Mobile World Congress: How should your foldable phone fold?

The latest news from Mobile World Congress including Huawei's new foldable phone, Nokia's five-camera phone, and Sony's very tall phone. The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dan Seifert, Paul Miller, Natt Garun, and Chaim Gartenberg discuss which foldable phone so far has the best design, what phone can actually get 5G, and Microsoft's updated headset the HoloLens 2. Stories discussed this episode: - Huawei has the best first draft for a foldable phone - This 18,000mAh battery has a phone in it - Sony’s Xperia 1 literally stands out from the crowd with a super tall screen - LG enters the 5G game with the V50 ThinQ - LG’s palm-reading G8 has a unique vision of the future - LG’s answer to the foldable mania is a second screen - The Nokia 9 PureView has five cameras and a lot to prove - Motorola confirms its foldable phone is coming, and it could look like a RAZR - HoloLens 2: inside Microsoft's new headset - A closer look at Microsoft’s new Kinect sensor - USB 3.2 standard gets new, even more confusing names ahead of its mainstream debut Thanks to Microsoft Azure for sponsoring this episode. Get started with a free account and 12 months of popular free services at Azure.com/trial today. 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.

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• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Mobile World Congress. Is that, that's not right? No, not true. Not, not correct at all. One lie, so far. Doing great. The flagship podcast of The Verge. I'm your host, Neelai. Friend, Paul is here. Hello. I'm gonna tell you, Dieter is on vacation, and to replace him in our hearts, I realized we needed not one, not two, but three additional people.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Heck, yeah.

• 1:46Nilay Patel?

  So Nat Garen is here.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Hello, it's been a while.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  Heim Gartenberg is here. Hi. Dan Seifert returns. Hi, I was here last week.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Dan will not be speaking for the rest of the show. We got a lot to talk about today. Real quick, I want to just plug Casey Newton was on the interview podcast this week talking about his amazing story about Facebook moderation. You haven't listened to that, please go back, listen to it, listen, read Casey's story, which is incredible. It's very, I think it's very important that we all like take a moment and think about the cost of these platforms. So that's the plug for that. And now we're going to talk about a phone with gigantic battery. Okay. So I'm Dan. MWC is going on Mobile Congress. We sort of had the first wave of Samsung news, which we talked about at length. The S10 is out. Dan's been working on the review.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  Well, technically it's out in like a week.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, we have one.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  We do have one, yes.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  So the S10 is not out, but there's no embargo. You have one, you're reviewing it. We're setting that aside for next week. I want to talk about all the other stuff that happened at MWC, including the gigantic Energizer phone, which we'll get into. But kind of the big standout is the Huawei Mate X or 10. All names are bad. The Mate X, the other folding phone. Heim, what, just give us the rundown.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  So it's like the opposite of Samsung. Samsung's folding phone is kind of like a book. You have the, the screen on the cover on the outside and then you open it and there's, there's more screen on the inside. And Huawei's is the opposite where it's just a big screen on the outside and then it wraps around like over the hinge and then it's on the back and then you like unfold it from the back and now you have twice the phone. So it's like a phone and then, then it's twice the phone.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  But so, but it has like a, like a, like a grip.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  And then the side of it is like a, it's like the Kindle Oasis actually is, is a good example. It's, it's basically a phone and then it unfolds into a Kindle, kind of, where it has that grip on the side that you can hold it in this big square screen.

• 3:36Nilay Patel?

  You mean the form factor?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, in terms of form factor. And then that grip is actually also where the cameras are so that it's rear cameras and then it's front cameras and. It costs like a lot of money.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  2,600.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a lot.

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  All of these are priced that no one will buy them.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Is my, my main take on them.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Um, I mean, in terms of foldables that we saw though, this is like the closest to being real like, and Samsung's, like a lot of the other stuff in terms of folding and MWC was prototypes. And this was at least like a functional phone, like Vlad actually got to hold it, like browse the verge on it.

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Uh, which already puts it a step ahead of most of the other foldables.

• 4:13Speaker 05

  Puts it ahead of Samsung's.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  And literally nobody outside of Samsung has touched it.

• 4:17Nilay Patel?

  Here's the debate.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  Which one is right?

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  Which one is correct? Do you, do you, is it a, is it a taco? Or is it a sheet of paper?

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Neither, it should be a clamshell.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  So it opens like that?

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, like.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  This is a radio show and I just did the thing.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, you can't see it, but what I'm doing is like folding my fingers into my palm. Yes, that's how it should be.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Like, like an old razor phone.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Like a razor.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Yes, like a razor phone, which Motorola might actually make. But, um, yeah, cause then you don't scratch the screen like if more, the more screens there are, the more there are to scratch. So if you put them on the outside, how like, has anyone at Huawei ever tried to put this in a pocket or a bag?

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  No one at Huawei has pockets or bags.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Apparently, because like.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  It's a very restrictive company.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Cause why would you want this many screens with no casing and like, I don't know.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  Well, apparently they announced that they were gonna have a case that wrapped around it somehow. I don't know how it works, but like apparently they said this, they're gonna have a case.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  To cover what part of it?

• 5:09Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Just all of it.

• 5:11Speaker 05

  I don't know if we can answer any of these questions.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  It's like a sleeve.

• 5:13Speaker 06

  So there's pros and cons, right? We, we can, we can organize this, this thinking. There's the safety of the screen. The, the screen is obviously going to be softer because it folds, so it can't have like a solid glass to it. So there's safety in the Samsung design. Um, but Samsung's design, I think you end up with a thicker phone. One, because you can't fold it as flat. Because of the radius of the screen fold. And then also Samsung has an extra screen so that the phone is usable. So there's, there's real trade offs. I can't decide. I want to be able to come down hard in one side or the other so that I can tell other people that they're wrong. But I don't know which one to be.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  It is remarkable how thin the Mate X is. Like the each, each side of it, when you flip it open and not counting the little grip part. It's like 5.6 or something millimeters thick. So it's like really thin so that when you do fold it over and it is like on top of each other, you're only at like 11 millimeters or whatever, which is, is, you know, it's thicker than your average iPhone, but it's not like ridiculously thick.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  That's like too, too like regular sized phone.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  Oh, the iPhone is like 8. something millimeters.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  iPhone's like 6, 6.9, like most phones, most phones are like.

• 6:29Speaker 06

  Nah.

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  The other side of Dieter's personality is arguing with the first part of Dieter's personality. This is incredible. Uh, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a hard vote. I think, I think I prefer the Huawei design. I think if you're gonna have a phone that folds, the magic that you want. And by the way, this is all caveat with, I think the fact that foldable phones exist is super cool. So however we end up with functioning foldable phones, great. But the magic, the thing you want is to be holding a thing and be like, hmm. And then there's more, more thing.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  Like the Samsung, you open it like a book and it's like, oh.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  But there's like.

• 7:05Nilay Patel?

  What kind of books are you reading?

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Once you have to have an extra screen on the front.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I'm like, I'm tired of using this garbage phone.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  At some point, also like the Samsung front screen is like really.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  It's really bad.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  It's like.

• 7:18Speaker 05

  It's designed to encourage you to open it so you use the other screen.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  Like you're not supposed to get used to the front screen.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  It's got like giant chunk, like notch, notch bezels on it, like.

• 7:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's no notch and no, because no, nothing on the Huawei. I'm saying in the Huawei, there's no notch on the Huawei. But as great as that is, as soon as you put this in your phone one time, you have destroyed it. Or sorry, in your pocket one time, you have destroyed it.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  Or not. I mean, we have, we don't know.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  So we do have phones with glass on both sides. Like, every, every phone we have right now is glass on the front and back. And like, I can't-

• 7:55Speaker 05

  But these aren't glass. That's the whole problem. It's like, they've gotta be this flexible, plastic-

• 7:59Speaker 03

  Also have phone cases that like, protect the other glass.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  I don't keep my phone in case.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  The last phone that I used that had a plastic screen on it was one of those Motorola Droid something-somethings that was like, the shatterproof ones, where you could like, drop it or whatever, and they wouldn't crack or shatter, but they had this like, plastic screen on it, and it would get scratched to hell so quickly, and it would turn gross so quickly. And I assume, in order to be flexible like this needs to be, it's gonna be a similar kind of surface.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 05

  Plastic-y surface.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  I think we, I think we kinda know it's plastic.

• 8:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's plastic, but I mean, like, it's gonna be a similar soft plastic that's gonna get gross. I mean, like, you can see the creases on these.

• 8:34Nilay Patel?

  That was, I was gonna bring up, that they're being very careful to not let you like, really examine the screens. And both the Galaxy Fold and the Mate X have an obvious sort of like, rumply bit. It's, I would, a crease implies like, a sharp line. Like, this isn't, this is like, like a, you know, like you, like a, like a sharply creased set of pants. This is like, you didn't iron your shit and you went to the wedding.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  I like-

• 8:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's a, it's a rumple.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's like, you should, you should really clean that up.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  This is like a folded shirt kinda crease, not like an iron kinda crease.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Do you crease your shirts when you fold them?

• 9:08Speaker 04

  No.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  I don't follow.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Like, uh-

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I ever, I'm just saying, everyone's calling it a crease-

• 9:12Speaker 04

  My metaphor's broken.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  Because the, the area where it folds, which would be the crease, has the rumple. I just, in your mind, do not think of a, like a starched shirt crease.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  It's more of like a, it's a, it's a, it's a rumple. That's what it is. And it looks really weird when it catches the light.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  The foldable rumple.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  The fold- It's my new band name. That's right, Band for Kids. It's where high, where the foldable rumples-

• 9:38Speaker 05

  Are rumples the new notches? It's the thing everyone's gonna be really mad about.

• 9:42Nilay Patel?

  If we make rumples a thing, I'll be, I'll be happy. So, both of these phones are super expensive, but they do appear to be coming to market. The thing I do wanna talk about, the Mate X, is- Actually, I think the camera situation is very interesting. So there's only the one set of cameras in that like grip area. And you take a selfie, you turn the phone over and the folded side of the phone becomes the viewfinder and you hold that out. What else does that other side of the phone do when it's folded? It just turns off?

• 10:09Speaker 04

  I think it turns off, but I think you can also like tent it if you want. So like if you're watching a YouTube video with someone who's sitting on the other side of a table, you can mirror the screen on both sides. Like that's a thing that we've seen already on like the ZTE Axon M was able to do that when it was two separate screens. I don't see why you couldn't do that on here.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Tell me socially how that's acceptable.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  I don't think it's, I don't think it's ever, I don't think it's ever come up as like a use case, but it is a thing that's possible.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  It's like, I really don't want to sit next to you while watching this YouTube video. Please put it across the table.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  I think most of the time, most of the time when it's closed, in its closed state, that small screen is off, but you can flip it over and turn the small screen on and it is like a full phone interface there. And it'll be your camera viewfinder. And then if you open it, you get to a certain point where it just kind of like kicks over into it's like now I'm on one tablet mode.

• 11:04Nilay Patel?

  But I think the tent mode, where you're like, I, where you, you're a real estate agent? Like, I don't, I don't know.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I'm.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  You play, you play Battleship.

• 11:13Nilay Patel?

  That's it. Everyone's been asking, what is the use case for these? 100% Battleship. That's what it's for. I'm so glad we figured this out. The Vergecast is over. Thank you, Dieters and Nat. It's been lovely to see you. Always great. When is the Mate X coming out?

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Later this summer.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  Is it also 5G because it's full of fake technology?

• 11:32Speaker 04

  It has 5G or it will have a 5G version in some.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's going to, it's going to have a 5G version. I mean Huawei is a huge pusher of 5G.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  So it'll be another $500 to get it.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Huawei, Huawei also has, like they have their own chipsets, so they're not really beholden to anyone and they have a 5G modem that will work with the processor that they've announced with this. So like.

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  Is it Kirin?

• 11:53Speaker 05

  It looks like June is arriving is when it's slated to arrive.

• 11:56Nilay Patel?

  So I don't think we should talk about the other foldables, most of which are like fake tech demos.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:01Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think we can talk about a Huawei phone. I don't think I can sit here and be like, that's the one that should win. Without talking about the fact that you cannot buy this phone in the United States because Huawei is routinely accused of spying on everyone. And they're doing this big push. They just put out ads, like full page ads in papers, addressed, this is true, to US journalists. To be like, come check us out. And then there's like an RSVP line at the bottom. And it's like, just email this email address at Huawei. Like, you'll come on by. Most of the most interesting phones at MWC, like, we can't get.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:30Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they're just like not going to be available to us. And the Huawei phones in particular are just in this veil of confusion. I'm not 100% sure if I did respond to like, hang out with Huawei, Huawei.com, or whatever that email address is. Even if I went, like, what would, are they going to let me see the code of the phone?

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I don't know what they can do to convince people, because like, the argument with Huawei is sort of like, that the Chinese government has like compromised them on like a state level, and because they are based in China, like, that's just a fact of being a business there. And I don't know what they could do necessarily to convince anyone.

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Otherwise, like, I, there, there may be a way, I don't know, maybe, maybe blockchain.

• 13:17Speaker 06

  My problem with this whole, and I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but we live in a country where our government has compromised technology that we use as consumers in order to spy on us. So it's really hard to, so when our government issues a guidance about Huawei, it's super believable, because China does spy on its citizens, that Huawei helps them spy on citizens and therefore would help them spy on us. But it's also really believable that our government doesn't like it, because maybe they have a harder time spying on us with Huawei stuff.

• 13:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So just to be clear, that spying is not alleged to be happening at the device level. You can import a Huawei phone and happily use it all day long.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Huawei sells laptops in the US.

• 14:03Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the spying is alleged to be occurring at the network layer, where Huawei sells base stations and modems and cell equipment.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  They are cheaper than most other competition. And then we've talked about this, like, rural broadband providers in the United States are like, We really like to buy some Huawei stuff because it's cheap and good and the government's kind of foreclosing on them.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:22Nilay Patel?

  The problem is the government is also saying to AT&T, I think last year at CES, AT&T was set to announce a Huawei phone and they, the government basically told them not to.

• 14:31Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:31Nilay Patel?

  And then maybe the best CES press conference of all time was like the Huawei dude being like, "Screw this, like, I'm honest, you should trust me." Uh, no phone was ever released regardless of the veracity of that performance.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  Well, not released on AT&T. They did release it unlocked in the US. I reviewed it, it was bad. I told you, I said, "Even if you could have bought this from AT&T, you shouldn't."

• 14:52Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 14:52Speaker 05

  So, no loss.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  Great. But I think that a question right now is, given the amount of innovations happening in these form factors on phones that are just not coming here, like, is, is it kind of irrelevant that we're like, "Which one is better?" When we'll probably get the Galaxy Fold.

• 15:07Speaker 05

  I mean, it's irrelevant because we're not gonna buy either of them.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy one of them.

• 15:11Speaker 05

  No, you're not.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  Come on. Max is gonna have to go to college.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Well, you are, but you're not gonna use it.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Max is gonna be great. She's gonna, she's gonna be a startup entrepreneur and she'll sell her first edition Galaxy Fold and that's gonna be like our seed round. It's gonna be great. No, I mean, like, but right now in the foreseeable future, it's gonna be very difficult to buy all these phones.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  Not least because Huawei is like in this constant state of controversy here. And my question just kind of goes to what Paul's saying is like, the reason that we accept our government spying on everything is like, they're ostensibly there to protect us.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Ha!

• 15:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, China is ostensibly, I know what you're, I know, Paul. And China is ostensibly like our geopolitical foe, so you'd rather have like the, the thing that's ostensibly protecting us spying on you than ostensibly the foe. But at the end of the day, it's like, is the phone so cool that people will be like, "That Huawei." Like, that's like a really interesting reason for Huawei to build and promote this phone is to just get good press to change that dynamic.

• 16:10Speaker 05

  So, I mean, the way that they've been trying to get good press for their products has been very aggressive pricing. So, you know, we mentioned that you, they sold phones unlocked in the US, they can't get it on carriers, but they sell them unlocked. I don't think they did their most recent, uh, uh, refreshes. I don't think you can get like the Mate 20 Pro. In the US for some reason, which they probably just realized nobody was buying anyways. At least not in the US.

• 16:32Nilay Patel?

  Like that Dan's gonna say it's bad again.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Well, it's just like more work than it's worth, but they are selling their laptops and PC lines here in the US. And the way that they've made them really attractive to press and product reviewers like myself is they made really good products with really good hardware. And they're selling it for like hundreds of dollars less than you can get from Dell or Apple or whatever. So that's like one way that they are trying to like make an image of their products as being like very high performing, well designed, well built, well made hardware at a price that you just can't beat with another device.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, except for this phone, which is gonna cost 20.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  Except, yeah. And it's also not coming to the US.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  I think I can beat the $26, $2600 phones price.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  With a $1,980.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, like, where are you gonna go?

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  So that's real quick. I just wanna, I don't wanna talk about Huawei without bringing up that contract, because it's just gonna follow the company.

• 17:25Speaker 05

  So I wanna, I wanna mention one last thing about the Huawei, though. And like, since this debate is gonna be ongoing as to which one's better, Samsung or Huawei. I, I, it's crazy to say this, but I have more faith in Samsung figuring out the software than Huawei. Having used many Huawei phones, having used many Samsung phones, neither of them are good at software. Huawei is demonstrably worse.

• 17:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  So these things are gonna live or die by their software, and I am have little to no confidence that Huawei has it figured out.

• 17:53Nilay Patel?

  But you can make it into a tent and play a YouTube video on both sides of the tent.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Have you used the Huawei tablet?

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, you can have a tent mode.

• 18:02Nilay Patel?

  You can make it, you can make it.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  The one thing that makes their PCs so attractive is that there's no Huawei software on them. They just run Windows and they're great.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God. Can we, can we have this stock Android debate about foldable phones? Like, when can we bring all of our themes together?

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Google did announce in the fall that they were adding like an OS level support for both flavors of foldables. So like the Huawei version and the Samsung version are both in theory getting like OS level support. Which is good, because again, I used the ZTE Axon M, which is the closest modern thing we have to a foldable up until now. And it sucked.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  It was so bad.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  The software was just.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  But I've never seen. A phone in a Best Buy attract more attention than the ax on it. Like, everybody went to go unfold it, and then they were like, "Well, nothing is happening on the screen. Is it like, slowly rotates to be bigger?"

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Why is the one screen yellow and the other one blue?

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  It's not great. But everyone wanted to unfold it. By the way, we're coming up with names for these folds, because there's gonna be like, multiple types. And so far, I'm just gonna put this out there. The unfold the screen should be called the Huawei. "Hi, I'll be playing that part of Dieter's personality today," where, "How does he live like this?" Like, the crushing silence and shame that follows a pun is so difficult.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  I mean...

• 19:23Speaker 05

  It's not a very good pun.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  Every time I hear "folding phone," I think of Mike Myers saying "fold the phone" in his Scottish accent.

• 19:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I know what you're talking about. Sorry, Married and Axe Murder is like, an underrated movie.

• 19:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what I'd say.

• 19:42Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so there's some other foldable phones. By the way, we're calling them foldables now. Oppo showed one off. TCL showed one off. This is actually, you should watch this video, it's incredible. They had a bunch of TCL stuff in a glass box, and Vlad went to make a video, and they agreed. He cajoled them into removing the glass box, but he was not allowed to otherwise touch or handle the phones.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  He looks so sad.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  So, we just have like, a camera like, panning over stuff that was previously, he's very unhappy about it. And then Motorola said it's gonna make, not, well...

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Maybe.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Maybe. Well, it basically said that it was working on a foldable phone, and that it was, quote-unquote, "not gonna be coming out any later than our competitors." Samsung's coming out with it in April. Huawei's coming in sometime in the summer, probably. So Motorola will likely announce theirs sometime in the summer. They usually have an event in August, and that would be like, I think, the earliest we'd see something.

• 20:39Nilay Patel?

  What danger is there in just announcing a foldable phone at this time? Like, The Verge, I would like to announce The Verge will be releasing a foldable phone in the near future. Like, they're all fake. I've thought about it, you know, our design's gonna be really innovative.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Because if Motorola's version end up being a Razer reboot, I think that they want that momentum to themselves.

• 20:58Speaker 06

  So, the last time they did a Razer reboot...

• 21:02Speaker 04

  It didn't go very well.

• 21:04Speaker 05

  I mean granted, it didn't fold, but like.

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  I could see it. I'm excited. I'm buying the Razr phone.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 21:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The Razr fold.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  I mean, like, the whole, the whole, like, picture, picture a Razr.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Razr's have always folded.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  And it unfolds, but instead of being a physical keyboard on the bottom, it's just more screen. I'd buy that. I'd use that.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  I'd buy the hell out of that.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Like.

• 21:23Speaker 05

  Imagine the.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  I had a Razr. Razr was my first phone.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Just imagine the rumble.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  It's a rumble.

• 21:27Speaker 05

  Imagine the rumble.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  My god, man.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 21:30Speaker 05

  Can we talk about the trunk yet?

• 21:32Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna end this segment with the trunk. No one knows what we're talking about. It's gonna be fine. Just look, you should look forward to that. Heim, you looked at a bunch of other phones. I wanna say LG's answer to fold is, is actually just like a flip out second screen.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  It's another phone!

• 21:47Speaker 04

  LG, LG's answer, LG's answer is a case for the V, uh, for the G8 that you just stick your phone in and it uses PogoPins and like a near-field Bluetooth thing, I think. And then it uses that to display content on the second screen. I haven't actually seen this in person because they're not bringing it to the US, which is kind of a theme that you should look forward to with LG this year is, we have cooler versions of our phones that is not coming to the US.

• 22:15Speaker 05

  But none of, none of you Americans bought our last phones.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Sorry, the second screen's not the G8. The second screen's the V50, which is their 5G phone. The V50 is coming here. Sprint is getting it first. Verizon's getting it in the summer.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  The 5G logo glows.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Literally a V40 with a glowing 5G logo on the back and a slightly larger battery.

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  That's perfect. What could, more could I ask for from a phone? Make the logos glow.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  And then the second, so the second screen thing, which is like the cool new thing, is not coming to America. Sorry.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  But it's not just like an attachment?

• 22:44Speaker 04

  It's an attachment. It's a case. You buy it separately. You stick it in. It powers off the phone and now you have two screens and then it folds together like.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  And then you have one screen.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Well, no, you have no screens.

• 22:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it folds up?

• 22:55Speaker 04

  It folds, it folds in on itself. It's like the book Full Like Samsung, but there's no thi, there's no screen on the back, so all you can look at is the glowing 5G logo on the back of your V50.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  Wait, why would they design it that way?

• 23:08Speaker 04

  You just take it out of the case if you only want one screen.

• 23:13Nilay Patel?

  This is horrible. Yeah. Well, I hope there's a rich and vibrant black market of second screen.

• 23:19Speaker 06

  Can we talk about this, this size and battery hunger aspect of 5G? Is that just because it's immature? Or is there something fundamental to 5G that it's always going to draw more power? Because that's a little, that's a little scary.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  I can answer this one. Uh, two things. One is that it's immature and just as we get better at optimizing things, it will get better. Right now, also though, every 5G chip on the market, uh, is not built into the processor. So you buy a Snapdragon 855. It has Qualcomm's LTE modem integrated onboard into the chip. But the 5G modem is a separate modem, which is the X50, or they just announced the X55, uh, which is a separate chip that needs to be running in your phone. It takes up more space and because you have to run both of those, if you want to use 5G, it's going to draw more power.

• 24:05Speaker 06

  It's like the LG second screen of mobile processors.

• 24:09Speaker 05

  Of mobile. The other part of this is, uh, 5G, at least millimeter wave, requires a lot of antennas that need to be placed all over the device. So they, right now, it works better with a larger, physically larger device because it's harder to block them with your hand. They have more space to put them, stuff like that.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Qualcomm has already announced that it's, next year, it will have a processor that has a 5G modem integrated onboard with the chip, which will probably be when 5G actually starts because right now it's optional for everyone because you have to stick a second modem into your phone.

• 24:38Speaker 06

  And there's no 5G networks.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  And also live in like one town in America.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, all the good, the good people of Dallas, Texas.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Don't have it either. AT&T, AT&T has 5G available in 12 cities.

• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  But not their hometown?

• 24:52Speaker 04

  They're, Dallas might be one of them. But if Dallas does have it, I don't remember the, the 12 towns off the list. They are only offering it right now for a mobile hotspot that you have to sign up and hope AT&T selects you and live in the right neighborhood in one of these 12 towns. And no one knows how much it costs because it's like a quiet, private beta. So like, like AT&T doesn't get credit. I'm, I'm not giving them credit for launching the first one.

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no one gets any credit for anything, except for the glowing logo, which is amazing.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Glowing logo.

• 25:23Nilay Patel?

  So that's the V50.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  That's the V50.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you played with the G8.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  I did play with the G8.

• 25:29Nilay Patel?

  Which seems to have a wacky camera system.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Wacky camera. So, the big thing with the G8, LG has a new camera on the front, which is calling the Z camera. It's a time of flight sensor, and it can detect like, advanced hand gestures. They're going very big on gestures for this one as like, the big feature.

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  Uh, and it has one of the single weirdest security features I've ever seen on a phone. You've heard of Touch ID, you've heard of Face ID, now meet, uh, I think it's Hand ID.

• 25:59Nilay Patel?

  Of course. Why wouldn't that be the natural progression?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  So this is how it works. This has to be the most LG gimmick ever. This is how it works. It shines the same IR laser that you use for like, Face ID to map your face. So it shines that at your palm, the laser reflects off the hemoglobin in the blood in the veins of your palm.

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  And LG uses the reflection back to create a unique vein map of your palm. And then when you put that over the front of your phone, it unlocks it.

• 26:30Nilay Patel?

  This, if you, if you were to be making like, a Blade 4, right? Like, what Wesley Snipes would discover is that the vampires had been mapping everyone's veins in this way. Like, the most popular phone in the world has secretly been mapping veins the whole time.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Blade 4 would be pretty cool.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  I would watch the hell out of Blade 4. I'm just saying, this phone would be the plot of Blade 4. Watch Blade 4. Does it work? You try it?

• 26:53Speaker 04

  So I tried it. It works, okay. It definitely takes like, a couple tries to get used to like, the positioning. Also, you just kind of feel like an idiot because you're just waving your hand. Unlock, please. You can do like, gesture controls with it too, right? And then once it's unlocked, you can do gesture controls. So, these are also weird. You hold your hand near the phone, near like, the camera, not near the screen, which is going to be your first inclination. You've got to go a little higher up. You hold it near the camera, then it'll light up to show like, it'll put like, a little light on top to show that it recognizes your hand. You pull your hand back a couple inches, and then it will bring down a contextual menu. And then you can rotate to adjust volume, or flick it left, or flick it right to do like things. You can preset shortcuts. You can turn off the preview, by the way, if you've reached the point where you're, you know, advanced.

• 27:38Nilay Patel?

  If you're Blade.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yes. If you're Blade, if you're Blade and are confident enough in your gesture abilities to do it without it telling you.

• 27:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  It also works like, okay, I had like a half hour, 45 minutes to play around with this.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  Do they tell you when you would want to use a phone in this way?

• 27:54Speaker 04

  So yeah, so their arguments are-

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Please, again, tell us when it's socially acceptable to do this.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  Their arguments are two, which is like, one is the classic of you're, you know, doing dishes and you want to answer a call, or adjust the music, or whatever, and your phone's over there and you don't want to touch your phone. The other is like, what if you're driving in a car, which seemed a little less good to me.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  This is how you crash a car.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Like, like the... So I get it. On paper, it sounds great. You just hold your hand up to your phone, the phone unlocks, and then you, you know, flick your hand around and you've got your Spotify going. Like, I see why someone thought this was a good idea.

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  But isn't that what your voice is for in the car?

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  It is.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Awesome. I've been watching you, like, do this as we are recording, and it just looks like you're playing with an invisible puppet. It's really weird.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  It does feel a lot like-

• 28:42Speaker 05

  It's like you cast a spell on the phone.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  You're just kind of like, arm up, head down.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  It works okay. I don't think anyone is gonna be rushing out to buy a G8 because of these new features.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I can't wait for the ads. The ads are like the idealized version of this. So like, someone's gonna be driving a car, and they're like, doing the cool thing. The washing dishes thing, like, everyone talks about-

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  When you're washing dishes, you obviously need this technology to help you. And that always seems like an infomercial to me. Like, heavens no, my hands are wet!

• 29:11Speaker 05

  The phone is waterproof!

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  Whatever I do!

• 29:14Speaker 05

  I can't touch my waterproof phone!

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we'll see.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  I don't know, I'm just never convinced by the idea of a phone company being like, what if you, what if you could control your phone from four inches away, within easy reach of the fingers you're using to control your... Am I this lazy? I can't ju-

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Was this a problem?

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  Also, it runs Android, right? Doesn't it have Android Auto?

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, yes.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay, just checking. You know, the interface that Google built for using in a car?

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 29:42Nilay Patel?

  It does Face ID too, though, right?

• 29:44Speaker 04

  Does Face ID, it does Face ID, it has a fingerprint sensor on the back. It's got, it's got everything.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  So it's a phone.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  It's got all the biometrics. It has all the biometrics.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  All right. Uh, you also played with the new Sony phones, which I personally love just because this is, this is the silliest idea.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Tall phones. Tall phones.

• 30:03Nilay Patel?

  That's it?

• 30:03Speaker 04

  That's, so that's their thing, tall phones. Sony, Sony, and this is true at the briefing, put up a slide like, it's hard to stand out or something in the world of phones. And then they're like, well, the phones literally stood out. So what if we stretched our phones? It's, it's the equivalent of, how do I get identified in the crowd? I'll put a top hat on.

• 30:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, so these phones look ridiculous because they have no chin, but they have massive foreheads.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the, the, there's, there's three tall phones. There's the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus, which are like the budget ones. The 10 is a 5.9 inch, the 10 Plus is 6.5 inches. Uh, and then there's the Xperia one, which is the flagship that's going to replace the Xperia XC3. So that's like the Snapdragon 855 flagship one.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  So the budget ones actually look better, honestly, because they have like no chin on the bottom at all. And just like these massive foreheads. And then the Xperia one tries to split the difference. So it's a little smaller on top and it's a little larger on the bottom, but it doesn't quite hit a balance on either. Like, just pick, pick a side.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't understand in a world where like the SE is now, the iPhone SE is now gone and everyone's screaming for smaller phones. They were like, yes, let's make it taller and more difficult to hold or put in a pocket.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  The whole thing with Sony is that they're also a movie company. And as you know-

• 31:26Speaker 04

  You're joking. This is a thing that they mentioned at the briefing as a reason why this is Sony movies will be sold and mastered for viewing on these.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  So no women work at Sony, that's good to know.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, but they just love watching movies the way they were meant to be watched.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  I'm a tall person and this phone did not fit in my pocket. I just like put in the jean pocket.

• 31:46Nilay Patel?

  Do tall people have longer pockets?

• 31:47Speaker 04

  I assume my pants have longer pockets.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  I just kinda, I didn't realize pockets were proportional to pant length.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  I don't know, the pants legs are longer, the pockets should be longer too. If not, I would like that.

• 32:00Nilay Patel?

  We'll never know unless someone tweets at Heimgardberg.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Or at Levi's to tell us if that's true.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  No, don't activate the brands.

• 32:10Nilay Patel?

  How much do these phones cost?

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Uh, no price really state on YouTube.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Typical Sony announcement.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, this is why they don't sell any phones. They don't tell you how much they cost or you can buy them.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  Or when they'll arrive.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Uh, they are coming to America, or at least the main, the big, the Xperia 1 is coming to America. It has, it does look like a nice phone. It's very glossy. It has a triple camera system, three different lens types, which is like the thing that we've seen on most of the multi-camera phones. You can get, you know, wide and telephoto and ultra-wide. Uh, it has a 4K OLED HDR screen. It's really tall.

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  All the specs.

• 32:41Speaker 04

  You can scroll Twitter for days, like.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  It's really tall. This sounds like a nightmare.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like, if you're watching like a 21 by 9 aspect ratio movie, it looks great. Like, so if you want to watch like Lawrence of Arabia, it looks fantastic on this, apparently. If you want to watch like a YouTube video, there are black bars the size of your thumbs on both sides of the panel.

• 33:04Nilay Patel?

  That's great, because you get to grip the phone, you're holding the video.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  Well, no, you have a grip because you also have the giant, you know, forehead.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we have to stop talking on this phone. Alright.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  They tried.

• 33:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy this phone, I'm buying two foldable phones. Wacky form factors, that's where I live now, with my extra-long pockets.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  I'm very sad for you.

• 33:23Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be wild, everyone's gonna have a good time. Speaking of wacky form factors, can we end on the most important phone of MWC?

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Please.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  The Energizer phone.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:31Nilay Patel?

  What Dan has been calling the trunk.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  We, we've been talking about all these crazy gimmicks that solve no problems. Energizer is here with the phone that solves problems.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  Tell me what this phone is.

• 33:42Speaker 05

  This phone, everyone likes to say that they would love to have a thicker phone with a bigger battery. Well, Energizer is here for you. Their phone has 18,000 milliamp hour battery. Just to put this in perspective, the average phone has like 3,000 milliamp hour battery. The Samsung S10 plus is a 4100 milliamp hour battery. That's a very big battery. This is 18,000.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  So it's basically like your like anchor like battery.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  It is if you put a phone on the outside of an anchor battery pack. It's 18 millimeters thick.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  I mean, do you have to look at, I can't pull over in a car.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 34:18Nilay Patel?

  There should not be another post at the top of the verge.com for the next month. We just pin it to the top.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  It has a pop up camera on the front, so there's no notch. It pops up.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Not enough.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Look, there's so much room for a pop up camera.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  Alright, but, but somehow it doesn't have room for a headphone jack. And it has a camera bump on the back.

• 34:38Nilay Patel?

  Why? This phone literally looks like they took an iPhone XR and just like scaled it. Like they just like stretched it.

• 34:46Speaker 05

  Well, if you're, if you look at the pictures on the site, which I strongly recommend you pull over your car and you look at the pictures on the site. Because the controls for like the power button and the volume and stuff like that are all like where you would expect them to be on a normal thin phone. And then there's just like endless body behind it. Like they didn't make it in the middle or anything. They just stretched the back of it.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Use like a stamp tool on Photoshop and just stamp the shit out of the.

• 35:07Speaker 06

  It is the physical embodiment of a bad Photoshop. But the, what, what's horrible about it is if you look, if you look at it, you're like, oh, haha. But what if it was just like, like, I'd love a 9,000 milliamp.

• 35:21Speaker 06

  Somebody from this absurd company that has somehow managed to license the Energizer brand to make a weird phone is getting like point at me and see, and they'll say, see, you weren't serious about long battery life. You were, you're a liar. Cause you make compromises for headphone jacks.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  Best part about this is, uh, well, I've, I've already said the best part, but like another best part about this. It has fast charging and a full charge will take eight hours.

• 35:46Nilay Patel?

  Perfect. Hi, and you're saying there's already a 9,000 milliamp phone?

• 35:50Speaker 04

  So Sam, uh, Sam Byford reviewed this for the verge. I'm gonna pronounce it wrong. It's called the, the dodgy, the doogie.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  Doogie.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  The Doogie S80. It has a 10,080 milliamp hour battery. Sam said it lasted a week off a charge.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  Yes. So imagine how long it could go with 18,000.

• 36:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, 18,000, I just want to say, uh, the spec is 48 hours of continuous video playback.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  Which is amazing. Uh, I'm buying this phone too. It's at, so this is not a stunt. It's like, the first thing I thought was this was a stunt, but Dan is insistent. It comes this summer. It comes this summer. Do you know how much it costs? No.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Do we know how much it weighs?

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Alright. No, I wish it did. How much it weighs is legitimately a good question. I will say that the amount of like, pocket reconsideration we've had to do on this show already is like, very high. And you still need a dongle with it.

• 36:48Nilay Patel?

  My god.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  I should be able to use Bluetooth. I feel like the hit to the battery on this from Bluetooth is just not gonna be that significant.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Also, like, you know how people use their phones in bed? Like, if this shit falls on your face, will your new shit go?

• 37:01Speaker 04

  You're dead.

• 37:01Nilay Patel?

  Broken nose.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here, here, here's my question. Long phone or giant phone? Or thick phone? Yeah, long phone or thick?

• 37:13Speaker 03

  I'm just moving to the woods.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  Can I have both? I want, I want a phone that is as long as the Sony, and I want it with this battery.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  I think what you're looking for is literally the very first phone to have a phone.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I want, I want, I want like, one of the, one of like, like a 1980's cell phone.

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  Zack Morris phone.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  But, but with like a OLED, with like an OLED screen on the front.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's coming. Like, some Android manufacturer heard you say that right now, and they're like, they're like, "Get down to the factory!", and like, "You're gonna get one."

• 37:40Speaker 03

  It's gonna be on Kickstarter in two months.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's right. That's a good call. Uh, I'm gonna go with long phone. Long, although, this is so tempting, because, just imagine like, being in a meeting, and you're like, "Hang on",

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  There's something very tempting about it. I wonder if you can use it as a battery for your laptop? There's no way this is not a bad.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Does it have USB-C?

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Oh my god, Siri, calm down.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  There's no reason in theory why you couldn't?

• 38:11Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're way over this. Heim reminds me we should talk about the Nokia phone real quick. The 9 PureView has five cameras on the back.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  Five cameras on the back.

• 38:19Nilay Patel?

  What do you, what do you think?

• 38:21Speaker 04

  It's not terrible. They partnered with Light from the wacky 16 camera, like camera? Like the L16. So they partnered with Light and it's different from like most of the other multicamera phones in that it is not using the five cameras for different lens types. They're all the same lens, three black and white, two color. Just shoots them all at different exposures and then it just kind of flattens them together. And you get these like really, really, really crisp, sharp details. So like, it does not look bad.

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  I think I saw James, Barry, my creative director, and Vlad in a long argument about whether a photo was good or not from the Nokia 9.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  I mean, they were talking about one of the sample photos that like, they had one of their like sample photographers take and then edit like a lot in Lightroom. I am not James or Vlad when it comes to photography, but I took pictures of like, they had some food set out so we could take pictures of it. Cause like, that seems like a fair thing and food looked good. Like, I would put that on Instagram.

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Which I think is like what they're gunning for.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, what Vlad and James were arguing about was it was a landscape shot.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:23Nilay Patel?

  And the, the way that it had captured the depth map, like, made the perspective seem really weird.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  And to clarify, like, the way like Apple and Google are doing this is they're taking a burst of photos at different exposures and then compositing them together. So it's not like it's gonna be that different, right? What's the advantage of doing it with a bunch of different cameras other than like a faster shutter speed?

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  Cause you can tune the cameras.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, each camera also, so there's three black and white cameras, two color. So you have different types of data. Also, each of those cameras can also shoot multiple exposures. So it's just even more detailed data to work with. Like, it is doing the same thing that Apple and Google are doing with one or two cameras, with five cameras, and then different color types, and then stacking that all together. It doesn't look terrible.

• 40:17Speaker 06

  It's coming out real soon, too.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's coming out March 3rd. They just announced today.

• 40:21Speaker 06

  Sony and Xiaomi are also gonna get this technology, right?

• 40:26Speaker 04

  So Sony and Xiaomi announced that they are also partnering with Light. Their phones that they've announced that MWC aren't using it.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it should come out.

• 40:35Nilay Patel?

  Five years from now, Sony will be like, the phone is very tall.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Well, Sony says that their next phone will have at least four.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Cameras, which is like.

• 40:43Nilay Patel?

  Great.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Two too many.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  So one of the reasons they need to work with Light in the first place is because apparently Qualcomm's image processor is just not designed to handle more than three simultaneous camera inputs. And if you're going past that, you either need to be doing like some funky stuff where like one of them is only being used for depth, or you need to talk to someone who knows how to handle 16 cameras.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Also, I know you, Hyam, you said that you don't use phone cases, but I'm just imagining what a phone case for these phones look like, and there are just like random holes in the middle, just to make room for all the.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a switch.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  Or just like one gigantic.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  It just looks like a.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Well, it's not gonna protect your phone.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  No, no, it's gonna look like a regular phone case that just like got shot through with a bunch of bullets.

• 41:24Nilay Patel?

  Yes. That's the only style of phone case that she made for this, is the one that looks like it was shot with a bunch of bullets. Okay, we have to take a break. I want to tell you two facts before we take a break. One, everyone said the back of the Nokia looked like a few holes. Our science team.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  Tripophobia.

• 41:41Nilay Patel?

  Was very adamant that that is a fake idea. It is not real. Someone on the internet just made it up, and the entire internet believes it's real. I think it's real. Two, I just Googled, do tall people have longer pockets? And there are zero results.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  So if anyone wants to make a quick buck doing some SEO scams, there's a page for you. We're taking a break, we'll be right back.

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Mila Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 43:03Speaker 07

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. This series is presented by EY.

• 43:45Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Dieter's not here. He just, as you know, we've replaced him with three people. But he just put a big feature on Hollands 2, which was Microsoft's big MWC announcement. As it happens, I actually went to Redmond a while ago, and I got to try on a Hollands 2. It's a weird, it's a weird product.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I know almost nothing about this, just because MWC world is a big world as it is. Tell me more. So where does this take from the original Hollands?

• 44:13Nilay Patel?

  So their whole, Alex Hitman, who runs the Hollands Project, is a super interesting guy. His whole thing is like, this is not a consumer product. I think Dieter and I are trying to, we talked a lot about whether that is a change for Microsoft. Because the first Hollands came out, they showed a bunch of games, they showed a web browser. It seemed like they kind of didn't know what it was for. And now they've arrived at this idea of what it's for, which is frontline workers. And it's like, what they talk about. This is for enterprise workers. You are Audi, you've got 10,000 techs in the field. You want to roll out a change in how you, I don't know, replace a tire. You can roll out the code to all the people, they all look at the car with the Hollands, and the new instructions will be right there. This is their grand vision.

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  So they focused the product on these like enterprise uses. They're selling them to businesses with all this custom stuff. Then they've changed the display to have a wild, a wider field of view. It uses a MEMS laser that, you know, there's a micro, like, micro electrical mechanical system. It like flips second forth 58 times, 58,000 times a second. So it's got this like wider field of view. They have this spec, hi, I'm curious if you think this spec is, is, is misleading as I do. They claim it's a 2K display per eye, which kind of means nothing. I think they're just trying to get you to add that to 4K.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  So VR headsets do measure things like that? I don't know if that's like a thing for AR where you measure on like a per eye level.

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what they say. This, it's a 2K display per eye. I've worn the thing.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Does it look like 2K?

• 45:42Nilay Patel?

  It does, it does not. That's why I think it's misleading.

• 45:47Speaker 06

  Could you describe the field of view? Maybe I'm butchering it, but the way I remember the original HoloLens is if you imagine holding a postcard at almost arms length, that was about the field.

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  Bring that postcard closer to your face.

• 46:00Speaker 06

  How close to your face?

• 46:01Nilay Patel?

  So it's like, it's a little past your nose. So it's like big enough.

• 46:05Speaker 06

  So that's a pretty close postcard.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, it fills a reasonable amount of the area that you're looking at. It still clips, it's not, it's not, you know, edge to edge or however you would measure your eyes. It's still clips, it's still a floating box of stuff. The other thing they've done is they've taken Kinect, which I'm sure you remember from Xbox. They've rebranded it as Azure Kinect, because every Microsoft technology will be rebranded as Azure in our lifetime.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  It's a really fun word to say.

• 46:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's great. So Azure Kinect is like their, like, something with their cloud services. It's actually two things, but they've put a Kinect sensor in the front of the HoloLens and they've put two eye tracking cameras inside of it. So you don't have to focus the lenses. You just like put the visor on, it's way more comfortable to wear. You just like tighten it in the back with a little screw. All the computer stuff is at the back, not a screw, like a knob, like a big knob.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say, a screw in the back of the head sounds unpleasant.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's the Matrix. They go in, they inject you with, no. It's like a big knob and you like tighten it, it's very comfortable. All the computer stuff is back.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  It's kinda like a baseball hat or like one of those hard hats?

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, kinda like that.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  A little bit. There's a visor that flips down. They've made it modular, so if you are a hard hat company, you can like get Microsoft to make hard hat versions. So it's kinda interesting. Anyway, so you put this thing on and then the camera sense the distance between your eyes and automatically calibrate the display for you. Which is a huge improvement over everything else. And then the Azure Connect sensor in the front, and the reason I say it's like cloud, like there's another Azure Connect product that is more about cloud computing, but this one is in the front and it does the room tracking. So it does like full inside out room tracking, no beacons. You have to map the room ahead of time, but the demo I did was, they put me in a room with a, like an ATV.

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  And they were like, you're gonna, you're gonna assemble a part of this ATV. And so there, there was an arrow pointing at the bolt that I needed to take out. Then there was an arrow pointing to another whole part of the room, which was the bins of replacement parts. And it led me over there. It was like, follow this arrow to go over here in physical space. It showed me which are the bolts I should get. And it brought me back and then there was a, like a webpage, I don't know what you'd call it, like a, a string of instructions next to the part. And it said, put this bolt here, it was like showing me where to do it. And it was like, press here to be done. So I placed the bolt, screwed it in, and I like just pushed a button in the air. And so the Azure Connect can also see your hands with some level fidelity.

• 48:38Nilay Patel?

  So you're not doing gestures, you're just like pointing and clicking in, in space.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  And this is all for like training purposes?

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  These are the demos they're showing.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:45Nilay Patel?

  And then the other thing it can do is because it's eye tracking, it can scroll with your eyes. So they're showing me demos where they're putting up pages of text. And I was just reading the text that was, you know, in AR. And as I got to the bottom of that page, it just automatically scrolled up. Which was super.

• 49:02Speaker 06

  Wait, that actually worked?

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  It actually worked. It was like their, probably their single best demo was like, you walk into a room, there's like a, there's a thing to read and you're just like reading it and just like moving in space as you read it.

• 49:13Speaker 06

  I mean, that, that, the first demo, it sounds, I know it's so far from actually being a real consumer thing, but imagine you wake up and then you put on this headset.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Well, it's not supposed to be a consumer thing.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  Right. That's what, oh, did I, I misspoke. Yeah, I'm saying, I, I know that they're not talking about consumer stuff right now because they're sorry that they promised Minecraft and they don't have Minecraft. But, but, but imagine waking up and then you put on your Hololens 4 and then you have like, basically, your whole day is just like quest givers, like, you know, like you just go to, and then you just, like, I, I don't feel motivated today. I don't feel like doing any thought. I just want step by step instructions from this display to tell me how to live my life.

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  Right. And then imagine the government owns that display and you are nothing but a worker like autonomous, autonomous, moving through the, moving through the motions of your.

• 50:04Speaker 06

  And the rich, the rich live in a space station orbiting the planet.

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's not Alicia.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  I wonder if in that demo where it tells you how to like walk to the side of the room to get your materials, like, does that factor in if there's another person in the room that's like maybe headed to the same place? Because theoretically, you're both wearing the glasses. What if you just.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  Again, as we, as we program our, our future ultra-capitalistic society, worker collisions in AR will have to be addressed. No, I mean, like this, it was very obviously a demo. Like my questions were like, okay, does this mean like every Kawasaki dealership in the world will have to be set up exactly the same way? So you can like roll the, these changes out, right? Like the screws will have to be in the same place. So you can like write this program.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  And their whole thing is like, we, we don't know, basically. They have like. This other whole program where they're trying to do world scale AR positioning. So that you can map a room and then an AR kit app on the iPhone or an AR core app on Android will be able to like access those beacons and those points of reference. So Microsoft is in full on nap the world mode. They like, kind of don't know how it's all going to play out. And then they also, I think this is probably the most direct. It's like great to talk to a tech executive who's just like super honest. So Kitman was like very honest. He's like, this product is not comfortable enough, is not flexible enough. It doesn't provide you any value out of the box. Like, like a consumer product, you take it out of the box, you turn it on and like you expect, I don't know, like Bixby to show up and be like, I'm going to help you out, right?

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Like, it like does stuff. This thing doesn't do anything.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  I mean, all they have to do is get IKEA to make a how to build your furniture.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but you're not going to spend like $3,000 to do that app.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Would you?

• 51:50Speaker 04

  IKEA furniture is not that hard to build. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on the record here.

• 51:55Nilay Patel?

  My, my point here is like Kitman is very honest that he knows on what metrics this thing fails, right? As a consumer product, it is not good enough. You spend too much money and get too much, too little utility out of it. But as an enterprise product, he's like, this is the thing where a bunch of construction workers can wear it all day and they're going to like get wiring diagrams like in real time as they build a building. A bunch of like high end mechanics can roll out changes to modern cars that are very complicated and those service centers will have to do less trade. Instead of every Audi mechanic in the world having to fly to Audi training headquarters, they can distribute this stuff across haul ends in real time and they can do the training in real time on those cars.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  Those are the kinds of use cases they're looking at with haul ends instead of the consumer stuff. I think that stuff is really interesting. Where Dieter and I just like couldn't agree is, is this a change? Right. Was Hololens supposed to be, it was a developer kit. They kind of didn't know what it was for. They found some uses and they realized all the uses are in enterprise and none of the uses are in consumer.

• 53:00Speaker 06

  The original Hololens demo was in a house and you had like this like virtual Skype icon on the fridge. And you played Minecraft.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm. Now you repair an ATV. It's just like, which I don't know what's going on in your house. That is a dream of mine to have the ATV repair shop at my house. Uh, but yeah, they're totally focused on enterprise. And then they have this other Azure Connect sensor, which is a little box. Uh, and they're, you know, the picture of that is there's all kinds of reasons you want to do motion tracking in the world. For enterprise uses. Again, this is not like a Xbox Connect. It's an Azure Connect. So you buy this camera module. It connects to the Azure Cloud where your hospital is running some Microsoft Cloud service. And then their, their, their use case was you'll put these in hospital bedrooms and then it will tell you when someone.

• 53:50Speaker 06

  That's, that's a literal company. Somebody is making that product. It's fall, fall detection.

• 53:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And that, and, and fall detection is a really big deal because there's an aging population. It's a thing. But it just struck me is there's a lot of ways in a hospital to tell if somebody fell down. And the idea that you're going to install a bunch of custom hardware in a cloud computing service.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. It seems like this Hololens too also, like just seems like there's a lot of different learning curves. Like there's some gestures that are like.

• 54:17Nilay Patel?

  The gestures are mostly gone.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the old Hololens, you had to do these like weird flippy hand twisty gestures.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 54:25Nilay Patel?

  And you had like tap to click, like you were basically like doing like hand mime the whole time. This one is very much, the gestures are, you're mostly, you can, you can like just reach out and grab an object and like pull it and to scale it.

• 54:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  And like manipulate it. So gestures really come down to, they're pretty natural, but you have to, you have to acquaint yourself with what the sense, the, what the sensor can see, like the fidelity of the camera in front of you. And so it looks like you're being a little bit more careful. But really, the gesture is like you just like reach out and poke stuff. You just have to do it in a way that you think the camera will understand, which took five minutes to figure out. But they're not like, there's no gesture library. There's no like, the old HoloLens was very much like,

• 55:07Speaker 08

  Right.

• 55:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm doing this pinch, I'm doing this twist. This is just.

• 55:09Speaker 06

  The sensor is much more high fidelity than the old Kinect sensor.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  Yes, that's exactly right. So it's, it's super neat. It's just very, they've just targeted it enterprise. And the way they're talking about that is by saying, on these metrics, comfort, usability out of the box, price, all this stuff. It is not ready to be a consumer product. I think that implies that they will get there. But at the same time, Magic Leap is in this world. Apple's like, look at all the AR on our phone. Like, there is a consumer product revolution happening there. That stuff still isn't quite as good.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  I was about to say, is it happening there? Like, as you're talking about Kinect, this feels a lot like Kinect where Microsoft is like, this is a thing, like AR/VR is a thing that exists. We're going to build a version of it that is different and in theory better. But like, it feels like the first HoloLens was like catching the tail end of that like first wave of VR with Oculus and Vive. Like Kinect was catching the tail end of like the first wave of motion controls with like the Wii. And like, Microsoft then had all this cool technology and nowhere to put it. And it's like, okay, throw it at enterprise.

• 56:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, the idea that they're still calling it Kinect is like very cute to me.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  But that team is the Kinect team. Like, it's largely the same people.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  I mean, it's really cool. It's just like, the answer to, we have a cool piece of tech and it's not ready for people yet. Is maybe not always. Let's see if enterprise users can use it.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think the idea is that it's more, enterprise users buy a solution.

• 56:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  Where they don't buy a product. They buy a thing that like trains engineers. Or they buy a thing that, hospital, like you're gonna see the patients fell down. Like, they buy a solution to problems or they buy a solution that makes some existing work more efficient. They don't buy this like multi-use converged product that has to do a lot of things well. And so I think that's why they can do it, because they can tailor. The limitations of this to the enterprise. At the same time, it's like if AR is going to take off, it's gonna, it's gonna need a piece of hardware on your face, right? Like, that seems to be the case for now, until we get the microchips directly implanted into our brains. And what Microsoft, I think their lead in this, where they had the opportunity to actually lead, is the thing runs Windows holographic. It's a Windows computer.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna get a bunch of app developers building these enterprise things for it. They're gonna get this map of the world. Magic Leap is like, what weird version of Android is that? That's like, that's a real question over there. Apple obviously has iOS, and people are building AR kit apps on iOS, but they gotta actually build hardware and interface and all those paradigms. So Microsoft is at least putting this foundation in place. Whether or not it's any good, whether or not like a bunch of Kawasaki dealers are gonna put in their ATV repair shops. By the way, I don't know what the total market of ATV repair is. It just seems like if it can support like people wearing AR headsets, it must be very lucrative.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because it's not cheap. This thing is $3,500.

• 57:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Again, so, look, it's currently a very small ATV repair shop that I run, but we have big dreams.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  And you have some very skilled people that you really, really just want to train remotely.

• 58:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're so smart, they're really great at computers, can't find a screwdriver to save their lives.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  And I cannot tell them to do it, so I'm telling a $3,500 robot to tell them to do it.

• 58:16Nilay Patel?

  Can you put on this face computer and just figure it out? Yeah, I mean, like, those are demos, they are what they are. It's just, it's super neat, right? And the fact that they've solved Field of View, and they think they're years ahead on Field of View, is the thing. Right? Because that's what everyone is chasing, is Field of View. So, come out, hopefully people get to try it like a Microsoft store or something. But Dieter isn't here, and I get to play with it, so I want to talk about it. All right, we're gonna take another break, and then Paul and Heim, I think, something very special will happen on the show.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:00:04Speaker 06

  All right, we're back. Paul. Yeah. Every week, my friend. Yeah, well, not this week because I'm going to interrupt this week's regularly scheduled segment for an important announcement from the USB Implementers Forum. That's what the segment is called. Words are meaningless and nothing matters.

• 1:00:24Speaker 06

  All right. All right. All right. So when you make a new thing, it's like a sequel, right? So maybe you had nine before and now you have 10, or you had like three before and now you have four, you had 3.1 before and now you have 3.2 Gen 2, right? It's not, it's not like you, now that, now that you have USB 3.2, right? Yeah. It's not like. Which, to be clear, I did not know that we had. Okay, well, you do. Coming soon.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  So what you're saying is I got a free upgrade to USB 3.2?

• 1:00:58Speaker 06

  Yes, yes, that's the thing. Everything that used to be 3.1, now that USB 3.2 exists, everything that was USB 3.1 is now USB 3.2 Gen 2.

• 1:01:12Speaker 05

  It's free upgrade.

• 1:01:14Speaker 06

  Wait, what? Yes. Hi, tell them, tell them I'm lying.

• 1:01:19Speaker 05

  Okay. I wish, I wish, I wish I could tell them that you're lying.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  This is how USB implementer forum does its name. So they first released USB 3.0. Yes. So just to also like, basic point of clarification here. This does not refer to a type of technology. It refers to speed. So like, you could have a USB C port that's USB 3.0. You could have a USB A port that's USB 3.0. You can have, you know, micro USB that's USB 3.0. Like, it just refers to the specified speed that you need. Okay. Okay. So USB 3.0 comes out. I'm a little wavy on that one, but we're gonna keep going. Okay. USB, years later, like, two years later, USB 3.1 comes out. Okay.

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  But, so, USB 3.0 transfers speeded up to 5 gigabits per second. USB 3.1. 3 equals 5. Yeah. No, no, 3.0 equals 5. 3.0 equals 5. 3.1 offers speeds it up to 10 gigabits per second. 3.1 equals 10. Now, here's where, here's where things get screwy. Okay. So when 3.1 came out, because according to the USB Implementers Forum, the 3.1 spec absorbs all previous versions of the 3.0 spec into it. So. Wait, what? From a branding perspective, they are now USB 3.1 Gen 1, which was 3.0. Yeah! And USB 3.1 Gen 2, which is USB 3.1. I can't even handle it. Everyone got upgraded.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  And then, now, so now. Wait, wait. They announced 3.2 last year. Okay. Uh, and now, we're finally at the point where we're gonna start seeing hardware, hopefully later this year. So they had to come out the formal naming. So. Yeah. USB 3.2 is out. So the one that you would call USB 3.2, if you say, didn't work at the USB Implementers Forum. Yeah. Is now USB 3.2 Gen 2 times 2. Oh, Gen 2 times 2. So, I can, I can already, I can already hear you asking. Why, why is that not?

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Why is that not USB 3.2 Gen 3?

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  I'm not even paying on what happened here.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  I hear the unspoken shouts.

• 1:03:38Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so USB?

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  So here are the three now.

• 1:03:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  So USB 3.0, which was USB 3.1 Gen 1,

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  is now USB 3.2 Gen 1.

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  USB 3.1,

• 1:03:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  which was USB 3.1 Gen 2, is now USB 3.2 Gen 2. So it just bumps up. So Gen 1, Gen 2.

• 1:03:58Nilay Patel?

  Nail it.

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  One that was Gen 1 is still Gen 1, Gen 2 is still in 2.

• 1:04:01Nilay Patel?

  Dead ahead.

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  USB 3.2 is USB 3.2 Gen 2 times 2. Who are we listening to?

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  Is that listed as a 2X2?

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  So there's a reason now.

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  It would be just easier if they just put the damn speeds on them.

• 1:04:16Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, Jacob, please, please, by all means, continue.

• 1:04:19Speaker 04

  So the reason, and I can hear, I can hear readers, listeners screaming from podcasts.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  If this person driving in the car hasn't crashed their car because of the adjusters, they've just done it now.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Why is this not USB 3.2 Gen 3? Because it's the third one. And that is because it is not actually getting speeds of 20 gigabits per second, which is the maximum theoretical spec. But it's not doing that in a single lane of USB traffic. It is just doing it in a way where it's using two lanes of 10 gigabit per second traffic at once, which previous generations can't do.

• 1:04:50Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  So in theory, the total throughput is equivalent to 20, and it is an upgrade. But it's essentially, and this is where the name comes in, it's essentially two USB 3.2 Gen 2 lanes together. Hence the name.

• 1:05:04Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Two by two.

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  So I just want the universal serial bus.

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:08Nilay Patel?

  The latest version.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:10Nilay Patel?

  Is two buses in parallel.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  It's two bus lanes. They should just call it the.

• 1:05:17Nilay Patel?

  Parallel port. They should just call it a parallel port.

• 1:05:19Speaker 05

  5 gigabit, 10 gigabit, and 20 gigabit.

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  So they do have official marketing names. The 5 gigabit one is officially supposed to be called super speed USB. This 10 gigabit one, you are supposed to refer to as super speed USB 10 gigabit per second.

• 1:05:33Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  And the new one is supposed to be called super speed USB 20 gigabit per second.

• 1:05:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay. I just want to stop you there. If you're listening to this, you are the only class of people that might have ever done this. But I suspect I know what the answer is. If you have ever in your life referred to one of these ports as super speed USB, I want you to tweet at Future Paul.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  It's C. Gartenberg.

• 1:05:58Nilay Patel?

  C. Gartenberg and tweet at C. Gartenberg. I just want you to reveal yourself. I'm the person who regularly refers to it as super speed USB. I walk about my daily life saying, please provide me with a super speed USB cable for my super speed USB ports.

• 1:06:12Speaker 06

  You don't need like.

• 1:06:13Nilay Patel?

  I just want to know who you are.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  It's like when you get in the Uber.

• 1:06:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, we'll send a photographer out.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  You hop in the Uber and you're like, excuse me, sir.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  Can I please have your super speed USB 10 gigabyte?

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  Does this, does this dongle support my super speed?

• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm just saying, if just reveal yourself.

• 1:06:30Speaker 06

  You want to shame these people, but do these people, it's better than USB 3.2 gin two by two.

• 1:06:37Nilay Patel?

  No, if you are that person, I will, you reveal yourself immediately and we will shame you. If you're the person who's just like, you know what? I do live in a world of brands and it's important for me to just say things what they are. I'm, I'm going to say, I want to glorify you. Well, we'll come, we'll come by, we'll put you on the Instagram page. Hi, I'm going to take a photo of you.

• 1:06:56Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:06:57Nilay Patel?

  5,000 word profile, but you have to prove to us that you have lived your entire life saying super speed. I don't know how you'll provide such proof.

• 1:07:05Speaker 06

  Okay, okay.

• 1:07:06Nilay Patel?

  But you do it.

• 1:07:07Speaker 05

  Does anyone know, does anyone have a super speed USB logo tattoo?

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  That's how you prove your allegiance.

• 1:07:16Nilay Patel?

  You just made somebody get a bad tattoo.

• 1:07:19Speaker 06

  Just, just to wrap this up.

• 1:07:20Speaker 05

  Dan, if I have to write 5,000 words on this, I'm going to make you add.

• 1:07:26Nilay Patel?

  When. Here's my question.

• 1:07:27Speaker 06

  When there is another USB, right? When there's a new faster USB standard, what happens? Do, does, does gen one become USB 3.3 gen one?

• 1:07:40Nilay Patel?

  Probably.

• 1:07:42Nilay Patel?

  Is there like a king of USB? I Like who runs, who runs this? Mr. USB.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  The Innovators Forum, it's made up, it's, it's a consumer organization.

• 1:07:51Nilay Patel?

  So when you say forum, it's not like a, like a

• 1:07:53Speaker 04

  I don't think they

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  Web forum?

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Nilay Patel?

  It's not like a Reddit?

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:07:57Nilay Patel?

  Because I will tell you

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  I don't think there's like a grand council of USB that meets and has, you know, meetings to decide

• 1:08:02Nilay Patel?

  Because when you say the USB Implementers Forum, I literally think to myself, yes, this is how, if there was a subreddit, they would choose to name things. Right? Like if you just get a bunch of people typing in a room.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Nilay Patel?

  You end up with this.

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  Do they have meetings?

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  I assume.

• 1:08:18Nilay Patel?

  Can we go to a meeting?

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:08:18Speaker 06

  The president and chief operating officer of the USB Implementers Forum is named Jeff Ravencraft. Sorry to dox you, Jeff.

• 1:08:28Nilay Patel?

  It's not a dox, it's just his name and title.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:08:31Nilay Patel?

  He's a public figure.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  Also, I just Googled this logo and it looks like an MLB, like, logo.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, Jeff, he's got the logo. So he's gonna tweet it.

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  So I do have one or two notes that will make this worse.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh, good.

• 1:08:44Speaker 04

  So, the USB Implementers Forum also wants to caution manufacturers, first of all, that when they list USB 3.2 to specify how fast it goes, it's in the document that it's very important lest you confuse someone.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  Because that's clearly the priority.

• 1:09:02Speaker 04

  It also notes that there are other names which have been used in the past in various forms for referring to the super speed spec, like super speed plus, enhanced super speed, and super speed plus, but the plus is a plus sign and not written out. Those are separate ones that they've used. You don't use those anymore, don't use them on marketing things.

• 1:09:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Speaker 04

  You don't have that. You have super speed USB 10 gigabit per second. Now, what's actually gonna happen is every single PC manufacturer is just going to list all their ports are USB 3.2 ports now and no one is going to have any idea what spec they have.

• 1:09:38Nilay Patel?

  Aren't they all just gonna say they're USPC?

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  So here's the thing, USB C does not guarantee that you are any of these. You could have a 5 gigabit per second USB C port and that would be USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB C port. That goes at a slower speed.

• 1:09:54Nilay Patel?

  Can we just stop for a second? I'm in the middle of the person who knows the most about this stopped to look at his screen and make sure he was getting that right. Because it's so stupid.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Are you sure he didn't stop to just literally take a breath? Because how can you not?

• 1:10:07Nilay Patel?

  He's been yelling the whole time.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  You could on the same laptop have a USB C 3.2 Gen 1 port that has slower speeds and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port that has faster speeds.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  That frequently happens all the time. We review gaming laptops or Windows laptops that have more than just like the two ports Apple gives you. You have to know which port does which. Like I just reviewed, speaking of Huawei, I reviewed the MacBook 13 earlier this year. And one of the USB ports had charging and the other USB port had video out and they were both USB C ports. And like this confusion exists already and it's just gonna get worse.

• 1:10:40Speaker 04

  So those are also different specs?

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  It specifically says this is not USB C PD, this is not, those are also separate things. But like, and I love joking about this, but like they do actually do like genuine harm in the sense that you can do harm with a USB C naming. Type of like, this is misleading to consumers and it probably could be easily avoided if you just called them 3.0, 3.1, 3.2.

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, or if you use different connectors.

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Nilay Patel?

  That would be great. I like the, I feel like the connector thing and the speeds thing.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  Well, what's nice about the connectors at least is if you do, if you are, say you have something that has, I'm gonna try this. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.

• 1:11:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, that's pronounced super speed 20.

• 1:11:26Speaker 05

  Super speed 20.

• 1:11:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  If you have a super speed 20 port, it's backwards compatible with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 device.

• 1:11:33Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, that's super speed 5.

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  And vice versa, because they are the same port.

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  I got it.

• 1:11:36Nilay Patel?

  I'm in the matrix.

• 1:11:38Speaker 04

  Also, at a certain point, it starts to not matter, like USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. That speed is only, super speed 20 is only capable on a USB C port. Like the USB type A technology stack does not support it.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  Thunderbolt 3.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  Thunderbolt 3 is.

• 1:11:54Nilay Patel?

  Which also uses USB C connectors.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  Yes, it does.

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  That's one, that's why like connectors has to be divorced from all this, because specs are terrible and nothing makes sense.

• 1:12:03Nilay Patel?

  But that's why you had different connectors.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Nilay Patel?

  In the first place, we like, we simplified the wrong thing.

• 1:12:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Nilay Patel?

  It seems very obvious to me. We took the thing where you looked at it and you're like, I know how this works. And we're like, we'll make that more confusing, but make the types of things longer.

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  Counterpoint though, if you have more different types of connectors, you need dongles. You have more dongles.

• 1:12:27Nilay Patel?

  Or you just add the ports to the computer.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  Apparently.

• 1:12:30Nilay Patel?

  You see this computer here, this, this, this, this vintage 2015 MacBook Pro?

• 1:12:35Speaker 05

  Neil is slapping the hood of his MacBook Pro. You see this?

• 1:12:38Nilay Patel?

  I can do, I can plug, there's a modem port on this beast, my friend. I hate you all.

• 1:12:44Speaker 05

  This laptop's seen some stuff.

• 1:12:46Nilay Patel?

  Look, all I'm telling you is that I have an ancient AMD GPU and a fan that runs all the time, but I can plug anything into this. I think that's it. I hope, I hope so. We've come to the logical conclusion of the Vergecast, which is I'm talking about my 2015 MacBook Pro. The pinnacle of technology. Everything's gonna be great. Dieter will be back next week. We'll have all of you back soon. Paul, how are you feeling? Is that good?

• 1:13:12Speaker 06

  I feel great.

• 1:13:13Nilay Patel?

  I feel great too. It really did take three of you to replace one Dieter, but it was good. Come see us at South by Southwest that is happening very soon. We'll be there live. Casey, Ashley, Dieter and I will be doing a live panel. We're working on some other stuff too. We'll see if it plays out. So check that out if you can. Listen to all of Why Did You Push That Button? Listen to Pivot with Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher. Listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka. All that's available, wherever it is that you do podcasty things. You just type those things into your podcast app, they'll show up and listen to them. But then find us and give us five stars. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:13:46Speaker 05

  Paul.

• 1:13:48Nilay Patel?

  Promo code.

• 1:14:07Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:14:28Speaker 07

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 1:14:52Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:15:05Speaker 00

  This series is presented by EY. Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. Your work lives in scattered places, and it's not only your team searching for context. Your AI agents need it, too. Jira taps Atlassian's teamwork graph to bring that context together across Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more, and makes it easy to share with the agents you already use, like Claude, Purser, and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time hunting for context, less time asking, "Wait, what did we decide?" and more time actually shipping with Jira. Learn more at jira.com.

• 1:15:50Speaker 00

  That's J-I-R-A dot com.