{"id":698948,"date":"2026-05-28T08:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698948\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T08:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:24:09","slug":"vertu-is-back-with-a-folding-phone-powered-by-surprise-an-ai-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698948\/","title":{"rendered":"Vertu Is Back With a Folding Phone Powered by\u2014Surprise\u2014an AI Agent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vertu is a company known for making extraordinarily gaudy smartphones<\/a> with outdated technology, luxe materials, and eye-watering prices<\/a>. Now the brand is here to meet the AI moment<\/a> with its first-ever book-like folding phone<\/a>, complete with an AI agent<\/a> on board.<\/p>\n

The company announced the AlphaFold smartphone<\/a> on Thursday\u2014targeting business executives\u2014which comes outfitted with the Hermes Agent. This agent can purportedly handle schedules and tasks on a user’s behalf and \u201cconnect to enterprise systems.\u201d Agents are big in the smartphone world right now, with companies like Google and Samsung offering ways for Gemini on Android smartphones<\/a> to perform tasks such as booking an Uber or ordering DoorDash<\/a>. Vertu is cashing in on that trend.<\/p>\n

But the company has a checkered past. Originally, Vertu was a Nokia subsidiary that made handcrafted luxury Nokia phones<\/a> (in the UK!) in the early 2000s. Each phone came with access to a live concierge service. The company faced headwinds with the smartphone revolution and fell behind the times. Vertu then changed hands over several years, with various acquisitions, eventually shuttering its UK factory and laying off staff.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Vertu<\/p>\n

In the last few years, the company has been churning out luxury Android smartphones again\u2014it debuted a folding flip phone last year that starts at $4,300<\/a> (with a calfskin backplate, naturally). In late 2025, it unveiled the Agent Q, which it calls the \u201cworld’s first AI agent phone for entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the company still claims a British heritage, its phones are no longer made in the UK, and according to its website<\/a>, its head office is in Hong Kong. Vertu spokesperson Viki You tells WIRED that the phones are \u201cstill handcrafted,\u201d but they’re assembled in China. \u201cWe have different factories,\u201d You says, noting that the company sources its high-end materials from other countries, like the full-grain calfskin from Italy.<\/p>\n

The AlphaFold has all the markings of a high-end Android smartphone. It’s powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset from 2025 and is 11.8 millimeters thick when folded, 5.4 mm when unfolded. Not quite as svelte as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7<\/a>, but not far off from competitors like the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold<\/a>. Vertu says the hinge and screen architecture were tested to withstand 650,000 folds, which is more than Samsung’s claim of 500,000 folds.<\/p>\n

Inside is a 6,500-mAh silicon-anode battery, an up-and-coming battery technology<\/a> that’s been making waves in Chinese smartphones and has only recently made its way into Western smartphones from the likes of Motorola<\/a>. There’s 65-watt fast charging, a 120-Hz screen refresh rate for the inner 8.05-inch screen, and a 6.53-inch outer screen. There’s a triple-camera system with a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide, and a 5-megapixel telephoto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vertu is a company known for making extraordinarily gaudy smartphones with outdated technology, luxe materials, and eye-watering prices.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1121,49,48,356,1189,190,10523,404,1124,61],"class_list":["post-698948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-android","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-luxury","tag-mobile","tag-phones","tag-shopping","tag-smartphones","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}