Project Gene5is adventures, Congress takes on VPNs, and Nothing Phone 1 review

02:30 - The Verge's David Pierce talks with tech reporter Mitchell Clark about what it took to get service from Project Genesis and they conclude a FOIA may be the only way to get the facts. I became a Dish influencer to get a 5G NFT 20:21- David talks with senior policy reporter Makena Kelly about US lawmakers suddenly discovering that VPNs are a thing that exists and that they aren't very honest about their business practices. Lawmakers push FTC to clean up the VPN industry 41:50 - And finally, reviews editor Allison Johnson and news reporter Jon Porter go deep on Nothing Phone — our review, the hype leading up to its launch, and the reality of it now that we got our hands on it. Nothing Phone 1 Review Hot and Hyped: Inside the strange launch of the Nothing Phone 1 Email us at [email protected], we'd love to hear from you. Call our Vergecast Hotline! 866-VERGE11 (866-837-4311) Find us on Twitter: Mitchell Clark is @strawberrywell Alex Cranz is @alexhcranz Makena Kelly is @kellymakena Jon Porter is @JonPorty Allison Johnson is @allisonjo1 David Pierce is @pierce Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Fake Cellphone Networks. I'm your friend David Pierce, coming to you from my local coffee shop. Shout out to St. Elmo's, where I am waiting for my order of the biggest iced coffee they would sell me. That's where they were, the biggest iced coffee they would sell me. Splash of milk, no sweetener, because it is 1 million, billion degrees outside, and I think this is the only chance I have of surviving today. I know it's hot everywhere, so good luck out there. Anyway, today on the show, Mitchell Clark is going to come on and tell us about his wild adventures with Project Gen of Five SIS and what it takes to actually build a cellphone network that actually works for real humans. McKenna Kelly and I are going to talk about VPNs and why members of Congress are suddenly curious about them, and John Porter, Allison Johnson and I are going to try and sort through all the hype and nonsense about the nothing phone and try to figure out if it might be

• 0:47David Pierce?

  worth your money, because I think there's a chance that it is, actually. We'll get to all of that as soon as I get my coffee and probably a muffin, because I've been eyeing this blueberry muffin across the coffee shop all morning, and it looks delicious. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting, and what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, "How do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting?" And, "What sectors are on the move right now?" Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:32David Pierce?

  Welcome back. I am in air conditioning again. Life is good again. Let's do this.

• 2:38David Pierce?

  So if you're a regular Vergecast listener, you know all about Project Genesis, which is the 5G network that Dish promised to set up to be a new fourth carrier as part of the T-Mobile Sprint acquisition a couple of years ago. It's messy and complicated, but most of it doesn't really matter. The idea is it's called Genesis, and we call it Gen-5-sis, because that's how Dish spells it, and this is their fault, so that's what we call it. Anyway, Dish says this network exists, and that it covers the 20% of US customers that it was required to cover by now. But we've been testing that theory and the networks themselves to figure out what's real and what's a bunch of 5G smoke and mirrors. And spoiler alert, it's mostly smoke and mirrors. Mitchell Clark is one of the unfortunate souls who has been doing this testing for us, so I grabbed him and Alex to hear how it's going. Hi, Mitchell. Hi, Alex.

• 3:23David Pierce?

  Hello. Hello. Mitchell, you have the, I guess, somewhat dubious distinction of being one of what appears to be like 13 people in the United States of America who has spent a lot of time using this network. You had an enormous amount of trouble just getting them to ship you a phone that used this new network. Walk us through the hell of signing up for Project Gen-5-sis.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Right, so at the beginning, when this first launched, the website was kind of a mess, specifically the address verification. Because I live in a condo, I always have to have like the unit two, otherwise it will get randomly distributed to one of my 50 neighbors.

• 4:01David Pierce?

  Which is like a thoroughly normal thing in the world. This is not like, again, you just did not describe something that is like unusual and surprising.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  The problem was, the way the website worked is that you typed in your address and it kind of populated a dropdown where it suggested the address. They didn't have any unit numbers in that populated dropdown, which is generally fine, because you just add them later.

• 4:23David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Except, when I got to the checkout page and I went to put in my billing and shipping information, the unit field was locked. You couldn't enter in any secondary address information, nor could you change the first line, because it's already been verified. Like, we don't want you to change to an unverified address, one that we don't know if you'll get Genesis at. And so eventually, I kind of banged my head against the system for a while, before I got the idea of just putting in the address of my wife's workplace, which was not a unit, thankfully, was eligible for Project Genesis. So now somewhere in Spokane, there's a credit union that has, that is technically signed up for, for Project Genesis, I suppose, under

• 5:06Speaker 02

  my name. The problems that I had now seemed to be resolved with the website. And I think they were resolved within a couple of days of my article about how horrible it was going live. It's not graceful, for sure, the last time I tested it, but the address picker does now include every possible unit number. So I just have to scroll through 10 or 20 to, to input my address, but it can be done.

• 5:31David Pierce?

  But you eventually got a phone. What was it, the Galaxy S22?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:35David Pierce?

  You know, everybody's favorite phone, I guess. It's, it's a phone.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Sure is a phone.

• 5:40Alex Cranz?

  We liked it. We liked it.

• 5:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's fine. It's a phone. It's like, would it be nice to have options or choices? Sure, but at least it's not the one Motorola phone you can get in Vegas. So we're slowly improving. And then you start trying to find this network, basically, right? Like, that was the assignment, was like, go see if this thing is real and tell us about it. Walk us through that process. I'm imagining you walking around with like your phone in the air, just sort of searching for Dish.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  The funny thing is that the phone itself does not make it clear whose network you're on. You do just kind of have to play around with a third-party app or two to find that info, like whose cellular network you're actually connected to. And the thing that kind of made this experience maddening is where I'm starting out, my house, sometimes it uses Dish Network there, like an actual Dish tower. I'm connecting to that. Sometimes it doesn't. I can be sitting on the couch and watch it toggle between the two. Like-

• 6:40Alex Cranz?

  Do you see like a difference in performance?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  I did at the very start, kind of right at the beginning for the first couple of days.

• 6:48Alex Cranz?

  When you were the only customer in all of Spokane? And they were like, oh, god, we gotta turn it on. Mitchell just bought his phone. Power up the transmitters, guy.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  For the first couple of days, I would pick my phone up, and if it worked, it was on AT&T. And if it didn't, it was on Dish. I will say, that hasn't happened recently. It does just kind of seem to work, which is maybe because I've been giving them all this feedback through the app, which maybe we can touch on in a bit. And I kind of eventually ventured out into the city trying to find it. And it was surprisingly easy. Basically, you know, you think, okay, if I go downtown, that's where all the businesses are. That's where everything is.

• 7:30Alex Cranz?

  Sure.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  That's where the service will be. And that was pretty much the case. I did have to walk quite a few blocks, because Spokane's an interesting city. There's a river going through downtown, like a pretty big one. And on one side of the river, I didn't have it. I was on AT&T. But when I walked across the bridge, then I got it. And I was like, okay, cool. I've found it. Kind of not in the urban core of downtown, but like on the outer rim of downtown.

• 8:00Alex Cranz?

  So like a whole river is what keeps you from the Dish Network? Like, they only installed it on one side of the river?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  It was at the beginning. Since I have gone back, it has since populated more of that area. I will say, this is my first time testing a new cellular network, because of course it is. But this one has, the rollout speed has genuinely surprised me. I keep discovering new towers.

• 8:25David Pierce?

  This is confirming a theory that I have, that I've been developing ever since you've been writing about this, and you're confirming that I'm correct, which is that there is a person, a DISH employee, who has been following you around since you got your phone, and they're watching you with binoculars. And every time you look at your phone, they're on a radio and they're like, "Now!" And somebody is like flipping a tower on, and then as soon as you walk away, they're like, "Oh, thank God, it worked." And then they turn it back off. And what has happened is this person is like, they're getting to know you, right? Like, they know where you go, they know your routines, they know when you like to look at your phones. So you're like, "Oh, the service is sick." And what this actually is, is this DISH person is just nice at their job now. This is, I'm absolutely convinced this is the truth.

• 9:03Alex Cranz?

  Is it actually multiple towers, or do they just like have it on the back of a truck? Mitchell, do you sometimes find yourself being followed by someone with a very large backpack?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  I am looking out into my driveway to see if there's any like stingray devices kind of randomly hanging out. I don't see one.

• 9:22Alex Cranz?

  They were supposed to have this rolled out to like, what, 30% of the American population?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  20%, yes.

• 9:27Alex Cranz?

  20%, the most random cities, sorry to your city, but the most random cities were chosen, like Duluth, Fort Worth, nobody knows where Fort Worth is. Like, I do, but nobody else does. Like, all these very random cities. And then we're supposed to have it all working the day one. And it sounds like that was probably not the case in your experience.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  It wasn't. And I will say that the emails that I get from them are still a little broken. Like, when I got my first email from them, it was like, "Oh, here's your temporary password." And it was invisible. I couldn't see it. In my specific mail client, I did go and check on the web version of Gmail, and it did show up, but they told me it was a problem with like dark mode. First of all, when I checked it, my phone wasn't on dark mode, so there's that.

• 10:13David Pierce?

  This is spy stuff, man. I'm telling you, all you're doing is confirming my theories. You're doing like dead drops, they're hiding things in pictures, like that's, that's just what this is. You are like, you're in a spy ring you don't even know about now. It's, it's intense.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  That was the first week, but just recently I got an email and I believe it, the wording was exactly, "Your auto pay will activate on space, period." There was no date. I don't know when my auto pay is going to go. In theory, I have three free months. I will definitely be checking in on my Apple Pay to see if that's accurate.

• 10:50Alex Cranz?

  How much does it cost?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  It's 30 bucks a month.

• 10:53Alex Cranz?

  30 bucks, okay. Does it feel like it's worth $30 a month? Like, has it felt like a deal?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yes, because most of the time, it's just AT&T's unlimited service. That's why. Which is pretty good. Yeah, it's fine. I use like Verizon's cut rate thing, it's called Visible. And I would say the service is not as good, which is, you know, I pay 25 bucks a month for Visible, so there's that. But like, if I didn't have that, it would be fine for me. Like, I, I think it would be okay. Now, what I will say is you mentioned this 20% requirement. That is actually not just for their network, it is for specific types of bands that they use. So they have to use like three different pieces of spectrum that they own.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  I will say that based on what my software can detect, there aren't any towers putting those out in Spokane.

• 11:45Alex Cranz?

  So they've just served 20% of the population of America. You're one of at least two customers who have actually purchased this. And of the two customers that we know that exist, that are probably the only two, you do not have the service legally required by, what was it, the agreement with the FCC?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yes. As far as I can tell, I do not. And I do believe the software is capable of picking it up because there are some towers only in Las Vegas. And everywhere that, like, I've looked at the map, it's an app called Cell Mapper, and it takes this kind of user-generated data. And the only places those towers have been spotted by Cell Mapper users is in Las Vegas. Everywhere else, there are these N71-band towers, which is kind of an older 5G tech. Like, it works, but it's not high-end to speak of, or at least in terms of speeds. It's more for range. But these other 5G bands, I haven't been able to find any evidence of them.

• 12:44Alex Cranz?

  Are we allowed to hold Dish Network in contempt of something, of the FCC? Like, they just didn't do it.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So Dish, last week, submitted a document certifying that they had covered 20% of the population by the date required.

• 13:00Alex Cranz?

  But they lied.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Well, they say in the document that there are these maps that they have that show where this coverage is. Those are classified.

• 13:09Alex Cranz?

  Because they're lies. Like, the FCC probably can't even look at them.

• 13:13David Pierce?

  We have the documents, but you can't see them.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  I assume the FCC can. I'm not saying that I'm not considering FOIA requesting them, because I'm deeply curious.

• 13:24David Pierce?

  Jenna Five Sis is deeply hilarious in general, but there is nothing more hilarious to me than the fact that you are now, congratulations, an official Dish influencer.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 13:35David Pierce?

  Like, you did it. We, this is like, if we had the soundboard that we've been requesting, I would, like, play, you know, Hail to the Chief here. This is like, you've really accomplished something.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Oh, perfect.

• 13:45David Pierce?

  Tell us about this app. What in the world is this thing?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  So the app basically just asks you to do a bunch of tasks every day. Ostensibly, it's also for managing your account. There aren't really any account management features in it. You can't change your password. You can't change your billing info. You can't change your address, anything like that, that you have to contact a support person for. But the main purpose of the app is so you can sort of do network testing for them by carrying out a variety of tasks each day. These tasks involve texting five people, or 10 people, visiting a website a couple of times, watching a video, playing a mobile game, calling 10 people, which seems a little onerous.

• 14:26David Pierce?

  That's too many people. Who calls 10 people?

• 14:28Alex Cranz?

  Baby boomers.

• 14:29David Pierce?

  What kind of monster?

• 14:30Speaker 02

  It's also funny because I don't believe the like phone calls are routed through their network in Spokane yet. They've only rolled out. Anyway, when you do these tasks, you get points and those points eventually add up to you becoming an influencer. After influencer, you reach the pro level and after that you reach the founder level and these come with rewards like a pair of earbuds that look so cheap I haven't even bothered to open the box yet despite receiving it three days ago.

• 15:02David Pierce?

  Are they like airplane earbuds, the ones that they're they just like give you to watch the movie?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  They are wireless and supposedly they do have Project Genesis branding and a charging mat for them. So maybe I should open them.

• 15:14David Pierce?

  You can listen to music over AT&T's network.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yes, of course. And then you also get NFTs, which is, you know, the ultimate prize.

• 15:24David Pierce?

  Be honest, how excited were you about the NFTs? The NFTs are amazing. Like we can we we've made a lot of jokes at Gen 5's expense, but the the founder level NFT dog, which is in Mitchell's story and we've talked about on the show, it is amazing.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  It's something else.

• 15:39David Pierce?

  I love it so much.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm getting fired for saying this, but the second, like the pro level one is not the worst looking thing I've ever seen. The influencer one and the founder one, they're a lot. They're maybe too much for my brain to comprehend because I'm a small brain baby. They're all bulldogs, but at least he is not wearing like emerald green sunglasses.

• 16:02Alex Cranz?

  Yours has got a little tattoo. Do you see?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:05Alex Cranz?

  Like if you see somebody with a tattoo like that, that's him. That's the guy following you.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Maybe it's a dog. Have we checked? Like have can this equipment fit on a dog backpack?

• 16:15Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  We'll have to look into that.

• 16:19David Pierce?

  So I will say, to Gen5Sis's credit, this app strikes me as a very clever thing. Where they're like, it's a new service. We need people to use it. It doesn't work very well. How do we incentivize people to like, actually do some testing? And like, you did it for journalism. But I actually think it's like, it's not a crazy way to get people to do this. And you ended up getting three months of free service. They're like, they're genuinely like, trying to incentivize you to like, use the hell out of the network, which is something.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Weirdly, they don't advertise that free service, which feels like the biggest incentive. Like, oh, I can actually get free service if I do these tasks. That would make me, if I weren't a journalist, that would actually make me want to do it. But that's actually not mentioned in the app. It's just in the email. But it spreads by word of mouth and people now know about it. As someone using the network, it feels like I have more feedback than I generally do. Like, if I am having problems on Verizon, like, there's a dead spot in the middle of the city, which I've had with other carriers that will remain unnamed. I have nothing I can do about that. I'm just like, what am I gonna do? Like, message a T-Mobile person? Oops. And say, hey, your service is bad and I can't use my phone anywhere.

• 17:24David Pierce?

  They say, okay, we'll call you back in 11 hours and answer your question.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Whereas with Gen5Sis, I can like, press like a thumbs down button in the app and say, hey, my service is bad here. And I feel like I'm actually doing something.

• 17:36David Pierce?

  Mitchell, what this means is the future of Gen5Sis is on your shoulders.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:40David Pierce?

  You have to fix it by yourself with the guy in the backpack. The two of you are gonna solve Gen5Sis.

• 17:47Alex Cranz?

  You got this.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna need a travel budget, because there's a lot of cities in the middle of nowhere that I have to visit.

• 17:53David Pierce?

  All right, we need to take a break. Mitchell, thank you for being here. Good luck fixing Gen5Sis. We are gonna take a quick break and then we will come back and talk about VPNs with Makena Kelly. We're back.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Company spending is complex. Managing it should be simple. This is Amex Corporate. A single platform connecting cards, expenses, and payments to streamline the way you work. Flexible controls for when priorities shift. Support around the clock. All backed by American Express. So you can stay focused on what matters most. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is Amex Corporate. Get started at go.amex slash Amex Corporate. Terms apply.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 19:16David Pierce?

  Welcome back. Over the last few weeks, I've been talking to a bunch of people around the tech industry about VPNs. I don't really know why I got interested in VPNs, but I started out with a question I thought was fairly straightforward, which is, why aren't VPNs everywhere? More and more people care about their digital privacy all the time, which means more and more people are using two-factor authentication, which is a huge security win, and they're using password managers, also huge security win. But VPNs, which have always been thought of as kind of a beautiful catch-all of internet privacy, haven't really caught on the same way. And I wondered why, so I started asking people. Then, while I was calling around, two members of Congress, in part, I think, answered my question. Ron Wyden and Anna Ishu sent a letter to FCC Chair Lina Khan, saying that VPNs are advertising

• 20:01David Pierce?

  themselves falsely, and are actually a huge security risk for people. They want the FCC to do something about it, to stop these deceptive marketing practices. But what would the FCC do about it? And in general, what is the future for VPNs? Makena Kelly on our team has been following all of the VPN stuff, even back further than I realized this has been an issue. So I brought her in and figured we'd try and make sense of it together. Hi, McKenna.

• 20:28Speaker 06

  Hey, it's great to be here.

• 20:29David Pierce?

  Thanks for coming. So this is kind of a weird one, in that there is like a big product story and a big policy story kind of happening simultaneously. But as I was prepping for this, I realized like the place I want to start by talking about VPNs is actually like five years ago, when there was a bunch of movement in the FCC about ISPs and online privacy, and everybody went all up in arms. We don't have to spend too much time on that, but I just think it's interesting context. Can you like rewind a little and tell me what happened?

• 20:57Speaker 06

  Right. At the same time, like net neutrality was rolled back in 2017. It's something we all remember. It was like a really big moment for internet users at large. At the same time, the FCC was going through a process of regulating privacy.

• 21:11David Pierce?

  Or not regulating it as.

• 21:13Speaker 06

  Or not regulating privacy, right? And that kind of got lost in the net neutrality talk, but it was something that happened. And at the time, everyone kind of freaked out and was like, oh, my gosh, well, these people have access to all my data. They have all this access, you know, to everything that I do in my life, what I search, what I, how I communicate, all these things. And I feel like it was a really big, you know, great awakening in sorts of people and privacy, which leads us into, I assume, the VPN conversation we're having.

• 21:42David Pierce?

  Yeah. So part of what was interesting about that is going back and looking, there was this run of articles right after that happened because VPN spiked in Google Trends. It was like, all of a sudden, all these people were like, okay, my ISP has all this information about me, which is one of those things that like, I think a lot of people sort of know, but don't ever think about that. Like, when you're on your phone and you're on the internet, like Verizon or whoever your carrier is knows absolutely everything you're doing on the internet. And then when it was like, okay, not only can they have this data now, they can actually like sell it and use it for things, people just freaked out. And so then there was this whole big thing about, okay, people wanted to get VPNs and VPNs started this like theoretical march towards being like a mainstream privacy tool, you know,

• 22:24David Pierce?

  do two factor authentication, do password managers, it's like this basic privacy advice. But then I started asking around, like, why didn't VPNs work? Because at least as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened. And one of the answers that I heard, which is sort of a teaser to this, is people just don't trust them because like, you're putting all of your faith in this VPN to basically take all of your web traffic, store it itself, and be like a better steward of it than your ISP. So instead of trusting one giant company, you're trusting one teeny tiny company that you know nothing about. And I spent a bunch of time talking to Harold Lee, who is like in charge of a lot of things at ExpressVPN, which is a really popular VPN. And he was basically saying like, yes, this is a huge problem.

• 23:04Speaker 07

  There is a difference between a privacy policy that you can't be 100% sure a company follows, but it says we're going to collect a bunch of stuff, and a privacy policy that you can't be 100% sure a company follows, but says they're not going to collect anything. How much toxic data are they holding? And there's also a difference between where the company is located and where their servers are and what risk that has. Of course, we might be talking about increasingly edge cases where people are worried about that kind of risk, but you never know where the law is going to lead and what activity might be targeted.

• 23:35David Pierce?

  So then this week, there was a, kind of out of nowhere, as far as I can tell, two congresspeople sent a letter to the FCC saying, like, do something about VPNs. Was there any sign this was coming? This kind of caught me off guard.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  I think you could have imagined something like this happening. Now, we haven't heard VPN in Congress probably ever. I think a majority of the folks who work in Congress, congresspeople, have no idea what a VPN is.

• 23:58David Pierce?

  Well, that was my thought, too. It's like, this is a very sophisticated thing for them to, it's a very normal, human thing, but you don't normally hear Congress talking about things like VPNs.

• 24:06Speaker 06

  Right, but if you look at Anna Eshu, right, and Ron Wyden, they're two very knowledgeable folks when it comes to tech. They're on the committees that regulate these things. Anna Eshu, Ron Wyden, both have been at the forefront of the net neutrality fight. And so it makes sense that they would do this. When it comes to talking about privacy now, it's been ramping up definitely in discussions, especially after the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Everyone, at the same time, it's kind of a similar moment where in 2017, everyone freaked out and was like, oh, my God, what do I do now that I have this, all of this information about what happens with my data? Now it's like, well, we have this information about our data, and there's this, all of a sudden, a lot of things are going to be criminalized when it comes to reproductive care. What does that mean for me and the apps that I use?

• 24:50Speaker 06

  What does this mean for my relationship with the Internet? And so folks are, of course, thinking about ways to better protect themselves again. And this specifically, this letter to the FTC came specifically around the same time where other folks were sending letters to the FTC and other federal agencies, asking for them to ramp up enforcement on shoddy marketing tactics and practices in this kind of digital ecosystem.

• 25:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, this was one of those really interesting privacy moments to me where like the thing you hear about privacy all the time is all the people who are like, you know, I have nothing to hide. And then all the other people who are like, what does privacy mean on the internet? You know, the advertisers know everything about you anyway. Privacy is pointless, like the sort of nihilistic view of things. One of the things I thought was so interesting here was it was like, okay, we took this like piece of information that existed about a lot of people on the internet, which is like pregnancy related and abortion related information, and took a thing that was not against the law or problematic anyway, and turned it into something that can be weaponized against you. And that was, I think, it's one of those moments where all of a sudden people go like, oh, I not only do I not know what's being made of my data now, like what could be made of it in the future becomes a whole thing.

• 25:59David Pierce?

  And we've like had cases where people's social media information is used against them in cases like these. And so I think in the in the sort of run up to people understanding why data privacy is important, this felt like a moment. So I guess in that sense, it does make sense that folks would be like trying to find the things where they're like, how can we hold people to account on this one?

• 26:17Speaker 06

  You know, we're talking about how this sounds kind of surprising, but in a way, over the past five years, 10 years, people have been learning a lot about how their data is collected and used. And the overturning of Roe v. Wade is serving as an example, an actionable thing for the first time that folks can see this is how data can be used to criminalize people, how it can be used by law enforcement in a way that you look at polling, a majority of Americans believe that women should have access to abortion care across the country. So this affected a lot of folks, not just women and not just pregnancy capable people, but it just rang a bell for everyone. Now with this like swarm and like a younger generation coming of age, who has, you know, more dramatic knowledge about the way that they interact with the internet

• 27:01Speaker 06

  and what kind of data they create and how it can be used.

• 27:04David Pierce?

  Totally. And that was one of the things that like I asked everybody I talked to about VPNs, like what do people need VPNs for? And kind of the response I got over and over, both from folks at Mozilla and from Harold at ExpressVPN was like, we just don't know what data is out there and how it's going to be used. And the best thing we can do and the best thing we can offer is this like blanket sense of security. It's like, we don't know. VPNs are not a perfect solution to all problems, but they're something, right? And it's like, okay, let's give people some real access. And I think that's one of the reasons that VPNs have been useful to the people they've been useful for. But then they do a lot of really shady shit, a lot of these VPN companies, especially the ones who are like free VPN. And it's like, well, they're gonna steal their data and sell it to people. So what was this letter from from Ishu and Wyden about? Like, what do they want?

• 27:49Speaker 06

  Right. Well, you gotta look at the agency that they sent it to first, the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission, I don't believe that they have anything on the books right now regulating VPNs, right? So what are they asking here? And it's asking the FTC to enforce rules that it already has on deceptive practices, on fraud and things like that. I think one example in the letter that I found was really interesting was something I had never heard before, which was, quote, "military-grade encryption" was like a marketing thing for one of these VPNs. It's like, what even is that? Like, how is the military encrypting things differently? Or how is that better? And of course, you know, when you say those things, it sounds like really serious.

• 28:29Speaker 06

  And it's one of those ways to market products that aren't entirely true and makes it sound like it's a really great thing to use. So when it comes to the FTC, it's more enforcing its rules that it already has on the books when it comes to fraud and misrepresenting a product.

• 28:44David Pierce?

  So the idea is essentially these VPN companies are lying about the service that they provide and what they do with your data. Lina Khan, stop it. Like, don't let them do that anymore.

• 28:55Speaker 06

  And I think that's fair to say, too, because ever since Lina Khan was confirmed as chair, there has been a ramp up in enforcing a lot of FTC rules, not just like on, of course, like VPNs haven't been something that I've been paying close attention to, but like on anything. Data rights, there was this Flow app, which helps you track your menstrual cycle. And they entered a settlement with them. So there has been, you know, some movement on these enforcement things. And this letter from Ishu and Wyden is being like, pointing the finger and be like, well, what about these guys, too? Look at these guys. Look at what they're doing.

• 29:27David Pierce?

  Well, so one thing I was trying to figure out about this is like how that process actually works. Because the weird thing about the VPN industry, and I think this is true of a lot of tech industries, but like one thing I know to be true about the VPN industry is it is like massive and full of different companies that are headquartered all over the world and it's all very complicated. And they have, they have servers everywhere, which is like part of the point. And so it's, it's sort of, it's not like you can just like make three phone calls and get all of the VPNs in the world to play along. And I would assume part of the goal of a letter like this is to just sort of very publicly yell at the whole industry at once in the hopes that more of them will just like fall in line. But in a case like this, like what would in theory the FTC do? Like, how does that actually work? I know what it's like to be mad about antitrust.

• 30:12David Pierce?

  This one seems very weird to me.

• 30:14Speaker 06

  What the FTC could do and what they have done in the past is make a case out of one really bad guy. So I like to think about the Facebook settlement that it entered after the Cambridge Analytica stuff. That must have been 2018, 2019. And they're like, they're doing really bad stuff with data. Let's make a big case out of them and make them pay us, you know, a billion or how much money it was. And to send a signal to everyone else in the industry not to do this. That's something they could do again, whether it's, you know, some company, it sounds like you talked to ExpressVPN or one of these like weird companies that are like free VPN service and be like, and just kind of make it public. And I also think that sending this letter in the first place, not only is it, you know, pointing the FTC in a certain direction, but it's also with it going up on our website and news media reporting on it.

• 30:59Speaker 06

  It's also letting people know, you know, just the public that like VPNs aren't all great. You know, they are marketing themselves as this privacy protecting service when really, you know, they could be doing just as nasty stuff with your data as whoever they say they're protecting it from. And so I think that's really important specifically because you can't go on YouTube. You can't watch a single YouTuber YouTube video with someone not being sponsored by a VPN company.

• 31:25David Pierce?

  It's so true.

• 31:26Speaker 06

  This is something that like a lot of people use and it's frequently advertised to them. And I think the way that it's advertised to them from their, you know, favorite YouTuber, whatever, and being like, I use this every day and it's so cool and sick and that they download it. And they have no idea that it might just be doing the opposite of what it says it will.

• 31:43David Pierce?

  Yeah, so I think you might have just answered the question I was about to ask you, but I'm gonna ask it anyway because I'm curious if you're thinking about this the same way that I am, which is like, play politics here with me for a second, which is like, there's so many things to focus on. There's like, a lot going on in the world, including in tech, including in data privacy. Somebody like Ron Wyden, who is like a particularly loud voice on this and has been for a really long time, like, why this? If you only have so much time and so many resources and so many things to be mad about, why do you think this one rises to that? And my guess would be, if I was just to like, throw my own thing out there, is exactly what you just said, that this is like a thing regular people are aware of in a way that like, ad tech networks are really complicated and messy, and this is something that actually like, you can sort of lodge inside people's brains.

• 32:28David Pierce?

  But what do you think?

• 32:30Speaker 06

  I would look at the tools and the toolboxes of consumers right now. What are they able to control after the reversal of Roe v. Wade? They're able to delete their menstrual tracking apps. They're able to think about how their data is being used. Maybe they're using a VPN and they didn't really know that it was like a great service. I think calling attention to these things is really smart, especially when there's so few answers right now about what is actually dangerous. And as soon as you get people asking these questions against the news media, against lawmakers, against regulators asking these questions, and actually coming down to things and answers for how to protect consumers in a really important, serious, and scary time.

• 33:12David Pierce?

  So one thing that a couple of the VPN people that I talked to told me was that the challenge with VPNs in general is like, it's very hard for you as the user to audit any of this stuff. And there's like, I just can't review the code of my VPN. So ultimately, you're just trusting this company. And they do security audits and they do external stuff to like, help you understand what's actually going on under the hood. But fundamentally, it's like, your data is going through someone. And it's just a matter of like, picking where you place your trust. But part of me wonders, like, that's the kind of thing that like, you know, we've talked about like, privacy nutrition labels. And there have been all these ideas about like, how do we talk about data privacy to regular people? And as far as I can tell, none of that has really come to anything. It's a lot of like, interesting discussions that have never turned into anything.

• 33:56David Pierce?

  And then you think about the FTC, which is like, busy. Like, they've got some stuff going on, mostly just like yelling at CEOs of companies, to no particular effect, as far as I can tell. But it's not like the FTC is short of stuff to do. Like, is there any chance this amounts to anything, do you think?

• 34:12Speaker 06

  Perhaps.

• 34:13David Pierce?

  Okay. Is that like a diplomatic way of saying no?

• 34:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it's a diplomatic way of saying no. For now, at least. Look at how long it took for the FTC to act on Cambridge Analytica.

• 34:24David Pierce?

  Right.

• 34:25Speaker 06

  I just, I always like to think about that. It took a very long time. At the same time, as soon as the news went up, there was automatically folks screaming about how it didn't go far enough, which I think you can argue, seeing how Facebook has grown and continued to, you know, be totally fine in the aftermath. Again, that was Facebook, but if they decide to go after a big VPN, I have a feeling it might scare smaller companies, but it's very hard to tell right now.

• 34:51David Pierce?

  Okay. Yeah, and I guess, I mean, the hopeful side of that, I guess, would be that, like, to your point, this is the kind of thing that people understand. Whereas I think even Cambridge Analytica was just so messy and complicated and like not the story it was understood to be in so many ways, that like this might be one that you can actually like help make sense inside of people's heads. It's like, you think a VPN is keeping you safe? Many of them are lying to you. That is like genuinely straightforward storytelling to do. I don't know what you do with that information or like whose job it is to fix it and say like, no lying on your website. But that at least feels like the kind of thing that it's like, if we're going to fix data privacy in the US, like, let's start with things that human beings can actually understand. That feels like a decent place to start.

• 35:35Speaker 06

  Right. And also just figuring out what service is trustworthy and what services are not. Because it seems like over the past 10 years, we've become, we've grown accustomed to just trusting things online. And then 10 years, it feels like every online product becomes milkshake ducked at some time. To me, it always comes to be like, I always realize that maybe you shouldn't be doing anything on the internet. And I don't want to, and I also work at theverge.com.

• 35:59David Pierce?

  Just because we shouldn't be on the internet doesn't mean we're not going to be on the internet. That is like, it's like the fundamental tension of The Verge. It's like, is the internet bad? Who knows? We're going to use it anyway.

• 36:06Speaker 06

  Welcome to theverge.com.

• 36:08David Pierce?

  McKenna, thank you for doing this. We're going to come back and try to figure out, every time there is like a slight reason for optimism, I think you're going to have to come on and we're going to like try to feel good about the possibilities for data privacy.

• 36:18Speaker 06

  I love it.

• 36:19David Pierce?

  Thank you.

• 36:20Speaker 06

  All right. Bye bye.

• 36:25David Pierce?

  Before we go, actually, let me just run through a few of the things I've learned about VPNs and how to choose one. The most important thing to know is that you're never going to be 100% certain about your VPN being trustworthy. That is the thing that drives me crazy about this is fundamentally you are trusting someone and all you can do is try to choose wisely. But as ExpressVPN's Harold Lee put it to me, "One good place to start is to think about the company behind the VPN and what their incentives really are."

• 36:53Speaker 07

  One benefit inherently that VPN providers have, or at least VPN providers who focus on that space, is that they have no conflicting interests. So if they're just selling privacy and security tools, maybe they're selling a range of them, but all they're doing is they're in a business of privacy. They should be strongly disincentivized to do something that violates that. Especially if they're a paid service, then those incentives align very well.

• 37:18David Pierce?

  This is one reason people like Mozilla's VPN too. The company has stood for privacy forever and has a really good track record on that front. So while, again, you can't know for sure, it's as good a bet as any. In general, you should look for things that are as transparent as possible, which means open source code is a good thing. You should also look for things that get lots of third-party audits and that come from companies with a good track record. The other thing I learned is that speed, which is really the thing about VPNs, is always going to be a trade-off because it just takes some work to redirect and encrypt your web traffic. But one thing that surprised me was that a bunch of people I talked to said that as long as you have fast internet, like pretty good broadband, you probably won't notice the slight degradation in the speeds.

• 38:00David Pierce?

  I also used to hear a lot about how bad VPNs were on mobile because they just couldn't get the operating system access they needed to work everywhere. But it actually sounds like that's gotten a lot better. One feature you should care a lot about if you do use a VPN is a kill switch. Basically, if a VPN disconnects or stops working for any reason, a kill switch instantly turns off all network traffic automatically. Without it, you could be exposed and not even realize it if your VPN shuts off for some reason. But with it, you might suddenly lose your connection, but at least you won't be leaking data. And the last thing I learned is that for most... Most things and for most people, you probably don't need a VPN. This one surprised me, actually. I expected everyone I talked to to be like, yes, it's a good security practice. Use a VPN. And that is true.

• 38:45David Pierce?

  If you're worried about your data, it is certainly more private than nothing. But thanks to things like HTTPS, which encrypts your connection to websites so that your provider could know which site you went to, but not what you did there, your web browsing is much less leaky and risky than ever. And if we're being honest, somebody phishing your email is a much bigger risk, as is your password being leaked in a data dump somewhere. Use two factor, use a password manager, but I think only use a VPN if it feels important to you or makes you feel better in some way.

• 39:15David Pierce?

  Okay, that's enough VPN talk for now. We're going to take a break and then we're going to talk about nothing. Not nothing, we're going to talk about something. We're going to talk about the company, nothing. I hate that name. We'll be right back.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/af.

• 40:53David Pierce?

  Welcome back. So after months, like months of teasing and hype and build up, Nothing finally launched the Nothing Phone 1 last week.

• 41:01Speaker 08

  We're incredibly excited to announce that, surprise, surprise, we will be launching a smartphone, the Nothing Phone 1.

• 41:08David Pierce?

  We've seen the phone, we've tested the phone, we've reviewed the phone, and now that the dust has settled a bit on all the hype and craziness, I figured this was a good moment to actually figure out what to make of this thing. So I grabbed John Porter, who went to the Nothing launch event in London last week, and Alison Johnson, who reviewed the Nothing Phone 1 for The Verge. Hi, John. Hi, Alison.

• 41:27Speaker 09

  Hello.

• 41:28Speaker 10

  Hello.

• 41:29David Pierce?

  So I was trying to think about where to start, because the Nothing story is weird and complicated and actually goes back a while. And I decided, I think, where we should start is just at the beginning of Nothing.

• 41:39Speaker 08

  Consumer tech, how do we let it get so boring? We're here to change this.

• 41:44David Pierce?

  This company, Nothing, kind of came out of nowhere and got a lot of attention relatively quickly. And John, maybe you should give us the background a little, because I know you've been tracking this company for a while. So like, real quick, top-line Wikipedia page about where Nothing came from.

• 42:00Speaker 10

  Yeah, Nothing is a new consumer tech startup from Calpay, formerly of OnePlus/BPK Electronics. Basically, kind of came out of stealth mode, made a big splash very early on, had some very big promises about what their mission statement for Nothing was. And kind of from the start, they were just saying, "We're a consumer tech company", and they weren't really getting into specifics about product categories. They were talking this kind of real, like, high-level view of what they wanted to achieve.

• 42:29Speaker 08

  We want to create an alternative to the current stagnant trajectory. We want to bring passion back to technology and create iconic products where artistry, confidence, and craftsmanship rule the day.

• 42:39Speaker 10

  And then the first product was a pair of True Wireless Earbuds last year, the Nothing Ear 1.

• 42:44Speaker 08

  This is Ear 1. It combines raw beauty and precise engineering for a pure sound experience.

• 42:50Speaker 10

  And then early this year, they came out and just said it, and they said, "Look, we're gonna do a smartphone. You know, we've existed for, what, like a year and a half or so, but we're just gonna jump right into the deep end. It's time for a smartphone", and then last week, we finally sort of announced.

• 43:04Speaker 08

  We're not saying we're going to fix the industry with just one product. We want the phone one to mark the start of change.

• 43:09David Pierce?

  How much money has this company raised? Like, I keep thinking of Nothing as this like tiny little mini startup. And then it turns out there this actually like massively well-funded thing.

• 43:17Speaker 10

  Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, in comparison to the kinds of smartphone companies they're competing against, then they are tiny, but they're still massive in terms of like, you know, your average company out there. So I think CrowdCube, which kind of has the data on this, says that they've raised over $150 million across seven funding rounds. So most of that money, it has to be said, kind of comes from traditional investors, stuff like Alphabet's GV and stuff. But then they've also kind of had community funding rounds where they've gone directly to individuals and they've said, look, do you want a slice of Nothing? And I think it's almost 10,000 people have said, hell, yeah, give me a slice of Nothing. That that sounds great, which really is the kind of, I think, is the story of this company. It's like how effectively they've marketed themselves. So they've not just got buy-in from these big institutional investors,

• 44:00Speaker 10

  but they've also got buy-in from, you know, thousands of just ordinary people that think this sounds like like an amazing opportunity for investment.

• 44:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, they've really done a remarkably good job of ginning up enthusiasm, including for this phone. And Alison, I know this is like a thing you've been paying attention to for a while. Nothing kind of just showed up one day and was like, we're going to make a phone and it's going to be the best phone ever. And it's going to blow all of the other phones out of the water. That's at least my memory of it. Is that basically what happened? I feel like that's basically what happened.

• 44:31Speaker 09

  Yeah, and that's kind of the story of using this phone is there's there's a disconnect between like all the marketing and all the hype and what they made it out to be and what it actually is. And it's a it's a good phone. But yeah, the that kind of legend they've spun around it is like, Nothing Phone One will bring us back to us. Like, I'm not sure what that means. You know, they kind of hyped it as this like, it's just going to change how you think about technology, how you use a phone, mind-boggling stuff.

• 45:04David Pierce?

  This is the thing that Nothing has kept saying over and over again, that I feel like every time I hear it, I actually disagree with it slightly more each and every time, which is this idea that like consumer tech and specifically smartphones are like fundamentally boring and everybody hates them and desperately wants something new. And I feel like actually, like every month you look around and there's some weird insane new thing happening in smartphones, like foldables are becoming a thing and gamer phones are everywhere. And now everybody's like, what if your phone was also AR glasses? And it's like, is any of this stuff any good? Debatable, but it's like, it's not boring. I don't know, Alison, you spend a lot of time with smartphones. Like, do you feel like the smartphone world is boring right now?

• 45:41Speaker 09

  I don't think it's boring. And I think there's sort of what we're interested in as spectators and people who cover the space. I can see where you can make that argument, but I think the average person with a phone is not just clamoring for a new way to use their phone. I think they're pretty happy if it gets through the day, if the battery life lasts all day. Like, you want to talk about what would be a real game changer is like, what if the battery could last all week? But that's not like, Nothing is not going to solve that one. But yeah, they sort of went the route of like, what can we do to make this particular style of phone different and a little more interesting and a little more fun?

• 46:25Speaker 09

  And I think it was, it was successful, but I don't think they've sparked a revolution in mobile technology.

• 46:33David Pierce?

  Well, you bring up that one of the things that I have thought is so interesting about this is like, on the one hand, are smartphones boring is a question you can debate about. But on the other hand, like, is that okay? Is like also, I think, an interesting question, right? Like, the idea that if my battery life was five times as long, that would be like the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to smartphones. Says a lot about where we are with smartphones, right? Like, it's, we're way past the gee whiz, look at this funky blinking thing. And it's just like, I just need a thing that like does all the stuff it's supposed to do and lasts a long time and is relatively reliable. Like, phones are refrigerators now, right? Like, it's, it's just, it's, as long as it does its job, I'm happy. And part of me wonders, and I think this is one of the things that Nothing has tried to figure out,

• 47:13David Pierce?

  is like, how much is it even a good idea to try and really reinvent the wheel with a lot of this stuff?

• 47:20Speaker 09

  Yeah, I think that what they've ended up doing a little bit is kind of highlighting how little room for innovation there really is with the traditional slab style smartphone. You know, if you set out to reinvent it, you you have certain parameters. If you want people to be able to use it, you got to build it on an operating system that is going to work with their other stuff. You end up within kind of operating in this narrow set of parameters. And what you get is, as John described it, a phone that goes blink, blink, blink. You know, it's like they made the phone kind of the same as all the other phones, but it it goes blink.

• 47:59Speaker 08

  But then we really did something interesting on the back. We call it the glyph interface. We've perfectly synced the glyph lights with our ringtones. Let me show you.

• 48:12David Pierce?

  That's actually a good segue to the phone itself, which you've both spent some time with. And Allison, you you did a whole big review of it for us. The biggest thing to me is the price, right? Like, there's a bunch of stuff, and I want to talk about the glyphs, and I want to talk about the sounds, and I think all of that is cool. But it seems like more so than I expected, the like, main thing this phone seems to have going for it is the price. Is that fair? Does this feel that way to you, too?

• 48:34Speaker 09

  For sure. And I think sort of caught us off guard when they were doing this, like, leaking out these different specs through the couple of months before the phone launch. They mentioned the processor would be a Snapdragon 778. And that sort of like took everyone by surprise because you just assume this blinking magical phone is going to have the latest and greatest in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. But they've kind of made it clear from that point that they were making a mid-range phone, and the price is right in line with that. And it makes the whole thing that much more attractive.

• 49:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think if you had asked me three months ago, which is more likely that this phone is going to be $3,000 or $400, I would have bet on $3,000. Like, without even thinking all that hard about it. Like, they sold 100 of them on StockX, so it was clearly, they're setting this thing up to be this, like, luxury cultural item, and then it's 400 pounds. That part was very confusing to me. But at the end of the day, it seems like, and I think the hardest part for me has been, like, divorcing this hype and marketing machine from the actual quality of the device itself, right? Because if you overhyped it and it's still like a pretty good phone, that's going to be disappointing, but it's still a pretty good phone. And it seems like, all in all, that's kind of the case, right? Like, it is a pretty good phone, right?

• 49:50Speaker 09

  Yeah, I really enjoyed using it, and it does, you know, 90% of what you needed to do. And at the price that it's at, you can forgive more about it. You know, the glyphs were cool, and they're sort of a neat way to have notifications be a little bit different. Is it life-changing? No, but it's a 400-pound, roughly $500 phone, and that's sort of like, okay, that's fine. They mostly are kind of a fashion statement, and that's fine.

• 50:22David Pierce?

  Yeah, the thing with the glyphs was hard for me to figure out, and I'm curious how it actually fits in your life. Because the idea is there's like a bunch of these lights on the back, and they do things, right? Like, it'll glow when it's charging, so it'll sort of fill up the thing with the lights while it's charging. It can blink for notifications or whatever. It seems like the kind of thing that would be like a very cool demo in a store, but I'm not exactly sure how it would fit into my life. So like, for you, having used it day to day, like, what did glyphs actually do for you?

• 50:48Speaker 09

  Yeah, you can assign an individual glyph to individual app notifications, which takes a little bit of, you have to go into app setting. It's kind of weird. But then it became a little more useful and a little more interesting, because what I was finding is, I'm just used to putting my phone down with the screen up. And I'm, you know, I've usually got everything silenced. Maybe there's an always-on display, which the Nothing phone does not have. But you, you know, I get my notifications that way. I can kind of peek at the screen. It works for me. So with the Nothing phone, I had to consciously, like, lay it down on the screen.

• 51:27Speaker 09

  And also, when you're just using the phone, you don't see the glyphs. That was kind of the thing for me initially. It was like, all right, it has these, these cool lights, and it does these things, but I'm, I just don't see them a lot.

• 51:38David Pierce?

  Much less if you put your phone in a case, which most people do.

• 51:41Speaker 09

  Yeah, and Nothing will offer cases that are clear so you can see the lights. But you know, you're gonna have to keep your case clean if you wanna go that route.

• 51:51Speaker 10

  For me, the whole glyphs on the back of the phone does seem to kind of conflict with a lot of the way I use my smartphone, which is to say that, you know, if I'm sitting there and I'm willing to be disturbed by a notification on my phone, then the phone goes face up. If I am doing anything where I don't want the phone to disturb me, like say, recording a podcast, right now, my phone is face down on the desk in front of me because that's just the behavior that I've learned to stop any notifications from even like distracting my train of thought is to turn it face down. And so I think like what some of the reviews for the Nothing phone have gotten into that I find quite interesting is that you kind of have to unlearn that behavior a little bit with the Nothing phone in order to get the most out of this glyph interface. You kind of have to go like, okay, it hasn't gone always on display.

• 52:36Speaker 10

  So your way of making sure that you keep up to date with what's going on with your phone is actually to turn it facedown, which I think is a bit weird and counterintuitive. And I would kind of love to hear from people once they've used this phone for like a couple of months or more. Did they eventually kind of come around on that? Or did they actually just continue to put their phone like face up? And they actually ignored the glyph interface after a while?

• 53:00David Pierce?

  It's an interesting question. I do feel like the charging thing is one of those things that seems like it will forever be cool, that you plug it in and just like it fills up as you go. But it is a really interesting point. And it's also the kind of thing that seems like it takes a lot of work. Like, there's been things on Android for a long time where you can have custom notifications so that like, I used to like resolutely set it so that when certain people would text me, it would buzz differently. So I was like, oh, this is a thing I actually care about. But that's just, it's a lot of like fiddly bits in dealing with your phone that I think historically, a lot of people don't wanna do. And so, yeah, I agree. It's gonna be really interesting to see how much this actually becomes like a part of people's lives six months into the phone.

• 53:37Speaker 09

  I got way too into assigning the different glyphs to different apps when I figured out I could do it and it was just blinking all kinds of different things. I was like, hold on, I don't remember if that little ping and the little exclamation mark is like the daycare app or Facebook. So I had to cut way back. So yeah, I'm curious if people are going to be able to, you know, I think when you've lived with it for a while, you can probably memorize the difference between them. But I had a real problem with it.

• 54:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, I feel like if I had more than like three of them, I would just instantly forget what's what. And then it would just be like, my phone is doing a light show that means nothing to me.

• 54:14Speaker 10

  I'd love to know the kind of the viral marketing potential of having a phone that flashes like this. And I kind of, I mean, like, bear with me on this one, but the analogy I'd like to use is Jägermeister and the Jägerbomb. Because you're standing at a bar, hear me out, you're standing at a bar and someone at the other end of the bar drops a shot of something into a glass of something. And immediately you go, that person is having a Jägerbomb, they're drinking Jägermeister. And you might not join them, but you kind of know exactly what it is. And I think with a lot of smartphones now, you know, that they're black rectangles and maybe on the back, the camera bump will be slightly, will be slightly different. But increasingly, even a lot of the camera bumps are getting very similar. And I think potentially the genius of the nothing phone is the second someone takes out that phone at a party, the second someone takes out that phone in

• 54:59Speaker 10

  a bar, you look at it and you go, oh, that phone looks different. That phone has a recognizable identity. And I do wonder the extent to which kind of word of mouth like that will benefit it. Or maybe people will just look at it and go, oh, that phone flashes and like, that's good for you, but I won't. Thank you. I won't indulge. Thank you.

• 55:19David Pierce?

  Well, and like a Jägerbomb, it works in the same sense that it is like slightly disruptive to everyone around you. Because in one case, it's like an extremely loud noise someone is making. And in the other, it's like, oh, we're in a dark place and all of a sudden, these lights are flashing for no reason. So it's like, yeah, it's actually a surprisingly good metaphor.

• 55:36Speaker 09

  I like it.

• 55:36Speaker 10

  I mean, also, I really don't want to be in a cinema when someone's trying to, like, the amount of people that leave their phones on vibrate still in cinemas, like, imagine sitting next to the guy who's got his phone flashing away.

• 55:47David Pierce?

  A hundred percent. Yeah, it's nuts. It's like when you can use the iPhones flashlight as a notification thing and every once in a while you get somebody who forgot to turn that thing. It's awful. Allison, the other thing, it seems like nothing put a lot of energy into was the launcher, which from the marketing and stuff, I couldn't tell if it was much more than just like some cool wallpapers and some basically cool wallpapers. What did they actually do to the software? Is there any, are there any sort of interesting ideas about Android on this phone?

• 56:15Speaker 09

  Yes and no. It is some cool wallpapers. There's a few, you know, custom widgets. There's kind of, I want to see a vibe. There's sort of a retro dot matrix thing happening like throughout.

• 56:29David Pierce?

  Which extends to the ringtones too, right?

• 56:31Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah. The ringtones, I think are a big part of the kind of identity, I think, of the phone is they're very kind of retro gaming console sounding.

• 56:47Speaker 09

  So that's fun. It's a, it's a very kind of light layer on Android. And I think what makes it really good is that it's kind of hands off and it feels like, feels like using a Pixel phone, honestly, with a different launcher on it. So sort of gets out of your way, has a couple of cool touches, like the, the voice recorder app, has a little kind of analog tape recorder animation. But it's light and it's fun. But most of all, it's just a clean take on Android, which I appreciate on any phone.

• 57:24David Pierce?

  Totally. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. This is, this is where the like device itself versus the hype about the device comes back to just sort of make me crazy. It's like what you just described is basically exactly what I would want from a company like Nothing. We've seen so many others over the years try like way overwrought versions of Android and they do weird stuff. And they're like, what if the settings menu was different and bonkers? And the right answer, which luckily manufacturers are starting to figure out, is just like, make a couple of things better and more interesting and then get out of the way. But then, if you're Nothing, to come in and have that Be your approach when you're simultaneously talking out of the other side of your mouth about how you're going to revolutionize consumer electronics. Those two things seem incompatible to me. And so it's like, does this sound like a good phone?

• 58:08David Pierce?

  Yes. Does it also sound like a super disappointing one based on kind of what we've been promised for months? Also, yes. But the ringtones do seem to be awesome. So I will give them kudos on the ringtones.

• 58:17Speaker 09

  Which is another thing, though, is like, I silence my phone almost all the time. So you have to kind of like, take your phone off silent if you want to enjoy the ringtones. And remember to put it face down. And you got to change how you use the phone a little bit to get the most out of all that. Which maybe the person who buys a Nothing Phone 1 is totally happy to do.

• 58:40David Pierce?

  That's fair. So John, you spent a bunch of time sort of in this hype cycle, especially around the phone's launch. And you wrote a great story about it, which we'll put in the show notes along with the review. The thing I've been trying to figure out, and I wonder what you think, is whether the hype thing that they're doing is sort of sincere. And they actually think this is like the line that's going to work with people and that they're going to accomplish this stuff. Or if it's basically just a bit, and the only way to succeed in tech is to be sort of loud and obnoxious. And this is their version of being loud and obnoxious. And it's all kind of like winking about what it is. I just can't tell. And I wonder if you can.

• 59:16Speaker 10

  I think everyone kind of working, working at this company has good intentions. But I do think it's, it's a marketing shick. I do think it's a bit. And it was this thing I was thinking when I was at this event, which was not filled with your kind of your typical tech crowd. It was filled with a kind of a younger, like hipper crowd. And I just, I just stood there as a 30 year old man. And I kind of thought, hmm, it doesn't feel like this is for me, you know? And so like, one of the thoughts I came away with is that maybe the reason why Nothing has to yell so loud about what it's doing is because it's not competing to be covered by tech publications that cover like the majority of flagship phones that come out on the market every year.

• 1:00:01Speaker 10

  It's shouting that loud so that it can reach the kind of publication that covers two or three. Smartphones a year, you know, and it's it's kind of it's speaking to that that maybe kind of a more of a lifestyle audience that they'll kind of go, okay, well, we'll cover the iPhone every year, but we won't really kind of like bother getting into into the weeds with Android. But they're kind of yelling loud enough that as tech journalists, we're kind of deafened. But for people further away from tech, it just kind of means they can kind of hear this this murmuring from a distance. And it actually it kind of gets their attention, you know, like in the UK, for example, BBC News covered the launch of the Nothing Phone One. And I could not tell you the last time BBC News covered the

• 1:00:43Speaker 10

  launch of a flagship Chinese handset, for example. And I think probably the reason why it's so loud and deafening and maybe a bit overwrought to us is that we're standing too close to it. And we're kind of not who they are yelling towards necessarily, if that makes sense.

• 1:01:02David Pierce?

  That's a really interesting point. I mean, and I think we've seen that with a lot of tech companies now, this push towards like influencers and lifestyle publications. And there's this sense that I think people who know what phone they want are just going to keep buying the phone that they want, and that those people are sort of unreachable. So now it's like, okay, how do we find, how do we find this new crowd? How do we make people who don't care about their phone, care about their phone?

• 1:01:26Speaker 10

  I thought it was really interesting looking at the Samsung's marketing for the Flip three last year, I believe, where the whole marketing shtick was like, it is a fashion accessory. They had photo shoots in kind of Notting Hill, London. They had this kind of almost like treating it like a thing that, oh, it can get like nice, nice and compact. So it kind of like fits in a fits in a purse and stuff. And none of the marketing there is about this amazing technology they've had to build to kind of make this foldable phone a reality. The whole thing at this point is people who are going to spend over a thousand pounds on this phone are going to be people that are doing it for a fashion statement. And I think maybe that's different for the fold because I think the fold is a more utilitarian phone. But I think with something like the flip, it's yeah, it's this it's this fashion audience. And I I do suspect that as phone components

• 1:02:10Speaker 10

  get more and more commodified, and as more and more companies can just go to a company like Qualcomm and go like, okay, we need This component off the shelf, we need this modem, we need this motherboard, we need this screen, we need this housing, put it together, we'll sell the phone. I think as that happens, probably the marketing is going to turn into this, oh, you're a, you're a car person? Cool. Here's the car person's phone. That's probably just a somewhat kind of inevitable shift as, as the kind of, as the big breakout technologies kind of shift into the past a little bit.

• 1:02:41David Pierce?

  Alison, you, you did the whole review. Obviously, we're going to put it in the show notes. Everybody should read it. But what is your sort of top line takeaway? Obviously, most people listening to this will not be able to get this phone, at least for now, because it's not coming to the US. But it is going to be available lots of places. Should people buy it? What's the, what's the verdict on this phone? It's hard to judge. It's the first one they've ever made, right?

• 1:02:58Speaker 09

  Yeah, it is a kind of wild card. You know, there's a lot of fine print on it that's good, too. Like, they say they're gonna offer four years of security updates, which is really good for a mid-range phone. I think that that's kind of my bottom line is, it is a very good mid-range phone. If the look of it appeals to you, if the flashing lights, you know, you think are cool, as long as you go in not expecting it to help you find your souls in our purpose, then you're gonna get a cool looking mid-range phone. And I think it's a shame that we seem to get so few of these devices in the US. We sort of have our couple of, you know, very good choices, but limited in this kind of price range. And it would be

• 1:03:42Speaker 09

  cool if, if one of them was the Nothing phone.

• 1:03:45David Pierce?

  So if you like phones that go blink, blink, blink, you would not be crazy to buy this phone?

• 1:03:50Speaker 09

  Yeah, this is the phone for you.

• 1:03:53David Pierce?

  I like it.

• 1:03:54Speaker 10

  I think it's astonishing and a really interesting sign of the times that a company is able to establish themselves and then less than two years later, release a full-on smartphone. And I think it's very interesting. The technical challenges of doing that do not seem to be that big anymore. But as we've kind of seen in the US, the business challenges seem to be what's, what's preventing lots of new entrants into the market. So for all of their kind of like overhyping this thing, I think to fundamentally release a phone within two years, I still find quite impressive, I have to admit.

• 1:04:25David Pierce?

  I agree. We've seen a lot of companies try and most of them not even get very close. So the fact that Nothing got this far is, is legitimately impressive. I totally agree. Thank you, guys. I appreciate you doing this. We'll, we'll talk again soon.

• 1:04:37Speaker 09

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:04:40David Pierce?

  All right, that's it for The Vergecast this week. Thank you so much for listening. As always, there is tons more coverage on everything we talked about at theverge.com, and you can also follow all of us on Twitter. Mitchell is StrawberryWell, which is an awesome Twitter name. Alex is Alex H. Krantz. McKenna is Kelly McKenna. John is John Porty. Allison is AllisonJoe1, and I'm Pierce. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Eleanor Donovan is our executive producer, and Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, or ideas on how we can all beat the heat this week, you can always email [email protected] or hit any of us up individually. Alex, Neelai, and I will be back on Friday to talk about the new Amazon Prime Video

• 1:05:23David Pierce?

  design, the latest in the Musk Twitter legal fight that seems like it's never going to end, and a bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:05:40Speaker 11

  First Citizens Innovation Banking, formerly Silicon Valley Bank, is the bank of the innovation economy. The name may have changed, but for over 40 years, their commitment to bold ideas, relentless ambition, and delivering what's next is as strong as ever. So if you're wondering where the road to innovation starts, it's here. First Citizens Innovation Banking. Head to firstcitizens.com/innovation to learn more.

• 1:06:10Speaker 12

  As a pioneer in the organic and natural food industry, the Whole Foods Market philosophy is rooted in a shared connection to people and to the planet. From farmland to stores, its products have always been a symphony of colors, textures, and flavors. In addition to its national brands, Whole Foods Market's team of local foragers continually scours the country to bring over 60,000 emerging and local products to its shelves each year. And they work with credentialed experts and top-of-the-line makers to offer customers the best possible variety. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online.