I don't really notice it after that. The effect, like you can, there's a setting to like crank it up to like maximum privacy and that really does kind of turn the phone into a black box if you look at it from an angle. Without that, it's a little, you can still make out like a little bit of what's on the screen but it's super hard from a glance. You know, like sometimes you're on the bus or something, you like glance at someone's phone in front of you and you can't, like you've seen everything on the screen and you can't help it. I think it cuts down on that. Like you're going to have to work to see it. It looks kind of gray. If you're all the way at an angle, it's black and you can't really see. But it does work. It's, I'm using it and it's one of those things you don't know if it's been effective because I don't know if anybody was trying to read over my shoulder on the airplane and they were foiled by the phone. But it's been like nice knowing that it's there as I travel.
Yeah. Again, I think the idea of it not being something you ever think about that just kind of does the job in the background is the absolute ideal outcome for this kind of feature. I think that's really exciting. Okay. Next one on my list. I wrote this down as non-problematic foldable phones. You and I have been on this show many times talking about foldable phones, and there's always a series of disclaimers about them, right? They have durability issues. They weirdly have not gotten some of the best technology, particularly when it comes to cameras. There's just always like this phone is very expensive and comes with a bunch of very real trade-offs, but it seems like you've seen a couple of devices over the last couple of days that are starting to solve those trade-offs in a pretty real way. Are we inching towards a five on foldable phones you can wholeheartedly recommend?
I think so. I think maybe it's never going to be a five. Maybe the best we can hope for is a four. I think they're always just going to be a little more expensive than your standard slab phone. You know, it does feel like all of the ingredients are there, but they're kind of in different devices. Like, you know, Google and now Honor just launched one that has IP68 or theirs is even IP69. So you don't have to feel so worried about dust getting into the hinge. Motorola just revealed that they're going to put a silicon carbon battery in the Razr Fold. So it's going to have huge battery capacity. Like 6,000 milliamp hours. So that kind of takes care of like batteries not a, you know, in theory not a problem. I don't see all these things existing in one device, you know, especially it's like you slim it down, it's super thin. There's maybe one phone that is super thin and durable and has a great battery. It's not in the US, but yeah, I think the price is always going to be like a sticking point for some people. They're just going to be pricier. But I think they're going to, it's going to come to a four maybe. That's what I'm hoping for.
It does seem like in general the foldable phone available outside of the US is like a full generation ahead of the foldable phones available in the US. As you walk around MWC having used all of the foldable phones we can get in the US, does that still seem true? Are you seeing stuff that remains just way ahead of anything that is available in like a Verizon store in the US?
Yeah. Yeah. Just the abundance of them. I mean, all of the Chinese OEMs will have one. They're on the booth and they're super thin. You know, they've been through all the generations of foldables that we are at now. And we sort of are like, well, you've got Google or Samsung and you can take your pick. I think that Motorola getting into it, you know, even if it doesn't end up being the foldable to end all foldables, can only be good from that standpoint of like we just desperately need some competition to maybe spur Samsung to throw something else in the next one, you know?
Totally. So on that front, actually, let's do a sub one to five here on the Razr Fold specifically because I read your piece about the Razr Fold and I read through the list of specs. IP48 and 49, fine. Fast chip, 50 megapixel camera, 50 watt wireless charging. Like, this seems like it's pretty close to the thing. Like if you were going to just, other than the price, which is obviously outrageous because they all are, if you were to sort of write down a list of stuff you would want a foldable phone to have, this seems awfully close. How excited should I be getting about the Razr Fold right now?
I think like medium excited. I really, the silicon carbon battery is the thing that is really catching my eye the most.
Can you explain what that is for people who don't know?
It's a different kind of battery technology that has much higher capacity and it can be much thinner. And so you get those crazy numbers like 6,000, maybe even 7,000 milliamp hours. It differs from a traditional lithium-ion. And the US manufacturers have been really hesitant about adopting it. And like basically all the Chinese OEMs and OnePlus, you know, you can buy a OnePlus phone in the US that has one of these batteries. There are concerns around like, do they last as long? It tends to, there's more stress on them as they go through charging cycles and there's like a concern that they don't hold up in the long run. But I don't know, an iPhone 14 Pro, like did the battery on that hold up? Like so many people have a phone from three or four years ago. They're like, dude, battery sucks now. So I don't know. This is the one that's going to be interesting to see if Motorola can kind of like open the floodgate. Obviously there's, you know, their parent company Lenovo and based in China is maybe like the way that this kind of makes the technology come mainstream in the US. But we'll see. I'm glad someone's doing it.
Yeah, I'm fascinated by this phone because it seems like if Motorola got all of these parts right and made a couple of correct technology bets, especially on the camera performance with the optical image stabilization and the battery in particular, this thing could be awesome or it could have a bunch of stuff that is too early and not quite right and it could end up just being a way too expensive like beta test for a bunch of things that might actually work out in three years. And I'm just fascinated to see which one it turns out to be. But I'm still like there is a world in which this is the best foldable phone on the market. And that just makes me very excited. All right, next one on my list. I have a couple more for you here. And actually you sort of alluded to this with the battery stuff. Everything's finally getting smaller is a thing that I've written down. We have some surprisingly thin tablets from Honor that are there. There's a really thin Xiaomi power bank. Suddenly everybody seems actually interested in the idea of not how do we, you know, make these things more powerful or add more specs or whatever, but they're like how do we make these things smaller? There's like a smaller energy happening at MWC this year. And I know there are going to be people who are excited about this. So like one to five, how real is this? I'll give it a four because really that's exciting.
Apple did it. Yeah. I mean, when you have the iPhone Air, I was just...
But the iPhone Air is kind of a science project.
Yeah. Yeah. But I think that kind of gives everybody else permission to do the science project and they're, you know, I was just over at the ZTE booth and, you know, they've got their iPhone Air clone. It has two cameras on the back. It manages to have a SIM tray. I don't know. It's like you sort of get the impetus out there of like we're doing thin things now and then maybe the next company that does it finds a way to add more to it or like make it so you're not having as many sacrifices. I think the silicon carbon in an iPhone Air or a Galaxy Edge is a very compelling, you know, you take one of the problems with those devices off the table if you can just figure out the battery. And then from there, you're not sacrificing so much. So I'm intrigued. I do think there is value in the phone that you carry every day all the time being a little lighter and a little thinner. It actually makes a difference. I just don't think right now the devices we have the trade-offs make sense. But they could.
That seems right. Yeah. I've been doing this phone switching experiment trying to figure out what phone I want. And I went from an iPhone 16 to a Pixel 10 Pro, which is like it's not the biggest phone in the world, but it is a pretty heavy phone.
And I am shocked at the extent to which I noticed the difference holding the thing in my hand all day.
It's nuts. Like even the little tiniest bit of weight difference, it means something in terms of what it feels like to hold the thing in your hand for a long time.
Yeah. Exactly. You look at the numbers on a page, you're like, "These are not that different." But in your hand and everyday use, yeah, you feel it.
Yeah. I made fun of you when you said that about the iPhone Air. And I think I'm kind of coming around to what you said.
Good. I still stand by my making fun of you, even though you might have been right.
All right. I have one more for you, and then I'm going to let you go here. The last one I have is another thing that you and I have talked about that has seemed many times like its time was almost coming, but it never did, which is the secondary e-ink display. This is a long-time staple of phone concepts and the only one I've seen so far this year is again from this company Tecno, which did a very cool thing. I don't know if you've seen this one, the sort of color-changing e-ink background on the Tecno phone.
I saw a version of the e-ink back panel last year. I don't know. I give that one like a two. Like it's fun. Like, "Hell yeah, let's put e-ink on all the things. I want e-ink everything." But I don't know. I don't see it. Like, they kind of struggle to even give you a reason why. Like, why does someone want this? What can it do? And they're sort of like, well, you know, it's cool. Which I don't know. Props for making something cool and trying it.
But yeah, the reason I like the Tecno idea is because I think it is actually very practical in a certain way that it lets you change the color of your phone and it's not perfectly vibrant. It's not the equivalent of like actually repainting the metal on your phone, but it lets you express something different on your phone and I think people like that and I think that's important. I have been holding out hope for this in particular because I don't know if you've seen this tiny little, it's like the XTE Inc thing that is basically just like a little MagSafe thing that you stick on the back of your phone and it gives you a little tiny e-reader. All of my tech nerd friends think this is awesome and then they buy one and they use it two times and never touch it again. But there is like, it's exactly what you said. There is something about it that you're like, "Yes, I want this. Give it to me." And then it's like, "Well, what do you want this for?" And it's not at all clear. I don't know. It was a fun idea.
I know. This to me is like every time I see a flip phone, I'm like, give me e-ink on the outside, phone on the inside. This is what I want. I think I'm the only one, but this is what I want.
All right. So before I let you go back into the craziness of MWC, what else have you seen that's super exciting? Any other like booths you've walked past that kind of blew your mind?
Oh God, there's robots everywhere. It's CES again. I've seen the robots. There was a robot restaurant. It was not clear. It said temporarily closed. The robots were not making any food. It looked like they were serving food to each other. The robots don't need to eat food. I don't know. That wasn't the thing I'm excited about, but it has been the thing that has been like hit over my head at CES and here is like robots are happening.
Well, so this means if we're doing CES again, I would say this means a couple of things. This means that all anybody wants to talk about is AI but in kind of directionless ways where everybody is doing AI but then you ask what that means and no one really knows. And it also means that the idea of gadgets that move, like physically move, has also really intoxicated the mobile industry because you like, the thing that's fascinating to me is everybody at CES is desperately trying to invent the thing after the smartphone so that they can not have to just play smartphone games right now. But what you're saying is even all the smartphone companies are now like, you know what, the next big thing is robots.
Yeah. I mean, Honor put a robot, quote unquote, on the phone. They're like, "This is it. This is the next thing."
Yeah. Have you seen anything at MWC that is like, "Yes, I do want a robot on my phone."
No. I mean, the gimbal aspect is cool. But so much of that is possible in software. Like the S26 has that horizon lock feature where you can fully spin the phone 360 degrees and the picture does not move.
Can I offer you a better answer?
Tell me about the pet phone.
Oh God. Okay. Pet phone. Well, pet phone is a little tiny tracker device that sits on the collar of your pet and it has a microphone and a speaker and it connects to an app on your phone. So you can have two-way communication with your pet. And so I mean there's like, you know, cameras and things you have in your home that you could maybe like talk to your dog on or something, but this is like on them all the time. And the wild thing is they say that your pet can call you if you train them to jump in the air three times in six seconds. So that rules out every cat because cats are not learning tricks. Can you...
Also rules out every happy dog who might just want to jump a lot.
They just jump. What if a mailman comes and they're jumping around and they butt dial you? Like this is, I have so many questions about how this works. There's a subscription, so you have to pay for your pet's phone bill, which I think is insane. Why? Like why in this world? It was just, yeah, it was the gadget at, it was kind of at the far end of one of these events where you go and see all the like little cool stuff and I was just like, ah, we're here, aren't we? We're at pet phone.
Yeah. It's somewhere at the end of every road in technology there is pet phone. Do you know what I mean?
Yes. All roads lead to pet phone. I just love this because it would absolutely terrify my dog who like mostly just wants to snooze under a blanket on the couch all day and if I'm just like wandering around and I'm just like, "Freda, do you want any snacks?" She would just lose her mind. Like this is the worst. She would hate it.
Yeah. Yeah. It would actively terrify her.
All right, Allison, you need to go back and look at more phones and don't get hit by any robots. That's my main task for you. We had some run-ins with robots at CES and I would like for MWC to be a less violent robot situation for all Verge staffers everywhere. We're going to take a break and Allison, you're going to be back soon to talk more phones because, spoiler alert, as we're recording this, Apple just launched the iPhone 17e. So we're going to come back and talk about that another time. Allison, have fun in Barcelona. We'll see you soon.
