David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host pinch complete a decade of acquisition covering user tech. Previously, astatine Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
After almost precisely 18 years, you could make the statement that the tech manufacture has yet vanished what the iPhone started. It’s not that there’s nary invention near successful phones, aliases that location aren’t different large ideas to beryllium had astir the devices we transportation around, but the circumstantial point the first iPhone was — a candy bar-shaped slab of solid successful your pouch — mightiness person reached its last form. Maybe there’s different logic that Samsung’s Galaxy S25 lineup looks truthful familiar, and why it appears this year’s different flagship devices will too. But possibly it’s conscionable that there’s not overmuch near to do here.
On this section of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Allison Johnson tells america each astir her experiences with the S25 Ultra, supposedly the astir absorbing and experimental instrumentality successful Samsung’s lineup, and why she’s a spot underwhelmed contempt the truth that the Ultra remains an fantabulous phone.
We besides talk the phones near to motorboat this year, and whether this mightiness yet beryllium the twelvemonth a caller telephone style — flipping, aliases folding, aliases possibly tri-folding? — hits the large time. We person immoderate theories, and a batch of hope, but are mostly readying for different twelvemonth of the aforesaid aged candy bars.
After that, we talk astir China. Cooper Quintin, a elder unit technologist astatine the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joins the show to talk astir each the privateness and information questions surrounding TikTok, RedNote, DeepSeek, and the different apps connected to China that are hitting it large successful the US. Quintin explains really to deliberation astir those apps compared to what Meta and Google are doing, explains really to deliberation astir your ain threat model, and makes the lawsuit that what we really request is a national privateness law.
Finally, we return a mobility connected the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 aliases email [email protected]!) astir the Meta Portal. The once-hot video calling gadget is no longer for sale and appears not agelong for this world — truthful really are we each expected to telephone the grandparents? With the thief of The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, we travel up pinch immoderate ideas.
If you want to cognize much astir everything we talk successful this episode, present are immoderate links to get you started: