The Vergecast - Hotline: E Ink, the fediverse, and smart Puka shells

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

You have questions. We have (some) answers! For this week's hotline episode, Travis Larchuk asks David your questions about E Ink screens, federated messaging, minimalist phones, AI wearables, and wha...t we got wrong about wide foldables. And don't forget, you can always call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com to get your questions in about anything and everything. Bonus points if it involves popping your two collars. Further reading: The Light Flip is a minimalist flip phone with a point to prove ‘Max Ink Mode’ is back on TCL’s NXTPaper 70 Pro Daylight DC-1 tablet hands-on: an Android tablet with a new kind of screen Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels like the future Disney says it’s ‘exploring’ adding a free tier to Disney Plus Disney Plus is about to go beyond streaming. Disney gives TikTok creators official access to Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar characters SpaceX is coming for T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon | The Verge Google Assistant will disappear from your phone next month Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:02 Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of anti-reflective display coatings. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show, we're taking your questions about I actually don't know what. Travis Larchuk, our producer, is going to come on and he's going to ask me some of the questions we've been getting on the Vergecast hotline. We're going to get into all of them. He has promised me I'm going to love at least one of them. I'm very excited about it. All that's coming in just a sec, but first, here's everything else happening on the Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Wednesday, August 5th, 2026.
Starting point is 00:00:29 Disney is thinking about some pretty big changes to its streaming strategy. On its earnings call, Josh Diomaro, the new CEO, said that the Disney Plus app will soon get games, merchandise, and other experiences, whatever that means. Basically, it seems like Disney Plus is going to become the Disney Everything app. Disney's even partnering with TikTok to turn the vertical video feed into, I guess, Disney Talk, whatever that looks like. DeMorrow also said that Disney is looking into adding a free ad-supported tier to Disney Plus and set it in such a way that it's very clear that that,
Starting point is 00:00:59 that is in fact coming and probably very soon. Right now, the streaming wars in general are just a race to become YouTube before YouTube can swallow the entertainment industry whole. It's wild out there. SpaceX also just reported earnings for the first time ever, and it's doing, I don't know, fine. SpaceX wants you to think that it's a space and AI company, but right now it's mostly making money renting compute to other AI companies.
Starting point is 00:01:23 But the big news was Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and actual leader, saying SpaceX is planning to build a terrestrial mobile, network in addition to its satellite systems. In part, the plan seems to be to connect all of its existing Starlink antennas and build a network that way. Starlink evidently has its sites set on taking, quote, quite a few customers from T-Mobile, ATT, and Verizon.
Starting point is 00:01:43 We'll see. And finally, a preemptive RIP to Google Assistant, which is officially being removed from Android devices starting on September 4th. This isn't at all surprising. Google has been all in on Gemini for a while now, but I think Assistant is actually still the best way to do some simple phone tasks, and now it is all LLLM. all the time, apparently forever. You can read more about all this at Theverge.com.
Starting point is 00:02:04 That is 90 seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, August 5th. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform
Starting point is 00:02:24 that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-Frey at O-D-O-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.
Starting point is 00:02:52 When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. All right, let's get to some of your questions. As a reminder, the best way to ask us questions about anything and everything, we love all of your weirdest possible questions.
Starting point is 00:03:30 You can email vergecast at the verge.com. You can call the hotline 866, verge 1.1. We're going to do more and more of these all the time. Travis Larchuk, our producer who is here, just wants to do the hotline all the time. All the time. Every show. I love this. You have a bunch of questions.
Starting point is 00:03:46 I am going to do my best to answer them. Let's get into it. All right. Our audience is very interested in that sick light phone that you talked about. Everyone is interested in this. It is extremely sick. Our first voicemail is from Wiley, and he has some thoughts on how phones like this. could be successful in the long run.
Starting point is 00:04:07 Hey, David, this is Riley. I just listened to the podcast with a light phone flip, and I've had a light phone and Nokia's and every other flip phone that's basically new. And you asked, what is the thing that needs to happen in order for these things to work, basically? And in my opinion, the thing that needs to happen is, open development and leverage the power of the very passionate community that is willing to do
Starting point is 00:04:40 development for them and approve and don't approve based on purely philosophical lines. I think, in my opinion, that would be the game changer that allows these things to take off. Okay, Wiley, I say this with love. I can hear from your voicemail that you are reckoning with the exact same thing that everyone does in this space, which is who decides. This is the problem with all of this, right? Like, you can make a phone that does a certain number of things. And if you, the developer, limit that phone to a certain number of things,
Starting point is 00:05:15 that is at least a very clear principle, right? You say, here is the phone. It does the things that it does. It does not do other things. The end, you can either like it or you cannot. The minute you open it up to any more than that, everything gets weird and messy and complicated. Because you say either I, David Pierce, the CEO of Flipphone Incorporated,
Starting point is 00:05:37 am now the single arbiter of what belongs on this device that you've actually already paid a bunch of money for. And in theory could make a very compelling case that is yours to do with as you please. Like, Travis, do you remember that thing going around with the Lightphone 3 where a bunch of people started putting full Android on it? Like, the Lightphone 3 is running on Android. So people were just hacking it to run actual, honest to God, Android. It seems like it defeats the person. a little bit, but okay. A lot of people would agree with you.
Starting point is 00:06:04 So this became a whole thing because there were a bunch of people who were like, you are destroying the thing that this is supposed to be. Why on earth would you buy this phone to run all of this stuff? And then there were a bunch of people who were just like, screw you. I paid $700 for this phone. It is mine to do with as I please. Both of those things are good and true things. And I've been talking to a bunch of people about this.
Starting point is 00:06:27 And the two different courses of action that I've really found are Commodore, which is making a flip phone. They sort of bought and rebooted the brand. There's a really fascinating Commodore thing happening with retro tech. They're making a flip phone. And their idea is actually almost exactly what Wiley said, is that anybody's going to be able to make apps, but they're only going to be able to be listed on the app store
Starting point is 00:06:49 if they are approved by Commodore. And that sets up the CEO of Commodore, this guy, Christian, as like the Lord and Savior of Flipphones. He is the arbiter of truth. and whether that could be good. And I think to some extent, that is a perfectly good and valid opinion, right? He's like, we're selling this phone. We're selling a belief system and a value system with this phone.
Starting point is 00:07:09 And I will be the one in control of that value system. Light phone has gone very much the other way. They opened up the development kit. They're going to have some curation and things in their own store as you go to the website to download stuff to do on your phone. If somebody wants to make a Facebook app, Light is not going to be. to promote the Facebook app. But if you want to make a Facebook app
Starting point is 00:07:32 and run it on your light flip, Kai Tang would tell you that that is your right. And it is your phone. And if you want to completely destroy the whole value system and belief system behind this phone in the name of getting Facebook and Instagram on your phone, knock yourself out.
Starting point is 00:07:49 So I think in line with the thing that all these flip phones have been dealing with for forever, which is what can these do before they become a problem? Like, everybody agrees you shouldn't be able to have Instagram on a minimalist phone. That is simple. Should you be able to have WhatsApp? Should you be able to have Snapchat,
Starting point is 00:08:05 which is both a social media platform and like straightforwardly a text messaging replacement? Nobody knows exactly where that line is. And now the question is who gets to be the one to be the keeper of that line? And I think I probably err on the side of you should be able to do whatever you want. If you want to get a phone and then use Claude
Starting point is 00:08:26 to build some weird apps that run and violate the whole premise, and light would hate you for it. I earnestly believe that is your right as the person who just spent a bunch of money on this phone. But different people will land in different places on this. And I think it's going to be one of the big questions in this era going forward with these devices. All right. And then our next one, this question, I believe, is David Pierce Bate. This is right up your alley. This is going straight for your heart, David. Wait, can I guess? Sure. It's about, it's going to be about one of two things. It's either going to be about
Starting point is 00:09:02 which note-taking slash to-do list app this person should use, or it's going to be about e-ink screens. Hey, David, this is Eddie. I just listened to the episode with Kai from the light phone slip. I was just curious, how do these minimalist phone designers, how do they decide between, like, e-ink, LCD, OLA? Bam. To me, it seems like you would want e-ink for just terrible screen and screen time restrictions, basically.
Starting point is 00:09:38 But I don't know. I think this new one has an LCD. I might be wrong. But yeah, how do they make those decisions? What are the pros and cons? My personal brand is immaculate, Travis. Yeah, before you answer, I had this moment when you were like, I'm going to guess, where I felt like I was on the newlywed game.
Starting point is 00:09:55 I was like, oh, do I know David as well as I think I do? Yeah, so I'm glad that worked out. You and everyone else pretty much have me pegged at this point. Okay, this is a really good one. And as America's foremost expert in the books, palma, I feel very qualified to answer this. So the tradeoff here is actually relatively straightforward, which is that e-ink lasts a lot longer. It's much easier on the eyes, and it sucks. And I mean sucks as a compliment in this sense, right?
Starting point is 00:10:25 It is actively unpleasant to do things like scroll TikTok on any ink screen. So even something like the Books Palma or all of these other devices that are more full-fledged Android devices, they do the thing they intend to do not by making it impossible, but just by making it terrible. Like if you want to put TikTok on your books palma, you can. And as I said before, I believe that is that is you're right. Knock yourself out. That's weird, but go get it. But no one does.
Starting point is 00:10:53 and that because it doesn't work and you wouldn't like it and you would have a bad time. E-ink screens are more complicated than you'd think. They're all essentially run by a single company. The whole E-Nc ecosystem is a strange thing that we should probably get into at some point in the show. But it's actually probably in many ways easier to get your hands on an LCD or an OLED screen than it is an E-Nx screen. But that is neither here nor there. So the pros for E-ink are I think fairly straightforward in having. you use the product, right? The cons are that sometimes you want things that suck on an e-ink screen.
Starting point is 00:11:30 And I think the one that comes up over and over with these companies is the camera. You can't use a camera properly with an e-ink screen. It doesn't refresh fast enough. It doesn't show enough fidelity. It won't properly show you what's in focus. Even books which ships a camera, they're like, this is a document scanner. Like, don't even try to take pictures with this thing. It will roughly capture the thing you are trying to do, and that will solve your problem relatively fine. The reason light started using non-E-ink screens, Light started making E-ink phones way back in the day for all of the reasons I just described. But they realized, okay, the number one thing people require on their primary device is a camera. Like if you were to make a list of features people want on their phone, I think you'd get to camera before you'd get to phone.
Starting point is 00:12:15 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So like, you just have to have a camera. And then the minute you have a camera and you want to use it for anything at all, you need a better display than what you get on an e-ink screen. You just can't do the thing on e-ink that you need to do the camera. So now you're stuck with like, okay, do we do a bunch of weird tricks to an OLED screen to make it look more e-inky?
Starting point is 00:12:40 And we're starting to see this from a lot of companies. Like TCL is doing some really interesting stuff in this space with Nextpaper. There are a lot of ideas about how you can change. the color of the backlight. There's this really interesting company called Daylight that basically just like took all the blue out of an LCD and made it feel much warmer and a little different and change the reflectivity. So there's a lot of stuff you can do on an LCD to make it more e-inky, which is where most of these companies are landing, right? Like even on the light phone, it's a black and white experience until you open up the camera and then all of a sudden it's a
Starting point is 00:13:12 full color camera because a black and white camera would suck and no one wants that. So I think the trade here is basically E-ink solves kind of all of your problems but one, but the one turns out to be maybe the single most important feature of most of these devices. So I think anyone who's going to use a phone or try to make something that you can use as a phone
Starting point is 00:13:31 is going to ultimately land on the side of how can we minimize an E-inkify an LCD or an OED rather than just go pure E-A-G. Until there may be some magical e-ink revolution, new technology to come. Travis, you're shaking your head. And that is also how I feel. I don't know whose priority that is right now.
Starting point is 00:13:56 No one's, yeah. But yeah, I think that the trade-off is tricky. And I think most of these phone makers are actually landing on the right side by landing on non-E-ink screens. Support for the show comes from Rippling. Imagine you just found out your sales team is at, risk of missing quota. No need to panic. Just ask Rippling AI. Since it's built on your real-time people and business data, Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and Salesforce into a meeting-ready
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Starting point is 00:15:11 That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G. Dot AI slash verge. Sign up for exclusive access today. Support for this show comes from O-Doo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing O-Doo. It's the only business software you'll ever need.
Starting point is 00:15:36 It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, commerce and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-3 at O-D-O-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery
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Starting point is 00:16:54 AI Cloud ERP for any size business. All right, David, I don't know how much longer we have you before you go and leave, so I just need to run this by you before you're out. This is some more David Beers bait. It is not about to-do lists, though. Oh, well, then I'm not interested. This is from someone named Travis, but it's not me. It's not me, I promise. We love a Travis here on this show. Question, friends. I've been very interested in your coverage of the Fediverse, or lack thereof. We're so back. But I'm wondering why it's only about social media. There's such a splintering of messaging platforms, especially in the work context. What once was established norms in email has turned to client and teen conversations with important documents across email, Slack, G-chat, WhatsApp. The beauty of email is any
Starting point is 00:17:43 client can email any other. Are there efforts to federate messaging? You send it from wherever you want and I receive it, however I want to receive it. It seems like a far more pressing problem. Yours and activity pub, Travis. This is my kind of thing. Okay. I just want to very briefly tell you about a company called Matrix that I find absolutely
Starting point is 00:18:06 fascinating and have done a bunch of reporting on and think is sort of an underrated most important company in tech right now. I really earnestly believe this. So Matrix is exactly the Fedaverse for messaging. Like imagine I have a Slack instance and you have a Slack instance and they actually have nothing to do with each other. They're completely separated. We each run our own on premises. Like you can run Matrix on a on a network on a Navy ship. It's like a real thing that they do. It is a completely distinct thing. But also I can message your Matrix from my Matrix. Like the It turns into cross-platform messaging right next to and integrated with, like, team messaging that is incredibly well put together and encrypted and all of the things that you would want. So Matrix started essentially as a completely federated, encrypted messaging platform.
Starting point is 00:19:01 And the reason, by the way, that this is a much harder problem for messaging than it is for social media is privacy. We just have completely different expectations about the privacy of our content when we're posting it publicly to a social network and when we're talking to our friends. And maintaining privacy across different servers and different implementations and different companies and building a system that sort of exists in so many places but all adheres to the same very intense privacy policy is just really hard. And so this company Matrix has spent a long time working through this. And the most fascinating thing about Matrix to me is that they have really struggled to get regular people to use it. They make an app called Element that is essentially just WhatsApp. It works very well.
Starting point is 00:19:50 It's very fast. It's very simple. But they're having a hard time getting that adoption in part because people use, you know, WhatsApp. But they are all over, like, secure government implementations. Like, countries around the world are using Matrix for important secure communication because the alternative is WhatsApp. which is not as secure, causes all kinds of problems,
Starting point is 00:20:11 is not nearly as manageable and administrable. It's just a worse system. So what they've done is they've rolled this much more secure, controllable, onable messaging platform called Matrix that has kind of percolated all over. So matrix.org is specifically the answer to this question. I think it's really good technology. The people who run it are really smart and interesting and up to cool stuff.
Starting point is 00:20:35 They just can't convince regular people to use it. And I think this is the most fascinating piece of this story to me is like if it had come along before everyone got entrenched in these worst platforms like teams and Slack, I think Matrix would be essentially ubiquitous in the world right now. It's the same thing with messaging, right? Like we could do better messaging except that everybody already uses iMessage and WhatsApp. They're not good. They're just the ones that we use and getting people off of those things is very hard. But whether it's Matrix or something like it, I think it's coming. Something like this is going to make that mainstream turn,
Starting point is 00:21:10 and it's going to look extremely fed aversey because that idea is the right one. All right. We have some feedback from our episode where we talked about AI wearables. Ooh, okay. Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Ben from Arlington, Virginia.
Starting point is 00:21:27 I was listening to the episode where you ranked the different sort of AI wearables, and it got me thinking when you rank the pendant and necklace so low, what if we brought back kind of like the puka shell chokers from the late 90s, early 2000s? Because then people could kind of design the batteries or the different components into each one of those different like balls or shelves. And then we could bring it back as a fashion statement. All right, love the show. Thanks. Bye. Before we get into this, I would like you to just briefly close your eyes and imagine early high
Starting point is 00:22:05 school David. I had a ring on my right hand. It wasn't like a thumb ring or a pinky ring. It's just like it was just a ring. I'm not really sure why in retrospect. I had not one but two popped collars on my polo shirts. Not again, it's very important. If just one, you're ridiculous, two legendary. And I did in fact have a pukeshell necklace. I also had braces and had a giant gap between my two front teeth, and I was styling. So this is the David we're bringing back with this idea. First of all, shout out to Northern Virginia. Go Nova.
Starting point is 00:22:47 This is a good idea, and Travis, I think you don't understand the extent to which this is also David Bait, because modular gadgets are my jam and have been for forever. But they don't work. That's just the problem. They don't work. We have been trying to do modular gadgets for a very long time. designing them in such a way that each one of them works individually, but also in concert with any number of other things, just turns out to be essentially impossible. We just can't do it.
Starting point is 00:23:15 We can't make it work with phones without them being like hideous puzzle piece blocks that don't fit together well. There's so many awkward things with making that work just from a user perspective that they haven't really worked. And then you throw in the fact that there are all kinds of battery problems to solve with this. Like, the idea that you could just stick a bunch of parts into a little puka and string a bunch of them together and make, is such a lovely idea that I, and I desperately want it to work. And in case you're wondering, Travis, the singular is puka. One puka, many pukas, and that's, that's your necklace. It, uh, it just doesn't work. Like, I actually think everybody would like this to be the answer, that you, you could have a smart
Starting point is 00:23:58 watch band that you would stick with a, uh, a mechanical watch that you like. You would have a smart pendant that could go on any number of things. Fitbit has been trying to do this. Like, how do we accessorize your life with a Fitbit thing for forever? It just doesn't work. The battery doesn't work. You can't do battery and connectivity in a thing that's that small without causing
Starting point is 00:24:19 like heat problems. And then you introduce a heat sink and all of a sudden the thing is too big. Like all of these things are several physics miracles away from being actually possible to do. but the minute they become possible to do, everyone will do it because it is so transparently the right idea. Right? Like charm bracelets of technology
Starting point is 00:24:39 is such a huge and cool and interesting idea that will percolate into every gadget that you have. Everybody wants to make accessories that do more stuff. Everybody wants to make lots of different kinds of gadgets that you can put together
Starting point is 00:24:51 with all the functionality you want and nothing else. Like everybody wants this. It's more sustainable. It would be cheaper to make. It would be cheaper to upgrade. Like, this is just a good idea, but in anything smaller than a laptop, like framework has figured out how to do this
Starting point is 00:25:03 in a way that I have found very impressive. Even that is like big and expensive and kind and a little bit clunky compared to what you'd get from another laptop. The idea of doing it at necklace size is just flatly, scientifically not possible right now. But everybody wants this and I will buy the puka the minute it becomes available to me.
Starting point is 00:25:23 All right. This is the last one. Okay, I'm ready. We got, there is a new galaxy Z-fold 8 and it is passport shaped. A lot of excitement about it. The reviews have been great. Dom really liked the form factor.
Starting point is 00:25:36 We've been surprised by it. However, we receive some feedback from people who are saying, wait a minute, I was on board this passport train a while ago. And here's an email we got. This is from Al. Tech Media Hypocrisy on the Z Fold 8 Form Factor. I was listening to today's Vergecast episode about the Samsung Z Fold 8, and it made me wonder, why is this wider form factor being praised as a game changer now
Starting point is 00:26:05 when the original pixel fold launched with this exact same shape years ago? It feels hypocritical almost as if tech reviewers and media outlets are suddenly warming up to this design now just to set a favorable precedent ahead of the upcoming foldable iPhone. Rumored. Asterisk Ed Travis. Right. first of all, it's a fabulous conspiracy theory. I really, really, really like the idea that, A, we would be doing that.
Starting point is 00:26:36 And B, that we, the tech media, would have gotten together and made a plan to do that. If I was getting secretly paid by Apple, I'd live in a much nicer apartment. I'll tell you that right now. So I will say, I was wrong about the passport size. And I think I was wrong for a couple of reasons. one is that it just took a while for the software to make any sense, right? Like, even everybody's experience so far with the fold eight has been, in a lot of ways, this is the best of both worlds, right?
Starting point is 00:27:08 Like, it's a pretty small screen that turns into a pretty big screen in a way that is kind of pocketable. Like, that's a huge victory. Software's kind of wacky. Some things fill the screen. Some things don't. Some things have weird sidebars because they don't know what to do with the aspect ratio. There's a lot to work out here.
Starting point is 00:27:22 And there's a lot less to work out than there was when the pixel. fault shipped with this, right? But I think increasingly the thing that seems to be true and the thing that I got wrong, and again, I still have not held the Z-fold eight, so I can't speak to this personally, but almost every single person who has picked it up seems to have had the reaction, oh, this is smaller than I thought. And Neil and I talked about this last week, that that is powerful, right? The idea that this becomes something that is easier to hold in my hand, easier to put away, easier to fit in my pocket, easier to fit in my purse, like whatever, anything we can get back in terms of physical wieldability on our phones is a big deal. And I think I underrated the extent
Starting point is 00:28:07 to which the passport form factor would be really nice when it was closed. I expected it to not be nice when it was closed. And it seems to be nice when it was closed, especially now that they're starting to figure out how to make the software work. So I think that combination of it's actually a smaller phone that opens up into a slightly bigger phone is more compelling than I realized. My argument against it for a long time was you've just given me a phone that opens up into a slightly bigger phone. Sure. That doesn't do much for me. But a smaller phone that opens up into a slightly bigger phone actually is something. The other thing is just that all of these phones had so many other problems that Samsung has done a particularly good job of starting to solve. Like the crease is going
Starting point is 00:28:48 away. The durability problems are going away. The cameras are getting better. So all all of a sudden the idea that you have to make a bunch of sacrifices just for the privilege of spending twice as much money on a slightly bigger internal screen, that trade is getting easier to make. I still don't think in good conscience I could tell anyone to make it because it's still twice the price. But it still at this point is like getting to the point where,
Starting point is 00:29:13 okay, it's now as good as your other phones and it has this other thing it can do, which is get smaller and bigger at the same time. And that smaller and bigger thing is what I missed. But I think the real thing that has happened is Samsung fixed a bunch of problems. It fixed a bunch of software problems. They're starting to figure out what this thing should be usable for. Like, for some reason, I keep going back to the moment in the launch event where she opens up the screen and on the one side is the TikTok video and on the other side is the comments.
Starting point is 00:29:42 That was like the first sort of visceral, oh, this is awesome reaction I've ever had to a foldable phone. And I'm sure Samsung didn't invent that idea, but it was the first time that I've been like, oh, I can now do something different by opening up my phone. And it's not just used to apps side by side, which I think is a tiny feature for hardly anybody. It's I can actually meaningfully change the experience of using my phone just by opening it up.
Starting point is 00:30:09 I think that's very cool. I think it took us a while to catch up to the idea that there is stuff you can do on either side of this equation. I think it took the phone makers a while to get here. I'm very curious to see if Apple has actually figured out, A, the form factor itself, like it's going to be very funny, frankly, if there's a big, messy crease in the middle of the iPhone Ultra or whatever ends up being called. And Samsung can just sit back and be like, yeah, we fix that, you clowns. I sort of hope that's the case.
Starting point is 00:30:38 But it'll be interesting to see also if Apple has a bunch of new ideas about how to make the software work. I wouldn't say I'm massively optimistic. I think the existence of the iPad suggests that Apple has not yet figured out what you're supposed to do with a screen that size. But we'll see. And that's it for today's hotline show. Wait, no, wrong.
Starting point is 00:31:01 I've one more to throw you. You didn't get to this, but I just want to give a quick shout out to David, who emailed us about the same show, talking about the Z-Fold 8, to point out that the exact device being created now is Theodore Twomb, his phone in the movie Her, the little, the little like makeup case that opens up to become his
Starting point is 00:31:20 phone. This is just what we're doing now. And I think that's so funny because her is the most interesting movie in tech right now in like a very real way because everybody in tech watched that movie somehow didn't realize it was like horrible and dystopian and started trying to make Samantha. And this is just literally what we were doing now. But if you look around that movie, I really encourage everybody to go watch this movie again because it's, fabulous. There's so many interesting ideas about devices in that movie and the way that he like picks up hardware and how hardware and software interact. And this device that he's talking about, the little makeup case, like, his AI assistant will say like, I need to show you something and he'll pull it out and look at it. And this is like, there's so many good interaction ideas and hardware ideas in that movie, including foldable phones. But everybody should stop trying to make us fall in love with our AI assistants. steal all the other ideas from that movie, including the pants that Joaquin Phoenix wears the whole time.
Starting point is 00:32:21 Leave Samantha alone. That's all I have to say. That did make me think that maybe this whole time, any movie with an AI plotline should have had like subtext subtitles where it's just like parentheses, this is bad. Don't do this. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:40 It's like satire needs to be like, this is satire, just so you know. All right. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you, David. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you again to Travis for being here.
Starting point is 00:32:51 And thank you, as always, for watching and listening. Special thanks, by the way, to everybody who sends us questions all the time about everything. 866, Verge11 is the hotline. Vergecast of the verge.com is the email. We want to hear everything, especially things I'm wrong about. We love hearing things that I'm wrong about. And a secret to getting on the show is make fun of me in particular, and Travis will almost always demand that we put it in the show.
Starting point is 00:33:13 That's just a little fun fact for all of you. If you want to support everything that we're doing, the best thing you can do is subscribe to TheVorge. Theverge.com slash subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts ad-free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage of my feelings about E-Inc and flip phones and everything else. Thank you in advance, theverge.com slash subscribe.
Starting point is 00:33:32 The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kajas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We will see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.

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