Vertu, based in London, used to make luxury bling-phones covered in filigree and Swarovski crystals. The designs were tasteless, the technology was dated, and the company bled out in the smartphone era. But the brand ultimately re-emerged in Hong Kong, and has caught up to the times with a high-end folding handset.
Classic VERTU geometry returns in a foldable body — from the camera curve to the body lines, every proportion carries presence before the screen comes alive.
The Alphafold is priced at $6,880 (and you can run that number up with upgrades including gold and diamond trim) and has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. It's 5.4mm thick open and 11.8mm thick closed, and is good for 650,000 folds. The screen is 120Hz, there's three back-facing cameras, and it has everything else you want from a Vertu, including concierge service, the veblen handbag look, and a dated operating system. There's AI, too.
Vertu claims its Hermes Agent can take your request, break it into steps, coordinate the process with relevant services, and come back with actions the user needs to confirm. One example the company offers in its press release is if a user asks the agent to "arrange tomorrow's Geneva trip, sync the flight, hotel, transportation, and meeting summary with my team," and the Hermes Agent can handle it all, presumably after you provide it access to your emails and conversations. How well all of this will actually work remains to be seen.
Wired has serious reservations about the revived Vertu: its office is a "Get Your Own Business Address" place in Kowloon, is clearly rebadging commodity hardware, and "put hackles up about privacy and security." (compare to the Trump Phone). And it noted in its 2023 article that there is another Vertu claiming the brand identity.
