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B (3:32)

When things get hard, how do you talk to yourself?

A (3:35)

I'm Robin Arson, VP of fitness programming

B (3:38)

and head instructor at Peloton.

A (3:39)

And this week on my new podcast, Project Swagger, I'm sharing my strategies for

B (3:44)

how to build better self talk.

A (3:46)

It's time to work on befriending yourself. Follow Project Swagger wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Joining me now, the Verge's senior reviewer, Alison Johnson. Allison, where describe your physical location in Barcelona.

D (4:04)

Right now, I am in Barcelona in the FIRA Conference Center. I'm in a tiny little hut in the press lounge. And just for authenticity, I brought a ham sandwich.

A (4:18)

Okay, so you've been doing all the phone news for the last several days. You're at mwc. And I think so far the theme of MWC is a lot of companies trying new things on a phone to see what works. So I want to play a game with you that I have not prepared you for.

D (4:36)

Okay.

A (4:37)

Because I just, I want to get your gut reaction to some stuff here.

D (4:40)

Okay.

A (4:41)

Basically I have think of a spectrum from 1 to 5. One is like this is pure science project, silly concept. This will never see the light of day outside of a convention room center. And five is, this is coming to your phone for sure next year. Does that make sense? One to five?

E (5:02)

Yes.

A (5:02)

With me so far. Okay, I'm just gonna throw a bunch of things that are happening at MWC and in the phone world at you right now. And I want you to put them on this one to five scale for me. Does that sound good?

D (5:13)

All right, ready?

A (5:14)

All right, the first one, we just, we have to start with 6G. 6G is apparently we're doing 6G again. I can't, I can't figure out if it's everywhere at MWC or if it is just like being whispered about in back corridors. But what's. Where are we with 6G right now?

D (5:32)

6G is what, 5 was definitely happening, right? It's definitely happening, but with the disclaimer that it is at least five years out, they're working on the standard. I talk to a bunch of people to get them to explain what it is to me. There's satellites, there's AI, you know, all kinds of things. I don't know if it's. It's not quite as pervasive here as I was sort of prepared for. But there is a lot I feel like, of laying the groundwork where, you know, everybody is saying agentic AI, and we're an AI company now, we make AI phones. And I think that the messaging is going to start bleeding into this like 6G talk. So I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, honestly.

A (6:25)

So I was actually thinking about this, reading your piece that it seems like the whole argument for 6G is going to be that it makes AI things faster, which is like a slightly more sensible argument than the 5G argument, which is that it will make unknowable things faster. But I still, I confess, I do not find that particular argument for 6G to be super compelling.

D (6:51)

I know that's the one I have the most trouble with. There's like satellites, you know, your phone is always connected. It can switch from a tower to a satellite up in space. Great, that sounds good. I'm on board. We need AI compute inside of the cell towers, inside of base stations. Sure. I guess they're just lying around anyway. There is a lot of the. That's where it feels like the 5G kind of chicken and egg thing where they're like, well, we think there's going to be a lot more of this AI. We're going to need all this other uplink, and we're going to have to spread out the compute between the device and the network and the data center. But, yeah, it is one of those, like, that doesn't exist yet. And they're sort of like planning for a future where it does, slash getting us hyped up for it. So that's where. Yeah, not my favorite use case, I think.

A (7:50)

Wait, so where did you put it on the scale one to five? Did you give me a number?

D (7:53)

It's happening.

F (7:55)

Five.

A (7:56)

Okay. All right, I buy it. All right, next one on my list, modular phones. And before. Before you, before you laugh at me, I would like to just quickly point out a couple. Honor has a. Has a robot phone, which is basically a phone with a. With a little gimbal camera on top. I'm counting that as a modular phone. Even though it's baked in, it's. It's. It's a phone with an extra part is kind of what I'm. What I'm thinking about this as Vivo is launching a phone with an entire professional camera rig. You and I like to make fun of the people who are like, we shot this on iPhone, and then it's like the iPhone $35,000 of additional equipment attached to the iPhone. But that's modular. Ish. Lenovo is out here doing modular laptops. Like, there was, I think a techno concept of a modular phone that people got excited about is the one to five. Are modular phones happening? Is this finally the year David gets a modular phone?

D (8:52)

In my heart, I want it to be a 5. I love a modular phone. I want it to be real. I think it's maybe at a three right now. Like, the techno thing sounds so super cool. And the idea of, like, we have magnets in the back of our phones. Why don't we put some things on them and you can add things when you need them and you can take them off when you don't. Like, we do this with battery packs already. So I just saw the. The Honor robot phone. I can confirm that a robot phone exists, and it moves and works to some extent. And it's. It's kind of like the idea of a gimbal camera on your phone. Yeah, that's cool. And it tucks away when you don't need a gimbal camera. Love it. Um, yeah, I think there are Aspects of it I really love and seem really like, yeah, we should do this, bring back moto mods like yesterday. But then there are other aspects that seem kind of a little far fetched and I'm like, well, we'll see when that happens. So a three in the real world and a five in my heart.

A (10:07)

Yeah. My theory with this has always been that if Apple or Samsung, and probably only Apple or Samsung decided to do this, they could brute force enough of an ecosystem to start to pull this off. That if they were like, you know, now we have a camera module that you can build things for. I think those two companies and maybe, maybe Huawei in obviously other parts of the world. But there's a very small number of companies that I think could just do it and enough people would show up that it would be something no one sorry to Vevo Vivo is not that company. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's not happening, but I admire the effort. I really do. Okay, next one. I think three is right and honestly feels like slightly more optimistic than I was even hoping for. So I'll take a three. Next one on my list is Samsung's Pixel Flex, which is the technology inside of the privacy display. This tech, I think has been around for a minute, but is now shipping in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. And suddenly I'm starting to think maybe this is a thing we're going to start to see in lots of other phones because Samsung makes displays for lots of companies. What's one to five? Are we going to start to see the Pixel Flex everywhere?

D (11:20)

Ooh. Well, does exist. It's on the phone that I'm using. I'm carrying the S26 Ultra around here. So that's a five. Is it going to be everywhere? It's, I mean, it's been kind of universally like everybody sees the appeal, you know, you, it's all over the Samsung display booth and you know, there's people looking at how the notifications can be the only thing that you have obscured on the screen. I keep forgetting that I have it on, on the phone and I, I shove my phone in someone else's face. I'm like, look at this. And they're like, I don't see what you're showing me. I think it could catch on. I think, I think I give it like a four. It gets an extra point for existing right now.

A (12:15)

Sure does.

D (12:17)

And maybe an extra point for being like cool as hell. So I'm going with four.

A (12:23)

I guess it sounds like it works. That was going to Be. My next question is, does this thing kind of work as advertised? And I feel like I don't notice it's there, but no one else can see. My phone is kind of the ideal outcome for this technology.

E (12:34)

Yeah.

D (12:34)

And I wonder if it's maybe when I turn it on and I'm just using the phone normally, you notice a little shift right at first where the screen is maybe a little less contrasty or a little dimmer. I'm not, you know, TV guy. I'm really bad at judging these things. I can see a little shift at first and then I don't really notice it after that. The, the effect, like you could. There's a setting to like crank it up to like maximum privacy. And that really does kind of turn the phone into a black box. If you look at it from an angle without that, it's a little, you can still make out like a little bit what's on the screen. But it's, it's super hard from a glance. You know, like sometimes you're on the bus or something, you like glance at someone's phone in front of you and you can't, like you've seen everything on the screen. You can't help it. I think it cuts down on that. Like you're going to have to work to see it. It looks kind of gray. If you're all the way at an angle, it's black and you can't really see. But it does work. I'm using it and it's one of those things you don't know if it's been effective because I don't know if anybody was trying to read over my shoulder on the airplane and they were foiled by the phone. But it's been nice knowing that it's there as I travel.

E (14:01)

Yeah.

A (14:02)

I, again, I think the idea of it not being something you ever think about that just kind of does the job in the background is the absolute ideal outcome for this kind of feature. I think that's really exciting. Okay, next one on on my list. I wrote this down as non problematic foldable phones. You and I have been on this show many times talking about foldable phones and there's always a series of disclaimers about them. Right. They have durability issues. They weirdly have not gotten some of the best technology, particularly when it comes to cameras. There's just always like this phone is very expensive and comes with a bunch of very real trade offs. But it seems like you've seen a couple of devices over the last couple of days that are starting to solve those trade offs in a pretty real way. Are we inching towards a 5 on foldable phones you can wholeheartedly recommend?

D (14:47)

I think so. I think maybe it's never going to be a five. Maybe the best we can hope for is a four. I think they're always just going to be a little more expensive than your standard slab phone. You know, it does feel like all of the ingredients are there, but they're kind of in different devices. Like, you know, know Google and now Honor just launched One that has IP68 or theirs is even IP69. So you don't have to feel so worried about dust getting into the hinge. Motorola, it just revealed that they're going to put a silicon carbon battery in the Razer fold. So it's going to have huge battery capacity, like 6,000 milliamp hours. So that kind of takes care of like batteries. Not a, you know, in theory, not a problem. I don't see all these things existing in one device. You know, especially it's like you slim it down, it's super thin. We don't. There's maybe one phone that is super thin and durable and has a great battery. Not in the U.S. but yeah, I think the price is always going to be like a sticking point for some people. They're just going to be pricier, but I think they're gonna, it's gonna come to a four. Maybe that's what I'm hoping for.

A (16:08)

It does seem like in general the foldable phone available outside of the US is like a full generation ahead of the foldable phones available in the US as you walk around nwc, having used all of the foldable phones we can get in the US does that still seem true? Are you seeing stuff that remains just way ahead of anything that is available in like a Verizon store in the U.S. yeah, yeah.

D (16:32)

Just the abundance of them. I mean all of the Chinese OEMs will have one. They're on the booth and they're super thin. They've been through all the generations of foldables that we are at now and we sort of are like, well, you've got Google or Samsung and you can take your pick. I think that Motorola getting into it, you know, even if it doesn't end up being the foldable to end all foldables is can only be good from that standpoint of like we just desperately need some competition to maybe spur Samsung to throw something else in the next one, you know, Totally.

A (17:18)

So on that front, actually, let's, let's do it. Let's do a sub 1 to 5 here on the Razer Fold. Specifically because I read your piece about the Razer Fold and I read through the list of specs. IP48 and 49 fine fast chip, 50 megapixel camera, 50 watt wireless charging. Like this seems like it's pretty close to the thing. Like if you were gonna just other than the price, which is obviously outrageous because they all are. If you were to sort of write down a list of stuff you would want a foldable phone to have, this seems awfully close. How excited should I be getting about the Razer Fold right now?

D (17:54)

I think like medium excited. I really. The. The silicon carbon battery is the thing that is really catching my eye the most.

A (18:02)

Can you explain what that is? For people who don't know, it's a

D (18:05)

different kind of battery technology. That much higher capacity and it can be much thinner. And the. So you get those crazy numbers like 6,000, maybe even 7,000 milliamp hours differs from a traditional lithium ion. And the US manufacturers have been really hesitant about adopting it in like basically all the Chinese OEMs and OnePlus. You know, you can buy a OnePlus phone in the US that has one of these batteries. There are concerns around, like, do they last as long they. It tends to. There's more stress on them as they go through charging cycles and there's like a concern that they don't hold up in the long run. But I don't know. An iPhone 14 Pro, did the battery on that hold up? Like so many people have a phone from three or four years ago, they're like, dude, battery sucks now. So I don't know. This is the one that's going to be interesting to see if Motorola can kind of like open the floodgate. Obviously there's, you know, their parent company Lenovo, based in China, is maybe like the way that this kind of makes the technology come mainstream in the US but we'll see. I'm glad someone's doing it.

A (19:34)

Yeah, I'm fascinated by this one because it seems like if Motorola got all of these parts right and made a couple of correct technology bets, especially on the camera performance with the optical image stabilization and the battery in particular, this thing could be awesome. Or it could have a bunch of stuff that is too early and not quite right and it could end up just being a way too expensive, like beta test for a bunch of things that might actually work out in three years. And I'm just fascinated to see which one it turns out to be. But I'm still like, there is a world in which this is the best foldable phone on the market. And that just makes me very excited. All right, next one on my list. I have a couple more for you here. And actually you sort of alluded to this with the battery stuff. Everything's finally getting smaller is a thing that I've written down. We have some surprisingly thin tablets from Honor that are there. There's a really thin Xiaomi power bank. Suddenly everybody seems actually interested in the idea of not how do we, you know, make these things more powerful or add more specs or whatever, but they're like, how do we make these things smaller? There's like a, there's a smaller energy happening at MWC this year and I know there are going to be people who are excited about this. So like 1 to 5, how real is this?

D (20:55)

I'll give it a 4 because really, that's exciting. Apple did it. Yeah. I mean when you have the iPhone air, I was just.

A (21:04)

But the iPhone air is kind of a science project.

D (21:06)

Yeah, yeah. But I think that kind of gives everybody else permission to do the science project. And they're, you know, I was just over at the ZTE booth and you know, they've got their iPhone air clone, it has two cameras on the back, it manages to have a SIM tray. I don't know, it's like you sort of get the, the impetus out there of like we're doing fin things now and then maybe the next company that does finds a way to add more to it or like make it so you're not having as many sacrifices. I think this, the silicon carbon in an iPhone air or a Galaxy Edge is a very compelling, you know, you take one of the problems with those devices off the table if you can just figure out the battery and then from there you're not sacrificing so much. So I'm intrigued. I do think there is value in the phone that you carry every day all the time. Being a little lighter and a little thinner, it actually makes a difference. I just don't think right now the devices we have, the trade offs make sense, but they could.

A (22:22)

That seems right. Yeah. I've been doing this phone switching experiment trying to figure out what phone I want and I went from an iPhone 16 to a Pixel 10 Pro, which is like it's not the biggest phone in the world, but it is, it's a pretty heavy phone.

D (22:37)

Yeah.

A (22:37)

And I am shocked at the extent to which I noticed the difference holding the thing in my hand.

E (22:41)

All day.

A (22:42)

It's nuts. Like even the little tiniest bit of weight difference, it means something in terms of what it feels like to hold the thing in your hand for a long time.

D (22:49)

Yeah, exactly. You look at the numbers on a page, you're like, these are not that different. But in your hand in everyday use. Yeah. You feel it.

E (22:57)

Yeah.

A (22:57)

I made fun of you when you said that about the iPhone Air. And I think I'm kind of coming around to what you said.

D (23:02)

Good.

F (23:02)

Okay.

A (23:03)

I still stand by my making fun of you, even though you might have been right. All right, I have one more for you and then I'm going to let you go here. The last one I have is another thing that you and I have talked about that has seemed many times like its time was almost coming, but it never did. Which is the secondary E Ink display. This is a long time staple of phone concepts and the only one I've seen so far this year is again from this company, Techno, which did a very cool thing. I don't know if you've seen this one, the sort of color changing E Ink background on the techno phone.

D (23:33)

I saw a version of the E Ink back panel last year. I don't know, I give that one like a two. Like it's fun. Like hell yeah. Let's put E Ink in all the things I want. E Ink, ink, everything. But I don't know, I don't see it. Like they kind of struggle to even give you a reason why, like why, why does someone want this? What can it do? And they're sort of like, well, you know, it's cool. Which, I don't know, props for making something cool and trying it. But yeah.

A (24:12)

The reason I like the techno idea is because I think it is actually very practical in a, in a certain way that it lets you change the color of your phone. And it's not perfectly vibrant. It's not the equivalent of like actually repainting the metal on your phone, but it lets you express something different on your phone and I think people like that and I think that's important. I have been holding out hope for this in particular because I don't know if you've seen this tiny little. It's like the XTE Ink thing that is basically just like a little magsafe thing that you stick on the back of your phone and it gives you a little tiny E reader. All of my tech nerd friends think this is awesome. And then they buy one and they use it two times and never touch it again. But there is like, it's exactly what you said. There is something about it that you're like, yes, I want this. Give it to me. And then it's like, well, what do you want this for? And it's not.

D (24:59)

Yeah, clear. I don't know. It was a fun idea.

A (25:03)

I know. This to me is like, every time I see a flip phone, I'm like, give me e ink on. Phone on the outside, phone on the inside. This is. This is what I want. I think I'm the only one, but this is what I want.

D (25:13)

You might be, yeah.

A (25:16)

All right, so before I let you go back into the craziness of mwc, what else have you seen that's super exciting? Any other, like, booths you've walked past that kind of blew your mind?

D (25:27)

God, there's robots everywhere. It's CES again. I've seen the robots. There was a robot restaurant. It was not clear. It said, temporarily closed. The robots were not making any food, and it looked like they were serving food to each other. The robots don't need to eat food. I don't know. That wasn't the thing I'm excited about, but it has been the thing that has been, like, hit over my head at CES and years, like, robots are happening.

A (25:53)

Well, so this means if we're. If we're doing CES again, I would say this means a couple of things. This means that all anybody wants to talk about is AI, but in kind of directionless ways where everybody is doing AI, but then you ask what that means, and no one really knows. And it also means that the idea of gadgets that move, like, physically move, has also really intoxicated the mobile industry. Because, like, the thing that's fascinating to me is everybody at CES is desperately trying to invent the thing after the smartphone so that they can not have to just play smartphone games right now. But what you're saying is even all the smartphone companies are now like, you know what the next big thing is, is robots.

D (26:28)

Yeah. I mean, honor put. Put a robot, quote unquote, on the phone. They're, yeah. They're like, this is it. This is the next thing.

E (26:38)

Yeah.

A (26:40)

Have you seen anything at MWC that is like, yes, I do want a robot on my phone?

D (26:45)

No. I mean, the gimbal aspect is cool, but so much of that is possible in software. Like the S26 has that horizon lock feature where you can fully spin the phone 360 degrees and the picture does not move.

A (27:04)

Can I offer you a better answer?

D (27:06)

Sure.

A (27:06)

Tell me about the pet Phone.

D (27:08)

Oh, God. Okay, pet phone. Well, pet phone is a little tiny tracker device that sits on the collar of your pet, and it has a microphone and a speaker, and it connects to an app on your phone so you can have two way communication with your pet. And so, I mean, there's like, you know, cameras and things you have in your home that you could maybe like, talk to your dog on or something, but this is, like, on them all the time. And the. The wild thing is they say that your pet can call you if you train them to jump in the air three times in six seconds. So that rules out every cat, because cats are not learning tricks. Can you.

A (28:04)

Does rules out every happy dog who might just want to jump a lot.

D (28:08)

They just jump. What if a mailman comes and they're jumping around and they butt dial you? Like, this is. I. I have so many questions about how this works. There's a subscription, so you have to pay for your pet's phone bill, which I think is insane.

E (28:23)

Why?

D (28:24)

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

A (28:41)

Yeah, it's. It's somewhere at the end of every road in technology there is pet phone. Do you know what I mean?

D (28:49)

Yes. All roads lead to pet phone.

A (28:51)

I just love this because it would absolutely terrify my dog, who, like, mostly just wants to snooze under a blanket on the couch all day. And if I'm just, like, wandering around and I'm just like, frida, do you want any snacks? She would just lose her mind. Like, this is the worst. She would hate it.

D (29:08)

Yeah, yeah, it would actively terrify her.

A (29:12)

All right, Allison, you need to go back and look at more phones and don't get hit by any robots. That's my main task for you. We had some run ins with robots at ces, and I would like for MWC to be a less violent robot situation for all Verge staffers everywhere. We're going to take a break, and Allison, you're going to be back soon to talk more phones because spoiler alert as we're recording this, Apple just launched the iPhone 17e. So we're going to come back and talk about that another time. Allison, have fun in Barcelona. We'll see you soon.

D (29:41)

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

A (29:43)

We'll be right back.

B (29:46)

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C (31:29)

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A (32:40)

All right, we're back. The Verge's reporter, Jess Weatherbed is here. Hi, Jess.

D (32:44)

Hi.

A (32:45)

I have been wanting to do this with you for months, ever since Apple put out this crossbody strap for the iPhone to, I would say, a mix of rapturous and deeply confused reactions. And I want to talk about why both of those things existed. Because it turns out, as you've covered in bits and pieces since then, there is sort of an industry in these straps that to me, as somebody in the United States, basically does not exist. So I want to talk about this because I think this is like a big burgeoning gadget accessory that we should talk about. So let's just start at the very beginning here. Tell me, tell me what a. Are we calling them gadget straps? Is this the official title that we're going with?

F (33:28)

Yeah, it seems to be a bit of a coverall. So every time you, you look up, the strap like it covers everything from the lanyards, from the wrist straps to like the crossbody satchels. But everything generally just seems to have been gifted the word strap. So I think it's a general coverall.

A (33:40)

Okay, so tell me the thesis behind a gadget strap. What is this thing for multiple purposes?

F (33:47)

If we're talking about what it was originally for, it's because obviously the first kind of mobile phones, before they were truly mobile, were the massive things you had to carry over your shoulder, like a brick sized thing. We had a continuation of that when they started actually getting a little bit more portable, where everything had a wrist strap attached to it, like the kind of thing that you just attach to yourself. At that point, everything was so expensive, you really didn't want to drop this thing on the floor. So it's as much as a security thing. You don't want to get it stolen. It's a protective kind of accessory that you don't want it to fall out. It's a personal choice. Some people have been customizing these for, like decades now. It has so much utility for it. It really depends on which strap you're getting.

A (34:28)

So why a strap and not a bag? Like the. Obviously we've, we've done. Messenger bags exist, purses exist, fanny packs exist. One of the questions I wrote down is, didn't we already solve this problem with fanny packs, which you are free to answer or ignore. You'd like to, but why this particular instantiation of this thing, which is basically just something that goes around your neck or your wrist and just sort of loosely, openly holds your phone, like functionally, that is what these things are. Why is that the correct form here and not all these other things that are available?

F (35:04)

The explanation I can give you is we'll also kind of, well explain why they haven't really taken off in America as much as they have in Asia and Europe. And that's just because we use our phones for everything. Now, if it's not in front of me, it's like, yeah, it might be at the back of my mind, but I am using it to check concert tickets, to get map directions up. I might be googling something while I'm walking around. And if you live in an inherently walkable kind of society, like I do in Britain, everything is like, if I leave the house, I don't necessarily want a massive bag with me. That's going to be rattling around with pretty much nonsense in there. I can pay for things on my phone. I can, I can open doors on my phone if I really wanted to. Like, this is my entire life now, just the size of a block. I think the biggest driver behind this is also, I hate to always pull the card out, but inherently sexism, right, because pockets just don't exist on women's clothing. Or if they do, they suck. You can't fit a phone in there.

A (36:03)

The last question I wrote down in my notes preparing for this is in all caps and it just says, jess, why can't we just give women pockets?

F (36:10)

Women had pockets, generous, huge, bountiful pockets right up until about the 50s. But that's only because they were literally tying them to their clothing. So you would have to. They weren't really built into clothes. You had to kind of like strap them around yourself. When it got to the point where form fitting dresses were invented, some fashion designers in Milan or something, I don't know, all men, not to, you know, call it out there, but all men decided that pockets ruined silhouettes. And we are kind of back into that stage now. A lot of clothing trends particularly that we're seeing kind of like female fashion is very structured, it's very form fitting. And yeah, I don't want a massive brick hanging out the side of my dress or my pants or whatever it is I'm going to be wearing. So I do kind of agree it does ruin the look of something. It's also uncomfortable, right, These, when phones kind of shrunk down to the size where they were petite, little cute things then. Yeah, Absolutely. I'd carry that around in my pocket. But now that I love an iPhone, max, I like the big phones. I like having a big screen again. I live on this thing. It's in front of my face 24 7. So I need a great big display in there. But that does mean I can't cram that into anything. And if I do find a pair of jeans or something that I can actually put my phone into, it's uncomfortable to walk in. I certainly can't ride a bike because that thing's just gonna fall out. Like, it's just not practical.

A (37:27)

So the strap then is kind of designed to be this, this like, hard to find middle ground of almost as convenient as just holding your phone in your hand all the time. But you don't have to be holding it in your hand all the time. And. Right. I'm sort of the way you describe the way you, like, move around in the world. I'm sort of imagining, you know, you're. You're walking along and you pull it out to tap on the train to use your ticket, and then. And then you pull it out again to pay for something and then you pull it out again to text your friend. And it's like this constant battle of do I want to be digging into my purse every eight minutes all day, or do I just want this thing sort of hanging at my side that I can just sort of swing up wherever it needs to be? It's just a pure accessibility play without needing to hold your phone in your hand all day.

F (38:11)

I feel. So a lot of the explanations I've heard from all of my other friends have said that they just wanted something hands free. Right. Either that's because they're going to lose the thing. I've had a couple of friends who've had phone straps. The reason they bought one is because they keep leaving their phones in taxis on a night out. That's a good one. Yeah. If you go out for dancing or something and you go out clubbing, you don't want to bring a great big bag with you. I've seen mums discussing things that sometimes they just need to know where their phone is all the time. And if they put it down and then they leave the room, they might forget the thing that converted me. I don't feel like this is specific to London. This will probably be the case in a lot of the big cities, which was where the walkable thing comes in. But I spent a day in London constantly digging my phone out of my coat pocket. It was raining I was having to dig everything out. I was needing it to scan myself into the tube to get on the train, and then five minutes later, I was needing it to buy a coffee, and then the next minute I was needing it to check my train tickets on the overground. I was just constantly digging it out. And I was like, if I could just have this around my neck or attached to my wrist or something where I know it's always going to be there. It's so much more practical. Some people do it for a security standpoint. I don't know how that stands up. I haven't tested having someone try to pretend to mug me, like, wench my phone away. But a lot of reasons that people do that is if they're traveling to big cities and they just don't want to have to worry about people slipping their hands in their bag or their pocket and getting it out.

A (39:34)

Yeah. The security angle is interesting to me because on the one hand, yes, it is now physically attached to your body in a way that is productive. Right. You see a lot of people who get their phones stolen just why they're holding them in their hand. Somebody walks by and just yoinks it out of your hand, or they grab it out of your bag or your coat pocket or whatever. That is a real risk. And having it tethered to you, even if it's not a perfect solution, is, I think, straightforwardly better. On the flip side, you're just showing everybody your phone all the time. Like, this is the thing that I'm so struck by every time I see one of these is a. I would be constantly worried about it banging up against everything and scratching and stuff. And there, there is some security that exists in my bag or my coat or my pocket that feels, even if it's not actually safer that way, it feels safer that way than it does just sort of hanging here for everybody to see. But then the. The flip side is, like, it is. I don't know, I'm just so torn between this idea of, like, having it accessible is useful, but I'm also just showing my phone to the world at all times. So is this what you see when you're out in the world? Like, you're just walking around and everybody's phone is just kind of hanging there on their right hip and this is just normal and.

F (40:42)

Okay, I see a lot less of it in London than I do. Like, I came back from Japan a couple of months ago and everyone there had some form of strap. Sometimes it was a lanyard around the neck Sometimes it was just they were walking around and it was attached, like around their wrist like a bracelet. That almost seemed more like a combination of utility but also just personalization. If we think like, I don't know, when I was at school, phone charms was a big thing because every mobile phone had that little thing where you could just cram as many little trinkets and stuff on there as possible. And that's still a big cultural aspect of a lot of areas where these straps are really, really popular. So sometimes they just want to match it with their outfit. It's a little mix of things. I think some people are just wanting to do it too, to accessorize. And other people are genuinely concerned about like security or having access to it, especially if they're in an unfamiliar location. Which is why we see a lot of these very popular recommendations for travels, like traveling blogs will always say, you need to get one of these. It's always in front of you. You always know where it is. You don't have to go digging.

A (41:42)

Totally. And the I left it in a taxi thing is probably much more real for many more people than somebody grabbed it out of my hand, you know, as an actual security risk. But I'm glad you mentioned Tokyo because I went back through all the comments on the pieces that you've written about these things and overwhelmingly the city people mention is Tokyo as the example of how this is used. And I find that really fascinating because I think the, the utility stuff you're describing and the accessorization stuff you're describing go hand in hand. Right. And I think Tokyo is, is a city I've not been. But from what I understand it is even more phone based than what you're describing about London. And so part of what I've been trying to figure out through all of this is why this is a thing in some places and not others. Like phone cases, universal accessory. Right. Anywhere you go, most people have a case on their phone. This, this is a much more sort of culturally different thing. And part of me wonders if it scales directly from how much of your day to day life involves tapping your phone on things like is. I, I kind of wonder if it's that simple.

F (42:46)

Like we know that a lot of the, like the strap culture for phones originated in Japan anyway. Like going again, going from the. Yeah, they have a whole thing. Kitai. I believe my pronunciation is terrible. I'm so sorry for anyone that is Japanese into listening to this. Kitai is the Japanese word for like mobile phone effectively. But it kind of became condensed into just meaning like the strap that you would attach to it. There was a whole thing where when phones, again going back to the 80s, massive thing, used to carry it on your shoulder. And then things shrunk, things were getting a little bit easier. Even when things were the size of like a cereal box, you still had a strap on the back of it. And as they continued to get smaller and smaller, Japan kind of like one of the, like the regions where if you bought a phone, right down to like the smaller Nokia ones, where we were actually getting to something that you could slip in your pocket, they all still came with a strap. It was just a whole thing where either for security purposes, they didn't like the idea of if you drop this thing, it might break and you've lost a lot of money. But there was also a lot of conversation. We can't definitively point to something and say this started it. This, this is where it all kicked off. But we know that Japan had a culture already of hanging trinkets because whereas in western kind of like cultures, particularly again Italy, the uk, we would tie pockets to our outfits, or if you were, if you were a chap, your coat would have pockets already in there. When we're talking about kimonos and robes and things, there weren't really any pockets built into that. So they would physically have to tie objects to themselves using bits of rope. And it came quite popular just to have little, little trinkets, little dolls, little customizations and things. And when phones became a thing, it was almost kind of a like the cooking pot was ready, right? It was a hey, you already a trinket kind of based culture in this. You're going to love this, you're going to love all the little doodads. And you can put your favorite comic character on there, or you can have a matching one with your bestie or your boyfriend or. And it just really took off like it was kind of like the perfect environment for it to be cultured in as much as part of the aesthetic side of it and the utility side of it, because it is the other side of this. Japan is very walkable. You will spend a lot of time just on your feet. There are very, very few reasons why you would have to get in a car. For example, you'll be on a train. That means that if you're out on your feet all day, you don't want to have to lug a heavy bag around or hold a phone all the time. So straps just became kind of like ubiquitous thing that spread to a Lot of other places in Asia you mentioned actually that kind of. You do a lot of stuff on your phone in Japan now, but actually we were always told before we went over there is that you have to bring cash because not a lot of places take car payments. Apparently that's changed within the last couple of years. But China had a huge push for mobile payments way, way before Japan did. So in places like China, Korea, Singapore, almost, the. The aspect of living on your phone is even bigger than it is in Japan and has been for a long time. So you just had all of these places where it was just primed to take off.

A (45:44)

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

F (46:25)

Yeah, a lot of it kind of. We've had a bit of a resurgence of it over here. I think now that kind of America and, like, parts of the UK are becoming aware of it, is because it has a very nostalgic charm in terms of it being like a vibe. Right. It's what people used to wear. And you see a lot of younger stars started to wear the beaded phone charms during the pandemic, where people were making them all at home. And because all of these pictures were all over Instagram, all in vogue, there were people wearing these phone straps to the met gala in 2022. It's this kind of thing. They just kind of kind of started leeching into the personal side of things because they looked cool before they became a utility. But then that became afterwards, because you would tailor it to what you need. Like my. One of the examples I go with for the Apple one, because I think that's what I. That's what I got everyone talking, why am I going to spend 60 on the strap? The magnetic design of it, because it's so flat and because it sits flush to your body. The first thing I thought of is, oh, my God, that's going to be so much easier to ride my bike because I'm constantly worried my phone's going to fall out my pocket. But every other strap is just like flopping around or smacking me in the back or something. You can actually tie that so it's really kind of flush to your chest. And then if you want to have it a little bit looser, you can loosen it up a bit. Just the practicality of that kind of thing. There was also a company, American based one actually that it tends to be known for this stuff called Bandolier. They were based in, they're based in California. You've had loads of celebrities rocking out. Zendaya Taylor Swift had one back in 2016 and that kind of like got that company known. But they're known for having not just the phone strap, it's got like a little pocket on the back. So you've got a phone strap and a wallet. You don't ever have to have a separate thing to carry your, your cards around. You can slap your keys on there. It's just looking at all of these different straps and going, what do, what do I actually need it for? Do I need it to look nice or do I need it to have a purpose? And no matter what you need, you can find one. There's a company that sells a strap that's made of a USB C charger. Like it's a two in one. Yeah, like that's a great idea. Satechi or something. It's like a corded rope. Like same kind of like roughly the same kind of design, not flat aspect of the Apple one, but literally they were like, you don't want to have to carry a charger around with you. So why don't we just have this thing hanging around your shoulder or your ne and you can charge your phone on it as well. There is so much utility and customization to all of it.

A (48:37)

Yeah, I love that. And one thing that really shocked me about Apple in particular was that Apple seems to have gone out of its way to show the crossbody strap on men. And I think I was looking up a bunch of this other stuff and it is. I'm on the Bandolier website right now, which I had not seen before. But it's like this just looks like a sort of fast fashion website, right? Like it is attractive women wearing attractive clothes wearing this thing. It looks like kind of every other fashion website you'd find anywhere. But we're starting to see a shift, right? You get a company like Peak Design, which you Covered fairly recently, which I think is a much less sort of specifically gendered company making kind of great accessories and products like this. Apple again went out of its way to show this thing on men. And so I guess what, I'm curious what you think and what you've seen around the world even is whether this goes like phone cases, which is a sort of universal accessory that everybody has with kind of infinite options about what you want it to look like, or if this ends up being kind of largely a product for frankly people who don't have pockets.

F (49:44)

I think it's always going to be a mix of the two. Guys historically just haven't had the same pocket dimension issues that the women have had. I think it's kind of taking a little while, particularly in the US where it doesn't occur to you that you might have to walk around unless you're living in New York or one of the other kind of big cities where you can be on your feet, walking around eight hours a day, going from place to place, constantly using your phone. You wouldn't think, why would I need to have this and have it accessible so quickly? You need to be in those environments, I think for it to click. And for guys who cycle a lot, they will see some of the benefits in this. Again, I'm constantly scared it's going to fall out of my pocket every time I go riding a bike. There's also part of me that wonders whether it's a midway point. Right. Because bags for men just generally carry bags beyond the usual boring, plain, very kind of like business standard satchel or rucksack or something with like, we're seeing a lot of guys actually wearing, for lack of a better word, handbags now or shoulder bags, strap bags or something. And they are, they're taking off, but they're nowhere near like kind of the, the, the impact that they've had on, on women and like, like outside of that perspective. So this might be kind of the, the law, as it were, kind of a. Hey, you, you'd really like, you, you need to carry something. Just, just try, just try. You don't need to commit to a bag. You know this. People can honestly almost miss this if they wanted to.

A (51:08)

Yeah. The thing I keep thinking about here that strikes me as both the best and worst case scenario is the belt clips that there, there is a generation of men and a generation of phones that were on were clipped to men's belts. And I would just like to say out loud to all men everywhere, we can't do that again. Don't know. That's. That was bad. That solved no problems. Like, the. The upside of these gadget straps is they actually. They provide some utility, right? It is. It is an easier version of access. It is that kind of security you're talking about.

F (51:44)

They.

A (51:44)

They can potentially look very cool. You can hold it while it's still in the thing. Belt clips just look bad and we shouldn't do them. And if that's controversial, I really look forward to getting in trouble on the Internet for this. But that does suggest on the plus side, that there is actually some appetite for. I would like this thing to be slightly more accessible. And maybe if we can figure out how to take gadget straps but make them fashion for men, there might actually be something here. All the utility stuff you're describing, I'm very compelled by. And I was thinking as you were talking, a thing that happens to me all the time is when I'm driving, I like. I will, like, throw the kids in the car. And we get in, and my phone is in my pocket, and it falls out of my pocket into that, like, liminal space between the seats where nothing ever comes back. And so the amount of time I have spent at stoplights, like, digging down, wouldn't it be great if I could just have my phone here and not think about that ever again? And I. Every time I get out of an Uber or a taxi, I have trained myself to open the door, get out, get all my stuff out, and then turn around and look down at the seat to make sure nothing has fallen out. And there is just a very basic amount of utility that would come into my life with one of these things. But then I'm like, I feel like I would look stupid wearing this. And so it's like, maybe I should be the change in the world, Jess. Maybe I need to get a crossbody strap and just wear it around everywhere.

F (53:09)

You could be so confident. I think, like, 90% of starting any of this confidence. But it's not. I would say it's not me you would have to convince, because I. I love hip clips. I was literally thinking about them the other day where I was like, can you, like, remember when everyone just used to walk around with, like, their Walkman and it was attached to their belt loop or something? But then I had to actually think about it. I was like, I don't actually remember anyone doing it. I remember seeing a lot of pictures in catalogs of people telling me to do that, but it never really happened, because if you jostled it around too Much everything would skip. But the new generation of Gen Z and everyone that's really into y2k at the minute are seeing all of these old pictures and they're going, oh, wow, that looks so cool. And they are gonna have to find out the hard way. And I feel that that is the next thing, right? We tried, like, if we're not gonna be able to strap or like crossbody or whatever. My mind went to how they tried to make the ipod shuffle really appealing by just building it on a clip. You want to just have it in front of you, have it nearby. I feel like that will be the next thing. People will want to start either clipping their phone or. We used to do it with Game Boys as well. Everything had a hip clip at one point. I swear we used to walk around the little Game Boy printer. There was a kid at my school that had a Game Boy printer. That was always, this is the thing, Right? Right. I think about it, I'm like, I don't think we thought he was cool at the time, but in hindsight, but

A (54:39)

he did and that's enough.

F (54:40)

You know what I mean?

A (54:41)

He knew he was cool. We just didn't know at the time.

E (54:43)

Yeah.

F (54:44)

And there's a generation of like nostalgic y2k hipsters now that are looking back at that going, wow, I wish, I wish that was me. Why don't we just do that? And it's going to happen. It's either that or we're going to start seeing like Batman utility belts everywhere. And I would rather a hip clip at that point because at least it's just one thing. You're not kind of cramming everything in there.

A (55:00)

Let's just do the straps, people. It's going to be okay. Okay, so here's my last question for you and I'm curious as you particularly as you think about this in your own life and how you use this stuff right now. It seems to me that either this is a very cool accessory ecosystem whose time has come. Right. Because the phone is still primary in our lives. We need it for more real world things than ever. Especially as we do more sort of camera based AR stuff. Having this kind of like anything you can do to shrink the distance between you and your phone being useful will work for people. So I'm very compelled by the idea of these things. I also wonder if they are a signal that actually the. What we need is like the next kind of gadget. Right. Because a lot of what you're describing is stuff that we were all supposed to be doing with our Apple watches and is the kind of thing people claim we're going to be doing with our AR glasses. And so like, do you look at, at gadget straps as like a, a sort of signal that we are ready to move on to the next thing or is this like just a. The next big accessory? Because we are going to keep using our phones for this purpose and we all need to get on board.

F (56:06)

I think contrastingly, I think this might actually be evidence that the promise of everything will be on our wrists or as some wearable glass and stuff. That the world just isn't ready for that yet or maybe ever. Because we've already established that people love having the little screen on a slab that they can take around. They can put it away if they don't need it anymore. And the only not convenient thing about that for a lot of people was the having access to it. And if a. I don't. You can go on Amazon, you can buy something for like $6, right. If you really want a strap and you don't want to spend those bandolier ones, start at like a hundred dollars so you don't have to get anything.

A (56:44)

They're fancy.

F (56:44)

They are very fancy.

A (56:45)

But you love that all this exists, right? Like this is the case ecosystem all over the. All over again. Right. You can buy the junkie thing for a couple of dollars on Amazon all the way up to like truly luxurious designer thousands of dollar things. And that should exist. I actually think it's really good news that that whole spectrum exists.

F (57:01)

Absolutely. Yeah. There's something for. And almost going back to the like, can we get men on board to kind of do this? A lot of guys in Asia, Japan as well, they were all wearing these straps. They were very, you know, utilitarian. They were very typically kind of masculine colors. You had a lot of navy khaki, like black. Not very accessorized and stuff. But they had the practical aspect of that. And I feel if we're already at the point where we're looking at smart glasses or like my Apple watch or something, I go, yeah, but that it's just not convenient. And this would be easier on my phone. I just wish I could like access my phone. In Teresa seconds. The constant having to take pictures, it was a game changer for vacation. Like just having it around my neck. And every time I was like, I need to translate this thing. Oh, my phone's here, I want to take a picture. Oh, my phone's here. I'm going to go swimming. But I don't have any pocket. Oh, my phone. Yeah, I can just swing around. But like, every, every part of it, I was like becoming kind of a convert more and more because, like, just drinking the sauce every time I was lifting it to my face going, oh, this is so cool. And at that point, I like, I can't think of why I would choose wearables specifically over something that I could just effectively make my phone a wearable that solves all of my problems. And I can do that for barely any money whatsoever. It makes everything better.

A (58:14)

And like, I think this in a funny way, this might be the accessory that unlocks a bunch of new things for people. And I think in the U.S. maybe we're gonna, we're just gonna start to see that happen. Okay, you've convinced me. But you have one more job to do here, which is, it seems to me there are basically three kinds, right? There's the crossbody one, there's the lanyard sort of necklacey one, and then there's just a wrist strap. Which one should I buy? I'm gonna buy whatever you tell me to buy, and I'm going to report back on how it goes and you have to tell me which one to get.

F (58:41)

Right now you need to get a crossbody. If you're just looking for a bit of everything, the wrist straps are any kind of useful. If you're literally like holding your phone all the time. And in London, when I'm slamming it to get into trains or whatever. Great. Those crossbody ones, you can extend the length. You can have it as tight or as like loose to your body as possible. You can hide it under your coat. If you're self conscious and you don't want to see the people like. And it's still. You just open your jacket and you can fish it out and it's super easy. So I feel like those are the standard line of. If you're going to consider one, get a crossbody. You can do so much. If you only want to loop it around your neck and you're going swimming or paddling or something, you can do that. It's still just a big loop. Just shove your neck through it rather than your neck and your shoulder. Easy peasy.

A (59:20)

Okay, I'm in. I'm gonna do it. I also just one other analog that makes me feel a lot of feelings that I was thinking about as you were talking is I was like, you're like, okay, how do we. How do you make this appealing to men? And I was like, oh, they're gonna make them that are just like big gold chains. And then I was like, oh, my God, we're doing wallet chains again. Yeah, just. We're doing wallet chains again.

E (59:37)

The.

F (59:38)

The little emo and pumpkin just doing wallet chains. Yeah, well, like the studded belts and everything is going to be fantastic.

A (59:45)

We're so back. I'm so excited about this.

F (59:47)

I'm so thrilled.

A (59:49)

All right, Jess, thank you. I know you did a bunch of research and stuff on where all this stuff came from, so I appreciate it. I think I'm gonna rate the apple one and I will report back on how it goes. Until then, we're gonna take a break. Jess, thank you. As always,

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A (62:26)

All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866-Verge-11. You can email vergecasthe verge.com I'm David. At theverge.com, we're not hard to find. Just send us all of your questions about everything. Joining me for this one, the Verge is Jay Peters.

E (62:39)

Hi, Jay. Hey, how's it going?

A (62:41)

I have brought you here for this because you. I don't know if you did this on purpose or not, but you have become the Verge's, like, unofficial what on earth is happening to the Metaverse correspondent. Was this a thing you did on purpose?

E (62:52)

Um, sort of. I think it's because I played a lot of Fortnite, and then I started reporting on stuff like Fortnite, and so here we are.

A (63:01)

Well, is Fortnite the Metaverse is a question that we do not have time for today.

E (63:04)

We can spend multiple episodes on that one.

A (63:06)

Yeah, but here, let me play the question we have today. And then I think it actually made touch on, is Fortnite the Metaverse? But let's play the question.

D (63:16)

Hello, my name's crosby, and I'm 14

A (63:20)

years old, and I was wondering, as the future of werewolves and VR technologies progress, Vision Pro in five years, Meta Quest, whatever, will we be seeing platforms

E (63:38)

such as Roblox and other similar online

A (63:43)

hangout areas be growing into areas where people actually live in? Like, Mark Zuckerberg promised the Metaverse a decade ago. Thank you. All right, I have a lot of thoughts on this, but, Jay, I'm curious your immediate reactions here.

E (63:58)

I think the answer is no. There's a couple reasons for that, purely from a hardware perspective. Like, I think VR headsets are still a really hard sell for a lot of people. Like, you have to put a face computer in front of your face. You have to make the display good enough to be compelling, interesting. You have to make the battery last longer than, like, two or three hours. And so, like, as a thing to live in for a long period of time, even in five years, I just. I Don't assume that that hardware is going to be ready or capable enough or whatever. And then from like these places, assume that's good enough, the digital places for people to hang out, they all want the people to hang out in their own place. So like Fortnite doesn't really want you to go to Roblox, Roblox doesn't want you to go to Fortnite. Meta doesn't want you to go from it's horizon worlds to other stuff. So there's just too many barriers and walls and, and just things that get in the way that I, I don't think a Metaverse style place is something we're all going to live in or like spend an exceedingly long amount of time in every single day.

A (65:05)

Can I tell you my theory about this? I've been thinking a lot about this since I first heard this question and I think it's possible that if you could, you know, Thanos, snap all Internet out of existence and we just like rebuild from scratch, that it is possible that the endpoint is something like this. I think there are reasons that these virtual worlds are interesting. Obviously platform dynamics being what they are on the Internet, things do tend to centralize like this over time and often we end up with one very large player in a new thing that kind of subsumes the whole ecosystem. But I think the problem is what you just described. It's that there already are huge scale versions of this thing that have absolutely no interest in interoperating with each other. And unless you interoperate, the user experience of this is going to be awful. Right? Like I'm in order to move from one place to another, I have to close an app, open a new one, log in and suddenly deal with an entirely new universe with different rules and expectations. Like that's an awful user experience. And so this thing only works if it is sort of one fully realized like ready player, one sized thought. And it doesn't work if not everybody's in it. It doesn't work if it's one platform that's actually lots of platforms. Like if, if you could just say to Meta Quest no other technology exists except this, you could maybe get to something at scale that's interesting. I also think this is a bad idea and it's good that it's not happening. And I think if you go back, like to me the metaverse is such a pandemic phenomenon where like in 2020 there was this idea that like, okay, no one is ever going to go outside again and we're all just going to be in virtual worlds. And what we need is more human ways to be in virtual worlds. And that's, I think, incorrect. What we need is actually something closer to AR glasses, right? Which is like, how do we put digitally useful information into the real world that is much clear, much more clearly what people want than this whole idea of like, blow up your life to sit on the couch and be in a virtual world. I think there is a time and place for that. And again, like, is Fortnite the Metaverse? There are things that Fortnite does that are those things. Right. And, and it is very compelling to lots of people. But that next turn I just don't see coming at all. Like, I, I, to me, society is just out on this idea at large and I don't know how it comes back.

E (67:43)

Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic, like you said, it was kind of a, an early test of like, oh, is this like actually a reality that we could maybe possibly do? As soon as it was easier to go outside because of the pandemic, because everybody got vaccinated or whatever, everybody realized, oh, I actually want to hang out with people in real life outside. Like, I don't want to spend my entire day on these virtual platforms. And I think that's why I think they're still more successful as gaming platforms, which is why Roblox and Fortnite are arguably like the biggest and most popular versions of these. Because they're things you maybe spend an hour or two of your friend of your time with, with your friends. You may be bouncing around from experience to experience dressed as, you know, somebody from Stranger Things or whatever, and then you go do something else because it's a video game and that's it.

D (68:29)

Right?

E (68:29)

Yeah.

A (68:30)

To me, the Meta Horizon Worlds example is really telling here. You wrote a story about this a couple of weeks ago. Meta doing a big pivot in how it thinks about Horizon Worlds. What do you make of this change that META made? They basically, they built a VR thing and then said, nevermind, this is not a VR thing, this is a mobile thing. And I have a hard time looking at that and not thinking this is like a complete 180 degree turn from what you thought you were building.

E (68:54)

Oh yeah, it 100% is because I think they realize that VR as a market has a ceiling and it's ultimately a low ceiling compared to what's possible with mobile. Horizon World started as this like VR first immersive metaverse type place. And then a couple years after they launched they also brought it to mobile and it's been kind of sitting in this weird in between of like make it for VR but also for mobile. And now meta is just so clearly like the way this platform moves forward is as a mobile platform, which is where Roblox has seen a ton of success. And more recently, now that like Fortnite's back on the iOS app store, Fortnite is also seeing a ton of success. So mobile is where it's at, but that's not a VR immersive experience. It's just another thing to play on your phone.

A (69:40)

Right? Okay, this is my one philosophical question that I will make you ask. Can mobile be the metaverse?

E (69:48)

I mean, I guess we have to decide what the metaverse actually represents.

A (69:52)

This is also, again, I, we could do that for hours. But I think to me it's like somewhere, if you allow the metaverse to be a spectrum right between I'm wearing a headset, that it takes up my entire field of view all the way down to like, I don't think you can have the metaverse on a smartwatch. But that's a fun debate if you want to talk about that. To me, it's just the idea of if I'm sitting here holding up a screen like this and 90% of my field of view is not my phone, this is now an AR device, not a VR device. And I think VR and the metaverse to me are the same thing. But maybe I'm wrong. Can you do this metaverse thing in the way that people are describing through mobile?

E (70:30)

I think the answer is yes enough. I mean, I think the sci fi ness of stuff like Snow Crash, where it's this or Ready Player One where it's, you know, ultra immersive. The VR side of it. No, we're learning that that's not what the giant scale metaverse is going to be, but something that's on your phone that you, you know, like you said, takes up most of what you can see it already. These kind of different worlds where you can play as different characters and jump from place to place to place to place with, you know, all with your friends in one group, all at the same time. Like, we have to define what a metaverse is. And since it's kind of a made up term anyway, taken from a book, like, who knows what it really means? And I think so I think the answer could be yes. I think just a more realistic way to think of these platforms still is just like these are just really giant gaming platforms that are trying to sell you digital items and that's where the money comes in. And that's ultimately what they are right now.

A (71:29)

Yeah. And I think that's fine and good, right? It is, it's. Let that, let that be what it is. And this actually brings me to my last question for you, which is again, if you go back to the early days of the pandemic 2020, 2021, there was this big theory about VR that it was going to be both its own thing, but also sort of a feature of ar. Right. I talked to a lot of people who were like, what this will actually be is sort of the lights off version of your AR glasses. You will be able to wear them and see the world through them or turn it off and be in a completely virtual space. And this is what we get with Passthrough on the Vision Pro and the Quest. And I think in theory, a lot of people were saying this is like in AR glasses, you might still want to be able to turn off the world around you and fully be somewhere else outside of gaming. Do you still buy that theory? It seems to me that we've just skipped past it and everybody agrees that actually AR is the feature of AR and this middle thing, except for playing video games, doesn't really exist. Is that how you see it too? Or do you think VR as a, as a feature of AR still works?

E (72:31)

I don't think it works. I mean, I've used the Vision Pro occasionally and like, it's a super impressive trick when you're in the immersive VR and you switch out of it and the pass through is like pretty good. On the Quest three, it's kind of good and it's a cool trick, but I don't want to like walk around my house wearing that stuff. I don't want to go outside wearing that stuff. Right. I think I remember right when the Vision Pro came out. Casey Neistat did that incredible video where he's just walking around New York City wearing the Vision Pro. And it's wild. It's a great video. It's not what anybody is ever going to do ever in real life. And so I think that's maybe why smart glasses have become so much more appealing. And realistically, when they become AR glasses, at some point in the next five years, I think people are just going to want, like you said, AR stuff overlaid over the world. They can see in the glasses, the regular looking glasses that they're wearing. They don't want to do the I'm in VR and Then transfer to AR type thing.

A (73:27)

Yeah, yeah. VR as video games continues to make sense to me. But compared to the way everybody talked about VR and still talks about the Metaverse, that is like, that is this big an idea. You know what I mean? And I think that's fine. And maybe we should just get there with VR headsets much more quickly. Like, just let the quest be a gaming system. It is a gaming system. We can all stop pretending anything else.

F (73:48)

I think.

E (73:48)

I mean, I think that's ultimately where Meta is going with all of its changes. They're like, we're largely stepping back from making a lot of the content for this. We're going to support third party developers who want to do so. We're going to continue to make really interesting and cool VR hardware, but that's kind of it. And instead they're betting on stuff like their smart glasses or AI. Mark Zuckerberg has a great vision of stuff you see in your feed might be AI generated. You can send a game that you make with a prompt to your friends. Is that the metaverse? I don't know. You know? Well, we still have to define what the metaverse actually is.

A (74:21)

Making me think of the meme with the guy with the butterfly, and he's just like, is this the metaverse?

E (74:25)

Is this the metaverse? That's exactly right. That's perfect. An absolutely perfect analogy for what this is.

A (74:31)

Well, I don't know that we've solved anything here, but I think we agree that. Are we all going to live in the Metaverse anytime soon, Crosby? Probably not. I think by the time you're 19, I do not think we will be living in the Metaverse. Uh, and I think that's probably for the best.

E (74:45)

I would say, or maybe fortunately, that we're not all living in the metaverse.

A (74:48)

Yeah, Yeah, I think it's. It's going to be good. All right, Crosby, I hope that helps. Jay, thanks as always.

E (74:52)

Yeah, thanks for having me.

A (74:54)

All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Jay and Jess and Allison for being here, and thank you, as always, for watching and listening. We have so much more to come this week. We're going to try and do this live show after the Apple event on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that. Lots of fun coming. It'll be in the feed if that's how you get your podcasts. But we're going to. We're trying new stuff. It's fun to try new things here on the Vergecast. We also have a lot more coming on the Paramount and Warner Brothers story, the Anthropic and OpenAI and Department of War Story. There's a lot of news happening and actually a lot of, I would argue, sort of big picture consequential things going on. So we're going to dig into all of it. For now. The best thing you can do to support all of this is to subscribe to the Verge to get ad free podcasts, including this one, and to support all of the journalism that the Verge is doing. It feels like a Verge y moment in the world right now, my friends. Subscribe, be part of it, come hang out with us, yell at us in the comments. It's what we live for. Until then, the Verge cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Keefer and Travis Larchuk. Neil and I will be back tomorrow, Wednesday and then on Friday to talk about just all of the news. Because all the news keeps happening. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.