The Vergecast - The 6G, modular, robot phones of the future

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Most mainstream phone options are kind of the same, year in and year out — but that doesn’t mean there’s no innovation to be found. The Verge’s Allison Johnson is at Mobile World Congress, and joins the show to report on all the modular phones, robot phones, small phones, big phones, and (alas) 6G phones set to hit the market this year. After that, The Verge’s Jess Weatherbed explains the phenomenon of the gadget strap, and makes the case that they’re an increasingly useful accessory as our phones become even more important to our daily lives. (Yes, even if you have pockets.) Finally, The Verge’s Jay Peters helps David answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) about whether the metaverse, however you want to define it, is ever going to be realized. Further reading: Oh great, here comes 6G  Honor claims its Robot Phone will launch later this year  Lenovo made a Franken-laptop with modular ports and a second screen  Vivo’s next phone will launch with a professional camera rig  Tecno’s latest concept phone is lit by neon  Honor’s Magic V6 is the first foldable with an IP69 rating  The Motorola Razr Fold is shaping up to be pure flagship Xiaomi’s super-slim power bank costs extra in orange.  Honor’s thinnest tablet doesn’t come cheap.  Peak Design has wearable gadget straps for people who hate bags  Apple’s misunderstood crossbody iPhone strap might be the best I’ve seen  Meta confirms Reality Labs layoffs and shifts to invest more in wearables Meta’s VR metaverse is ditching VR 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 [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 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 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 Nielai 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 Vergecast 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, and after all, what else do we talk about here? All that is coming up in just a second, but first, I just don't. I've got 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. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing, what you need. Prompt something like

Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it. On your company's data, in your cloud, with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist,

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Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients

have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Joining me now, the Virges Senior Reviewer, Alison Johnson. Alison, where? Describe your physical location in Barcelona right now. I am in Barcelona in the Fiera Conference Center.

I'm in a tiny little hut in the press lounge. And just for authenticity, I brought a ham C&M. much. Okay. So you've been 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. Okay. Because I just, I want to get your gut reaction to some stuff here. Okay. Basically, I have, think of a spectrum from one to five. One is like this is pure science project silly concept. This will never see the light of day outside of a convention room center.

And five is this is coming to your phone for sure next year. Does that make sense? One to five? Yes. Got it. 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. Ready. All right. The first one, we just, we have to start with 6G. 6G is apparently, we're doing 6G again. I can't, I can't figure out if it's everywhere at MWC or if it is just like being whispered about in back corridors. But what's, where are we with 6G right now?

6G is what, 5 was 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 talk 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, 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 identical AI. 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 the, 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? It's happening. Five. 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 techno concept of a modular phone that people got excited about. 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 techno 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. 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, I'll see when that happens. So a three in the real world and 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. No one, sorry to Vivo. Vivo is not that company. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know. 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 S-26 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, does exist. It's on the phone that I'm using. I'm carrying the S-26 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 obscured on the screen. I keep forgetting that I have it on, on the phone. And I shove my phone in someone else's face. I'm like, look at this. 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.

Sure does. 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 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. Um, the, the effect, like, you can, there's a setting to like crank it up to like maximum, uh, privacy. And that really does, um, kind of turn the phone into a black box if you look at it from an angle. Uh, without that, it's a little, you can still make out like a little bit of what's on the screen, but it's, it's super hard from a glance, you know, like sometimes you're on the, 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. 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. 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 tradeoffs. But it seems like you've seen a couple of device over the last couple of days that are starting to solve those tradeoffs 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. lab 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 there's this even IP 69. 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 razor fold. So it's going to have huge battery capacity, like 6,000 milliamp hours. So that kind of takes care of like batteries, 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. We don't, you know, there's maybe one phone that is super thin and durable and has a great battery. It's not 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 for it maybe. That's what I'm open for. It does seem like in general the foldable phone available outside of the U.S. is like a full generation ahead of the foldable phones available in the U.S. As you walk around NWC, having

used all of the foldable phones we can get in the U.S. 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 U.S.? Yeah, yeah. Just the abundance of them. I mean, all of the Chinese Oeans 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're 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, is 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 razor fold specifically because I read your people. about the razor fold, and I read through the list of specs, IP 48 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 razor fold right now? I think like medium excited. 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's much higher capacity and it can be much thinner. And so you get those crazy numbers like 6,000, maybe even 7,000 million of hours. Differes from a traditional lithium ion. and the U.S. manufacturers have been really hesitant about adopting it in like basically all the

Chinese OEMs and One Plus, you know, you can buy a one plus phone in the U.S. that has one of these batteries. There are concerns around like do they last as long? They, 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. And I're like, dude, the 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 flag gate. 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 U.S. 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. 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 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 ZD. booth and, you know, they've got their iPhone ear 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, it finds a way to add more to it or like make it so you're not having as many sacrifices. I think this the silicon carbon in an iPhone air or 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 like, I do think there is value in the phone that you carry every day all the time being a little, like, and a little thinner. It actually makes a difference. I just don't think right now the devices we have, the tradeoffs 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's a pretty heavy phone. Yeah. And I am shocked at the extent to which I noticed the difference holding the thing in my hand. 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 error. And I think I I'm kind of coming around to what you said. Yeah. Good. Okay. 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, Techno, 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 techno 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 and all the things. I want 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 try in it. Yeah.

The reason I like the techno 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 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 ink thing that is basically just like a little mag safe 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 it's 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. You might be, yeah. 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? God, there's robots everywhere. And 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 years. Like robots are happening. Well, so this means

if we're 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 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 cannot 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 is robots. Yeah. I mean, Honor put the,

put a robot, quote unquote, on the phone. They're, yeah, 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 S-26 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? Sure. Tell me about the pet phone. 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 That also rules out every happy dog who might just want to jump a lot They just jump. What if the 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 pets phone bill Which I think is insane Why?

Like why in this world? It was just yeah It was the gadget It was kind of at the far end Of one of these events where you go and see all were like little cool stuff. And I was just like, oh, we're here, aren't we? We're at pet phones.

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, like Frida, 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 VERS 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. Thank you.

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All right, we're back. The Virges reporter Jess Weatherbed is here. Hi, Jess. Hi. I have been wanting to do this with you for months. Ever since Apple put out this cross-body strap for the iPhone to, I would say, a mix of rapturous and deeply confused. reactions. And I want to talk about why both of those things existed, because it turns out, as you've covered in bits and pieces since then, there is sort of an industry in these

straps that to me, as somebody in the United States, basically does not exist. So I want to talk about this because I think this is like a big burgeoning gadget accessory that we should talk about. So let's just start at the very beginning here. Tell me what a, are we calling them gadget straps? Is this the official title that we're going with? It seems to be a bit of a cover rule. So every time you look up the strap, it covers everything from the lanyards, from the wrist straps to like the crossbody satchels. But everything generally just seems to have been gifted the word strap. So I think it's a general cover all. Okay. So tell me the thesis behind a gadget strap. What is this thing for? Multiple purposes. If we're talking about what it was originally for, it's because obviously the first kind of mobile phones before they were truly mobile were the massive things you had to carry over your shoulder. Like a brick-sized thing. We had a continuation of that when they started actually getting a little bit more portable where everything had a wrist strap attached to it, like the kind of thing that you just attached to yourself. At that point, everything was so expensive, you really didn't want to drop this thing on the floor.

So it's as much as a security thing. You don't want to get it stolen. It's a protective kind of accessory that you don't want it to fall out. It's a personal choice. Some people have been customizing these for, like, decades now. It has so much utility for it. It really depends on which strap you're getting. So why a strap and not a bag?

Like obviously we've done messenger bags exist, purses exist, fanny packs exist. One of the questions I wrote down is didn't we already solve this problem with fanny packs, which you are free to answer or ignore however you'd like to. But why this particular instantiation of this thing, which is basically just something that goes around your neck or your wrist and just sort of loosely openly holds your phone. Like, functionally, that is what these things are. Why, why is that the correct form here and not all these other things that are available? The explanation I can give you is we'll also kind of, well, explain why they haven't really taken

off in America as much as they have in Asia and Europe. And that's just because we use our phones for everything now. If it's not in front of me, it's like, yeah, it might be at the back of my mind, but I am using it to check concert tickets to get map directions up, I might be googling something while I'm walking around. And if you live in an inherently walkable kind of society, like I do in Britain, everything is like, if I leave the house, I don't necessarily want a massive bag with me that's going to be rattling around with pretty much nonsense in there. I can pay for things on my phone. I can open doors on my phone if I really wanted to. Like, this is my entire life now,

just in the size of a block. I think the biggest drive. Either behind this is also, I hate to always pull the card up, but inherently sexism, right? Because pockets just don't exist on women's clothing. Or if they do, they suck. You can't fit a phone in there. The last question I wrote down in my notes preparing for this is in all caps. And it just says, Jess, why can't we just give women pockets? Women had pockets, generous, huge, bountiful pockets right up until about the 50s. But that's only because they were literally tying them to their clothing.

So you would have to, they weren't really built into clothes. You had to kind of like strap around yourself. When it got to the point where form-fitting dresses were invented, some fashion designers in Milan or something, I don't know, all men, not to, you know, call it out there, but all men, decided that pockets ruined silhouettes. And we're kind of back into that stage now, a lot of clothing trends, particularly that we're seeing kind of like female fashion is very structured, it's very form-fitting. And yeah, I don't want a massive brick hanging out the side of my dress or, like, my pants or whatever. this I'm going to be wearing. So I do kind of agree it does ruin the look of something. It's also uncomfortable, right? When phones kind of shrunk down to the size where there were petite little cute things, then yeah, absolutely, I'd carry that around in my pocket. But now that I love

an iPhone max, I like the big phones. I like having a big screen. Again, I live on this thing. It's in front of my face 24-7, so I need a great big display in there. But that does mean I can't cram that into anything. And if I do find the pair of jeans or something that I can actually put my phone into. It's uncomfortable to walk in. I certainly can't ride a bike because that thing's just going to fall out. Like, it's just not practical. So the strap then is kind of designed to be this, this like hard to find middle ground of almost as convenient as just holding your phone in your hand all the time. But you don't have to be holding it in your hand all the time. And right, I'm sort of the way you describe the way you like move around in the world. I'm sort of imagining,

you know, you're, you're walking along and you pull it out to tap on the train to use your ticket. and then you pull it out again to pay for something and then you pull it out again to text your friend. And it's like this constant battle of do I want to be digging into my purse every eight minutes all day? Or do I just want this thing sort of hanging at my side that I can just sort of swing up wherever it needs to be? It's just a pure accessibility play

without needing to hold your phone in your hand all day. I feel so. A lot of the explanations I've heard from like all of my other friends have said that they just wanted something hands free, right? Either that's because they're going to lose the thing. I've had a couple of friends who, had phone straps. The reason they bought one is because they keep leaving their phones in taxis on a night out. Yeah, if you go out for like dancing or something, you got clubbing,

you don't want to bring a great big bag with you. I've seen moms discussing things that sometimes they just need to know where their phone is all the time. And if they put it down and then they leave the room, they might forget. The thing that converted me, I don't feel like this is specific to London. This will probably be the case in a lot of the big cities, which is where the walkable thing comes in. But I spent a day in London. and constantly digging my phone out of my coat pocket. It was raining. I was having to dig everything out.

I was needing it to scan myself into the tube to get on the train. And then five minutes later, I was needing it to buy a coffee. And then the next minute, I was needing it to check my train tickets on the overground. I was just constantly digging it out. And I was like, if I could just have this around my neck or attached to my rest or something where I know it's always going to be there, it's so much more practical. Some people do it for a security standpoint. I don't know how that stands up.

I haven't tested having someone try to pretend to mug me, like wench my phone away. But a lot of reasons that people do that is if they're traveling to big cities and they just don't want to have to worry about people slipping the hands in their bag or the pocket and getting it out. Yeah, the security angle is interesting to me because on the one hand, yes, it is now physically attached to your body in a way that is productive, right? You see a lot of people who get their phone stolen just why they're holding them in their hand. Somebody walks by and just yoinks it out of your hand or they grab it out of your bag or your coat pocket or whatever. that is a real risk and having it tethered to you,

even if it's not a perfect solution is, I think, straightforwardly better. On the flip side, you're just showing everybody your phone all the time. Like, this is the thing that I'm so struck by every time I see one of these is, A, I would be constantly worried about it banging up against everything and scratching and stuff, and there is some security that exists in my bag or my coat or my pocket that feels, even if it's not actually safer that way, it feels safer that way than it does, just sort of hanging here for everybody to see. But then the flip side is, like, it is, I don't know,

I'm just so torn between this idea of, like, having it accessible is useful, but I'm also just showing my phone to the world at all times. So is this what you see when you're out in the world? Like, you're just walking around and everybody's phone is just kind of hanging there on their right hip, and this is just normal and okay? I see a lot less of it in London than I do. I came back from Japan a couple of months ago

and everyone there had some form of strap. Sometimes it was a lanyard around the neck. Sometimes it was just, they were walking around and it was attached around their wrist like a bracelet. That almost seemed more like a combination of utility but also just personalisation. If we think, like I don't know, when I was at school, phone charms was a big thing

because every mobile phone had that little thing where you could just cram as many little trinkets and stuff on there as possible. And that's still a big cultural aspect of a lot of areas where these straps are really, really popular. So sometimes they just want to match it with their outfit. It's a little mix of things, I think. Some people are just wanting to do it to accessorize,

and other people are genuinely concerned about, like, security or having access to it, especially if they're in an unfamiliar location, which is why we see a lot of these are very popular recommendations for travels. Like, traveling blogs will always say, you need to get one of these to, it's always in front of you. You always know where it is. You don't have to go digging. Totally.

And the, I left it in a taxi thing. is probably much more real for many more people than somebody grabbed it out of my hand, you know, as an actual security risk. But I'm glad you mentioned Tokyo because I went back through all the comments on the pieces that you've written about these things, and overwhelmingly the city people mention is Tokyo

as the example of how this is used. And I find that really fascinating because I think the utility stuff you're describing and the accessorization stuff you're describing go hand in hand. Right, and I think Tokyo is a city. I've not been, but from what I understand, it is even more phone-based than what you're describing about London.

And so part of what I've been trying to figure out through all of this is why this is a thing in some places and not others. Like phone cases, universal accessory, right? Anywhere you go, most people have a case on their phone. This is a much more sort of culturally different thing. And part of me wonders if it scales directly from how much of your day-to-day life involves tapping your phone on things. Like, is, I kind of wonder if it's that simple. Like, we know that a lot of the, like, the strap culture for phones originated in Japan anyway. Like, again, going from the, yeah, they have a whole thing.

Kite, Ketai, I believe. My pronunciation is terrible. I'm so sorry for anyone that is Japanese. And so I'm listening to it as Kito is the Japanese word for, like, mobile phone effectively. But it kind of became condensed into just meaning like the strap that you would attach to it. There was a whole thing where when phones, again, going back to the 80s, massive things to carry it on your shoulder.

And then things shrunk, things were getting a little bit easier. Even when things were the size of like a cereal box, you still had a strap on the back of it. And as they continued to get smaller and smaller, Japan was kind of like one of the, like the regions where if you bought a phone,

right down to like the smaller Nokia ones, where we were actually getting to something that you could slip in your pocket, they all still came with a strap. It was just a whole thing where either for security purposes, they didn't like the idea of if you drop this thing, it might break. and you've lost a lot of money.

But there was also a lot of conversation. We can't definitively point to something to say, this started it. This is where it all kicked off. But we know that Japan had a culture already of hanging trinkets, because whereas in Western kind of like cultures, particularly, like Italy, the UK, we would tie pockets to our outfits.

Or if you're a chap, your coat would have pockets already in there. When we're talking about kimonos and robes and things, there weren't really any pockets built into there. So they would physically have to tie objects to themselves using bits of rope. And it became quite popular just to have little trinkets, little dolls, little customizations and things. And when phones became a thing, it was almost kind of a like the cooking pot was ready, right? It was a, hey, you're already a trinket kind of based culture in this. You're going to love this.

You're going to love all the little doodads and you can put your favorite comic character on there. Or you can have a matching one with your bestie or your boyfriend. And it just really took off. It was kind of like the perfect environment for it to be cultured in as much as part of the aesthetic side of it and the utility side of it. Because it is the other side of this, Japan is very walkable. You will spend a lot of time just on your feet. There are very, very few reasons why you would have to get in a car, for example, you'll be on a train. That means that if you're out on your feet all day, you don't want to have to lug a heavy bag around or hold a phone all the time.

So straps just became kind of a ubiquitous thing. spread to a lot of other places in Asia. You mentioned actually that kind of you do a lot of stuff on your phone in Japan now, but actually we were always told before we went over there is that you have to bring cash because not a lot of places take car payments. Apparently that's changed within the last couple of years, but China had a huge push for mobile payments way, way before Japan did. So in places like China, Korea, Singapore, almost the aspect of living on your phone is even bigger than it is in Japan and has been for a long time. So you just had all of these places where it was just primed to take off.

That's interesting. And it does that back and forth between the aesthetic appeal of it, that this thing is an accessory. People are going to see it for utility reasons. So you might as well make it something you care about. And then that coming back to the utility of it, but also giving you real incentive to like you've now made this thing into something that sort of reflects you as a person. Of course you want people to see it. So that actually having this thing dangling off of you all day is it's a feature, not a bug, right? Like, in a real way, it sounds almost like you're describing sort of a piece of jewelry. It's just extremely functionally different kind of jewelry. But people are treating it essentially the same way.

Yeah. A lot of it kind of, we've had a bit of a resurgence of it over here. I think now that kind of America and like parts of the UK are becoming aware of it is because it has a very nostalgic charm in terms of it being like a vibe, right? It's what people used to wear. And you see a lot of younger stars started to wear the beaded phone charms during the pandemic where people were making them all at home. And because all of these pictures were all over Instagram, all in Vogue, there were people wearing these phone straps to the Met Gala in 2022. It's this kind of thing. They just kind of started leaching into the personal side of things because they looked cool before they became a utility. But then that became afterwards because you would

tailor it to what you need. One of the examples I go with for the Apple one, because I think that's what I got everyone talking. Why am I going to spend $60 on the strap? The magnetic design of it, because it's so flat and because it sits flush to your body, the first thing I thought of is,

oh my God, that's going to be so much easier to ride my bike. Because I'm constantly worried my phone's going to fall out my pocket. But every other strap is just like flopping around or it's smacking me in the back or something. You can actually tie that so it's really kind of flushed your chest. And then if you want to have it a little bit loose, you can loosen it up a bit. Just the practicality of that kind of thing. There was also a company, an American-based one, actually, that it tends to be known for this stuff called Bandolier.

They're based in California. You've had loads of celebrities rocking out of Zendaya. Taylor Swift had one back in 2016, and that kind of got that company known. But they're known for having not just the phone strap. It's got like a little pocket on the back. So you've got a phone strap and a wallet. You don't ever have to have a separate thing to carry your cards around. You can slap your keys on there.

It's just looking at all of these different straps and going, what do I actually need it for? Do I need it to look nice or do I need it to have a purpose? And no matter what you need, you can find one. There's a company that sells a strap that's made of a USBC charger. Like, it's a two and one. That's a great idea. Setechi or something. It's like a corded rope.

Like roughly the same kind of design, not the flat aspect of the Apple one, but literally they're like, you don't want to have to carry a charger around with you. So why don't we just have this thing hanging around your shoulder or your neck and you can charge your phone on it as well? there is so much utility and customization to all of it. Yeah, I love that. And one thing that really struck me about Apple in particular was that Apple seems to have gone out of its way to show the crossbody strap on men. And I think I was looking up a bunch of this other stuff and it is, I'm on the Bandelier website right now, which I had not seen before. But it's like this just looks like a sort of fast fashion website, right? Like it is attractive women wearing attractive clothes wearing this thing.

It looks like kind of every other fashion website you'd find anywhere. But we're starting to see a shift, right? You get a company like peak design, which you covered fairly recently, which I think is a much less sort of specifically gendered company making kind of great accessories and products like this. Apple, again, went out of its way to show this thing on men. And so I guess what I'm curious what you think and what you've seen around the world even is whether this goes like phone cases, which is a,

a sort of universal accessory that everybody has with kind of infinite options about what you wanted to look like, or if this ends up being kind of largely a product for, frankly, people who don't have pockets. I think it's always going to be a mix of the two. Guys historically just haven't had the same pocket dimension issues that are, that women have had. I think it's kind of taking a little while, particularly in the U.S. where it doesn't occur to you that you might have to walk around, unless you're living in like New York or one of the other kind of big cities where you can be on your phone. be walking around for eight hours a day, going from place to place, constantly using your phone,

you wouldn't think, why would I need to have this and have it accessible so quickly? You need to be in those environments, I think, for it to click. And for guys who cycle a lot, like, they will see some of the benefits in this. Again, I'm constantly scared it's going to fall out of my pocket every time I go riding a bike. There's also part of me that wonders whether it's a midway point, right? Because bags for men, just generally carry bags, beyond the usual... boring, plain, very kind of like business standard satchel or rucksack or something. We're seeing a lot of guys actually wearing, for lack of a better word, handbags now,

shoulder bags, strap bags or something. And they are taking off, but then they're nowhere near like kind of the impact that they've had on women and like outside of that kind of perspective. So this might be kind of the law, as it were, kind of a, hey, you really, like you need to carry something. Just try. Just try. You don't need to. commit to a bag, you know, this people can honestly almost miss this if they wanted to. Yeah. The thing I keep thinking about here that strikes me as both the best and worst case scenario is the belt clips. There is a generation of men and a generation of phones that were on, were clipped to men's belts. And I would just like to say out loud to all men everywhere,

we can't do that again. Don't. No, that was bad. That solved no problems. Like, the upside of these gadget traps is they actually, they provide some utility, right? It is, it is an easier version of access. It is that kind of security you're talking about. They can potentially look very cool. You can hold it while it's still in the thing.

Belt clips just look bad and we shouldn't do them. And if that's controversial, I really look forward to getting in trouble on the internet for this. But that does suggest on the plus side that there is actually some appetite for I would like this thing to be slightly more accessible. And maybe if we can figure out how to, you know, take gadget straps but make them fashion for men, there might actually be something here. Like all the utility stuff you're describing,

I'm very compelled by. And I was thinking as you were talking, a thing that happens to me all the time is when I'm driving, I will like throw the kids in the car and we get in. And my phone is in my pocket. And it falls out of my pocket into that like liminal space between the seats where nothing. ever comes back.

And so the amount of time I have spent at stoplights, like, digging down, wouldn't it be great if I could just have my phone here and not think about that ever again? And every time I get out of an Uber or a taxi, I have trained myself to open the door, get out, get all my stuff out, and then turn around and look down at the seat to make sure nothing has fallen out. And there is just a very basic amount of utility that would come into my life with one of these things. But then I'm like, I feel like I would look stupid wearing this.

So it's like maybe I should be the change in the world, Jess. Maybe I need to get a cross-body strap and just wear it. I think you could rock it. You could be so confident. I think like 90% of starting any of this confidence. It's not, I would say it's not me. You would have to convince because I love hip clips. I was literally thinking about them the other day where I was like,

can you like remember when everyone just used to walk around with like their walkman? And it was attached to their belt loop or something. But then I had to actually think about it. I was like, I don't actually remember anyone doing it. I remember seeing a lot of pictures and catalogs of people telling me to do that. But it never really happened because if you jostled it around too much, everything would skip. But the new generation of like Gen Z and everyone that's like really into White U.K. at the minute are seeing all of these old pictures and they're going, oh, wow, that looks so cool.

And they are going to have to find out the hard way. And I feel that that is the next thing, right? We tried, like, if we're not going to be able to strap or, like, crossbody or whatever, my mind went to how they tried to make the iPod shuffle really, like, appealing by just building it on a clip. You want to just have it in front of you, have it nearby. I feel like that will be the next thing. People will want to start either clipping their phone or, like, we used to do it with Game Boys as well. Everything had a hit clip at one point, I swear, we used to walk around.

the little game boy printer. There was a kid at my school that had a game boy printer that was always. Like, this is a thing, right? Amazing. Right? I think about it. I'm like, I don't think we thought he was cool at the time. But like, in hindsight, you know. But he did. And that's enough. You know what I mean? He knew he was cool. We just didn't know at the time. Yeah. And there's a generation of like nostalgic Y2K hipsters now that are looking back at that going, wow, I wish, I wish that was me. Why don't we just do that? And it's going to happen. It's either that or we're going to start seeing like Batman utility belts everywhere.

And I would rather a hit clip at that point because at least it's just one thing. You're not kind of cramming everything in there. Let's just do the straps, people. It's going to be okay. Okay, so here's my last question for you. And I'm curious, particularly as you think about this in your own life

and how you use this stuff right now, it seems to me that either this is a very cool accessory ecosystem whose time has come, right? Because the phone is still primary in our lives. We need it for more real-world things than ever, especially as we do more sort of camera-based AR stuff, having this kind of like anything you can do to shrink the distance between you and your phone being useful will work for people. So I'm very compelled by the idea of these things.

I also wonder if they are a signal that actually what we need is like the next kind of gadget, right? Because a lot of what you're describing is stuff that we were all supposed to be doing with our Apple watches. And is the kind of thing people claim we're going to be doing with our AR glasses. And so, like, do you look at gadget straps as like a sort of signal that we are ready to move on to the next thing? Or is this like just the next big accessory because we are going to keep using our phones for this purpose? And we all need to get on board. I think, contrastingly, I think this might actually be evidence that like the promise of everything will be on our wrists or as some like wearable glass and stuff that the world just isn't ready for that. yet or maybe ever because we've already established that people love having the little screen on a slab that they can take around, they can put it away if they don't need it anymore. And the only not convenient thing about that for a lot of people was having access to it. And if a, I don't know, you can go on Amazon, you can buy something for like $6, right? If you really want a strap and you don't want to spend, those Bandolier ones start at like $100. So you don't have to get anything. They are very fancy. But I love that all this exists, right? Like this is the case ecosystem all over the all over.

again, right? You can buy the junkie thing for a couple of dollars on Amazon all the way up to like truly luxurious designer thousands of dollar things. And that should exist. I actually think it's really good news that that whole spectrum exists. Absolutely. Yeah. There's something for, and like almost going back to the like, can we get men on board to kind of do this? A lot of guys in Asia, Japan as well, they were all wearing these straps. They were very, you know, utilitarian. They were very typically kind of masculine colors. You're a lot of navy, khaki, like black, not very accessorized and stuff, but they had the practical aspect of that. And I feel if we're really at the point where we're looking at smart glasses or like my Apple Watch or something, I go, yeah, but it's just

not convenient and this would be easier on my phone. I just wish I could like access my phone in three seconds, the constant having to take pictures. It was a game changer for vacation. Like just having it around my neck and every time I was like, I need to translate this thing. Oh, my phone's here. I want to take a picture. Oh, my phone's here. I'm going to go swimming, but I don't have any pocket. Oh, my phone. Oh, yeah, I can just sling around. Like every, every part of the thing. of it. I was like becoming kind of a convert more and more because I just drinking the sauce every time I was lifting it to my face going, oh, this is so cool. And at that point, I, like, I can't think of why I would choose wearables specifically over something that I could

just effectively make my phone a wearable. That solves all of my problems. And I can do that for barely any money whatsoever. It makes everything better. I think this, in a funny way, this might be the accessory that unlocks a bunch of new things for people. And I think in the U.S., maybe we're just going to start to see that happen. Okay, you've convinced me, but you have one more job to do here, which is, it seems to me there are basically three kinds, right? There's the cross-body one. There's the lanyard sort of necklace-y one, and then there's just a wrist strap. Which one should I buy?

I'm going to buy whatever you tell me to buy, and I'm going to report back on how it goes. And you have to tell me which one to get right now. You need to get a cross-body. If you're just looking for a bit of everything, the rest of it. straps are any kind of useful if you're literally like holding your phone all the time. And in London, when I'm slamming it to get into trains, whatever, great. Those crossbody ones, you can extend the length. You can have it as tight or as like loose to your body as possible. You can hide it under your coat if you're self-conscious and you don't want to see the people like. And it's still, you just open your

jacket and you can fish it out. And it's, it's super easy. So I feel like those are the, uh, the standard line of if you're going to consider one, get a crossbody. You can do so much. If you only want to loop it around your neck and you're going swimming or like paddling or something, you can do that. Like, it's still just a big loop. Just chub your neck through it rather than your neck and your shoulder. Easy, peasy. Okay. I'm in. I'm going to do it. I also, just one other analog that makes me feel a lot of feelings that I was thinking about as you were talking is I was like, you're like, okay, how do you make this appealing to men? And I was like, oh, they're going to make them that are just like big gold chains. And then I was like,

oh my God, we're doing wallet chains again. Yeah. Just we're doing wallet chains again. The little emo and punking is just doing wallet chains. Yeah. Well, like the studded belts and everything. It's going to be fantastic. Fantastic. We're so back. I'm so excited about this. I'm stay thrilled. All right, Jess, thank you.

I know you did a bunch of research and stuff on where all this stuff came from, so I appreciate it. I think I'm going to read the Apple one, and I will report back on how it goes. Until then, we're going to take a break. Jess, thank you as always. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling. aha moments and quiet meditation.

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But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise. That you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means?

to the elected officials and what it means to the people. So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary, third. Like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin.

All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge 1.1. You can email Vergecast at theverge.com. I'm David at theverge.com. We're not hard to find. Just send us all of your questions about everything. Joining me for this one, the Verge is Jay Peters.

Hi, Jay. Hey, how's it going? I have brought you here for this because you, I don't know if you did this on purpose or not, but you have become the verges, like, unofficial, what on earth is happening to the Metaverse correspondent? Was this a thing you did on purpose? Sort of.

I think it's because I played a lot of Fortnite and then I started reporting on stuff like Fortnite. And so here we are. Well, is Fortnite the Metaverse is a question that we do not have time for today. We can spend multiple episodes on that one. Yeah. But here, let me play the question. we have today. And then I think it actually

made touch on is Fortnite the Metaverse. But let's play the question. Hello. My name's Crosby and I'm 14 years old. And I was wondering, as the future of wearables and VR technologies progress, Vision Pro in

five years, MetaQuest, whatever, will we be seeing platforms such as roadblocks and other similar online hangout areas be growing into areas where people actually live in like Mark Zuckerberg promised the metaverse a decade ago. Thank you.

All right. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but Jay, I'm curious, your immediate reactions here. I think the answer is no. There's a couple reasons for that. Purely from a hardware perspective,

like I think VR headsets are still a really hard, sell for a lot of people. Like, you have to put a face computer in front of your face. You have to make the display good enough to be compelling, interesting. You have to make the battery last longer than, like, two or three hours. And so, like, as a thing to live in for a long period of time, even in five years, I just, I don't assume that that hardware is going to be ready or capable enough or whatever. And then from, like, these places, assume that's good enough, the digital places for people to hang out. They all want the people to hang out in their own

place. So like, Fortnite doesn't really want you to go to Roblox. Roblox doesn't want you to go to Fortnite. Meta doesn't want you to go from its horizon worlds to other stuff. So there's just too many barriers and walls and just things that get in the way that

I don't think a Metaverse style place is something we're all going to live in or like spend an exceedingly long amount of time in every single day. Can I tell you my theory about this. I've been thinking a lot about this since I first heard this question. And I think it's possible that if you could, you know, Thanos snap all internet out of existence and we just like rebuild from scratch, that it is possible that the endpoint is something like

this. I think there is, there are reasons that these virtual worlds are interesting. Obviously, platform dynamics being what they are on the internet, things do tend to centralize like this over time and often we end up with one very large player in a new thing that kind of subsumes the whole ecosystem. But I think the problem is what you just described. It's that there already are huge scale versions of this thing that have absolutely no interest in interoperating with each other. And unless you interoperate, the user experience of this is going to be awful. Right. Like, I'm, in order to move from one place to another, I have to close an app, open a new one, log in, and suddenly deal with an entirely new universe with different rules and expectation.

Like, that's an awful user experience. And so this thing only works if it is sort of one fully realized, like ready player one sized thought. And it doesn't work if not everybody's in it. It doesn't work if it's one platform that's actually lots of platforms. Like, if you could just say to meta-quest, no other technology exists, accept this, you could maybe get to something at scale that's interesting. I also think this is a bad idea and it's good that it's not happening. And I think if you go back, like, to me, the metaverse is such a pandemic phenomenon where

like in 2020, there was this idea that like, okay, no one is ever going to go outside again and we're all just going to be in virtual worlds. And what we need is more human ways to be in virtual worlds. And that's, I think, incorrect. What we need is actually something closer to AR glasses, right? Which is like how do we put digitally useful information into the real world? That is much clear, much more clearly what people want than this whole idea of like, blow up your life to sit on the couch and be in a virtual world.

I think there are, there is a time in place for that. And again, like is Fortnite the Metaverse? There are things that Fortnite does that are those things, right? And it is very compelling to lots of people. but that next turn, I just don't see coming at all. Like, to me, society is just out on this idea at large, and I don't know how it comes back. Yeah. I mean, I think the pandemic, like you said, it was kind of an early test of like, oh, is this like actually a reality that we could maybe possibly do?

As soon as it was easier to go outside because of the pandemic, because everybody got vaccinated or whatever, everybody realized, oh, I actually want to hang out with people in real life outside. I don't want to spend my entire day on these virtual platforms. And I think that's why I think they're still more successful as gaming platforms, which is why Roblox and Fortnite are arguably like the biggest and most popular versions of these because they're thinking you maybe spend an hour or two of your time with, with your friends, you maybe bounce around from experience to experience dressed as, you know, somebody from stranger things or whatever. And then you go do something else because it's a video game and that's it, right?

Yeah. To me, the meta Horizon Worlds example is really telling here. You wrote a story about this a couple of weeks ago, meta doing a big pivot in how it thinks about Horizon Worlds. What do you make of this change that Meta made? They basically, they built a VR thing and then said, never mind, this is not a VR thing, this is a mobile thing. And I have a hard time looking at that and not thinking

this is like a complete 180 degree turn from what you thought you were building. Oh, yeah. It 100% is because I think they realize that VR as a market has a ceiling and it's ultimately a low ceiling compared to what's possible with mobile. Horizon World started is this like VR first immersive metaverse type place. And then a couple years after they launched, they also brought it to mobile. And it's been kind of sitting in this weird in between of like, make it for VR, but also for mobile. And now meta is just so clearly like the way this platform moves forward is as a mobile platform, which is where Roblox has seen a ton of success. And more

recently now that like fortnight's back on the ios app store fortnight is also seeing a time of success so mobile is where it's at but that's not a VR immersive experience it's just another thing to play on your phone right okay this is my one philosophical question that i will make you ask can mobile be the metaverse i mean i guess we have to decide what the metaverse actually represents this is also again i i we could do that for hours but i think to me it's like somewhere if you allow the metaverse to be a spectrum, right? Between I'm wearing a headset that it takes up my entire field of view all the way down to, like, I don't think you can have the metaverse on a smart watch. But that's a fun debate if you want to talk about that, to me, it's just the idea of if I'm

sitting here holding up a screen like this and 90% of my field of view is not my phone. This is now an AR device, not a VR device. And I think VR and the metaverse to me are the same thing. But maybe I'm wrong. Can you do this metaverse thing in the way that people are describing through mobile? I think the answer is yes enough. I mean, I think the sci fineness of stuff like Snow Crash, where it's this, or Ready Player 1, where it's, you know, ultra immersive. The VR side of it, no, we're learning that that's not what the giant scale

metaverse is going to be. But something that's on your phone that you, you know, like you said, takes up most of what you can see. It's already these kind of different worlds where you can play as different characters and jump from place to place to place to place with all with your friends in one group all at the same time.

Like, we have to define what a metaverse is and since it's kind of a made up term anyway, taken from a book, like, who knows what it really means? And I think, so I think the answer could be yes. I think just a more realistic way to think of these platforms still is just like, these are just really giant gaming platforms

that are trying to sell you digital items and that's where the money comes in and that's ultimately what they are right now. Yeah. And I think that's fine and good, right? It is let that, let that be what it is. And this actually brings me to my last question for you, which is, again, if you go back to the early days of the pandemic, 2020, 2021,

there was this big theory about VR that it was going to be both its own thing, but also sort of a feature of AR, right? I talked to a lot of people who were like, what this will actually be is sort of the lights off version of your AR glasses. You will be able to wear them and see the world through them or turn it off and be in a completely virtual space. And this is what we get with Pass Through on the Vision Pro and the quest. And I think in theory, a lot of people were saying this is like in AR glasses, you might still want to be able to turn off the world around you and fully be somewhere else.

Outside of gaming, do you still buy that theory? It seems to me that we've just skipped past it and everybody agrees that actually AR is the feature of AR and this middle thing, except for playing video games, doesn't really exist. Is that how you see it too? Or do you think VR as a feature of AR still works? I don't think it works. I mean, I've used the Vision Pro occasionally. And it's a super impressive trick when you're in the immersive VR and you switch out of it.

And the pass-through is like pretty good. On the Quest 3, it's kind of good. And it's a cool trick. But I don't want to like walk around my house wearing that stuff. I don't want to go outside wearing that stuff. I think I remember right when the Vision Pro came out, Casey Neistat did that incredible video where he's just walking around New York City wearing the Vision Pro, and it's wild, it's a great video,

it's not what anybody is ever going to do ever in real life. And so I think that's maybe why smart glasses have become so much more appealing and realistically when they become AR glasses at some point in the next five years. I think people are just going to want, like you said, AR stuff overlaid over the world they can see and the regular looking glasses that they're wearing,

they don't want to do the, I'm in VR and then transfer to, AR type thing. Yeah. Yeah, VR as video games continues to make sense to me. But compared to the way everybody talked about VR and still talks about the Metaverse, that is like, that is this big an idea. Yes. You know what I mean? And I think, and I think that's fine. And maybe we should just get there with VR headsets much more quickly. Like, just let the Quest be a gaming system. It is a gaming system. We can all stop pretending anything else. I think, I mean, I think that's ultimately where meta is going with all of its changes. They're like, we're largely stepping back from making a

lot of the content for this. We're going to support third-party developers who want to do so. We're going to continue to make really interesting and cool VR hardware, but that's kind of it. And instead, they're betting on stuff like there are smart glasses or AI. Mark Zuckerberg is a great vision of stuff you see in your feed, might be AI generated. You can send a game that you make with a prompt to your friends. Is that the Metaverse? I don't know. Well, we still have to define what the Metaverse actually is in reality. You're making me think of the meme with the guy with the butterfly and he's just like, is this the Metaverse? Metaverse? That's exactly right. That's perfect, an absolutely perfect analogy for what this is.

Well, I don't know that we've solved anything here, but I think we agree that are we all going to live in the metaverse anytime soon? Crosby, probably not. I think by the time you're 19, I do not think we will be living in the metaverse. And I think that's probably for the best. I would say, or maybe fortunately that we're not all living in the metaverse. Yeah, I think it's going to be good. All right, Crosby, I hope that helps. Jay, thanks as always. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Jay and Jess and Allison for being here. And thank you, as always, for watching and listening. We have so much more to come this week.

We're going to try and do this live show after the Apple event on Wednesday. So keep an eye out for that. Lots of fun coming. It'll be in the feed if that's how you get your podcasts. But we're trying new stuff. It's fun to try new things here on the Vergecast. We also have a lot more coming on the Paramount and Warner Brothers story, the Anthropic and Open AI and Department of War story.

There's a lot of news happening. And actually a lot of, I would argue, sort of big picture, consequential things going on. So we're going to dig into all of it. For now, the best thing you can do to support all of this is to subscribe to the Verge, to get ad-free podcasts, including this one, and to support all of the journalism that the Verge is doing it. It feels like a vergey moment in the world right now, my friends. Subscribe, be part of it, come hang out with us, yell at us in the comments.

It's what we live for. Until then, the Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Neil and I will be back tomorrow, Wednesday, and then on Friday to talk about just all of the news, because all the news keeps happening. We'll see you then. Rock around.