Google Pixel Fold review, Microsoft vs FTC, and Congress’ child safety bills

41:04That's one very important necessary step. That Josh Hawley introduces a bill to allow you to sue for things. That man loves to sue. He loves to sue. So while that new big bad thing is happening, like I said, the states are still a little bit behind and they're still working on what that big tech company did that was bad. And right now we're in this part where the states have already put out so much legislation that has become law, basically childproofing the internet in many, many ways. And Congress is looking at that and being like, oh, crap, we need to do something now. And so there's a handful of bills that have been put out.

41:43And the wild thing is, yeah, when I look at this, it's like, this is the one thing tech-wise that I can imagine Congress doing this year. It sounds like a very admirable thing to protect children online. But when you do these things, and like we've seen with the state laws, they have a real impact and could, I should say, could have a real impact on civil rights for not just children, right, but for everyone on the internet. Got it. Okay. So big picture, like you said, there are a bunch of bills and I want to get into some of the specific ones, but do we agree on kind of big picture what the solutions are to this problem?

42:20Like you say, childproofing the internet, right? That's sort of a big, vague term that I think most people kind of agree on. Do we have a sense of what everybody actually wants to do, even sort of in broad strokes here? I think the best answer to that is just protect kids. What protect kids means is very different. So there are some laws, like the ones that have gone into effect in Texas and Louisiana, that is just strictly restricting a minor's access to the internet. You cannot create certain accounts with social media platforms without explicit permission from your parents. In some instances, that sounds great for lawmakers.

42:56But then you kind of peel back the layers of this and you look at, oh, my gosh, well, what if a child is in an abusive situation with their parents? What if a queer kid is looking for resources online? They can't sign up for these websites. They can't go into these forums. They can't receive these resources without basically outing themselves to their parents, which is oftentimes the last thing they want to do. And so that gets at the heart of the problem of these bills and what they end up doing. When we talk about what is the solution, it's a handful of different things that people have proposed.

43:31And there's a handful of issues. So the one thing is just like making sure kids aren't accessing really bad content and they can't see it. We've heard a lot about disordered eating content, basically, you know, pro-Anna stuff. Anyone who's on Tumblr in the 2010s has seen this, like pro-Anna content. and having social media platforms over-moderate that. And that, yeah, that might sound great at face. Like, I don't want to see pro-anna content. That can be triggering to a lot of people. But then it's like, oh, how does a tech platform actually moderate that? They might just be going ahead and removing all content related to eating disorders, stuff that has actually like resources, like we said, or people posting TikToks being like, this is how I overcame this eating disorder.

44:16And it could encourage platforms to over-moderate in a way that could be challenged as being unconstitutional and violating the First Amendment. Yeah. And then it does seem like we've been in this place for a long time where those are the tradeoffs. And that seems to be, at least from my perspective, what has held this up over and over and over again is it's like, OK, this stuff is, like you said, sort of admirable. And in the positive case, everybody kind of agrees this is what we should do. Right. We should have better controls for what kids see. Parents should have more. But then it's like there's just edge case after edge case after edge case after edge case.

44:50And it seems like that has bogged all of this down. But you've been talking to people about this new run of bills. You talked to Ed Markey, I know, and a couple of other folks, I think. And I'm guessing after, or at least I'm hoping after all of these other tries to do this, and we've been back and forth through all this, that maybe we have found some new strategies and nuances that we can figure out here. Like, walk me through kind of what you've heard from these folks this time around. So Senator Ed Markey is a senator from Massachusetts, and he was the original author of COPPA, the bill that we've been talking about that has been used, you know, hundreds of times.

45:27He, for the last couple of years, has been putting out something called COPPA 2.0. I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago about that and what that bill exactly does. COPPA 2.0, it says very specifically that companies must get consent before collecting data about users age 13 to 16, bans targeted ads to children and teens, which are inherently manipulative. And it actually creates an online eraser button so kids and parents can tell companies to delete the data they've collected about child users. It ultimately then creates a digital privacy bill of rights for children and teens in our country. Sounds great.

46:12It does. Compared to a lot of what's being proposed in Congress. And I think when you look at Markey's bill, it is one of the bills that makes fewer changes, that would do fewer things. When we look at other bills with the potential to be passed, there's the Kids Online Safety Act that was introduced. That's a bipartisan bill introduced by Senator Marsha Blackburn and Senator Richard Blumenthal. That does a wide variety of things. It touches on the moderation stuff that we talked about before, which the bill could encourage platforms to over-moderate content that the bill decides could be harmful for kids.

46:45Then there's another bill that Senator Brian Schatz put out called the Protecting Kids Online Act. And that starts something that has spooked a lot of people, which is like a nationwide pilot program on age verification. Ah, yes. So making accounts online, you would have to basically show your ID to show that you are above a certain age. And that has spooked a lot of people. What could go wrong? Right. Right. Basically just uploading your ID to platforms that who knows where that data could go. So that would be a pilot program. The marquee bill does not do age verification. It basically follows through on like a lot of what the initial COPPA does, which is if content is looks like it should be for a kid, you just, you know, abide by COPPA from that.

47:35It's more of like an assumption rather than a confirmation. And yeah, that spooked folks pretty bad because when we talk about protecting privacy, you don't want to make people offer up even more data to protect kids. You're then requiring even more data from people 25, 35, 45, you know, anybody on the internet. One thing Marky said in that clip you played is the age 16, which feels like I think I've seen this come up in a bunch of these discussions that 13 and actually I don't know if COPPA did this or not but there was at some point where 13 was sort of established as like the the age at which you were allowed to use the internet and I think we can have lots of interesting arguments over whether that is too young or too old or whatever but it seems like more recently and you've covered this a bunch there's been a push to make that age 16 instead of 13 is that marquee is that somebody else like what's going on here so the marquee bill moves it up to 16 I think what the Francis Taugen revelations about how Instagram and Facebook has inflicted, you know, actual real harm on kids.

48:41That's kind of had senators and lawmakers thinking about, oh my gosh, well, you have a ton of kids online with unfettered access to the internet, seeing things that could be really damaging. And what's changed since COPPA and what's been really pressing for lawmakers is that we're actually undergoing a nationwide mental health crisis for youth. We can debate like what is actually causing this, but the Surgeon General, for example, has put out social media as one of these reasons. And so that, you know, when we talk about a youth mental health crisis, that is everyone under the age of 18. And those kids, lawmakers need the same protections.

49:24Got it. Okay. Folks on the other side of this who have been, you know, the civil liberties groups and the internet freedom groups and the sort of free speech maximalists, what do they make of this new round of bills? I mean, it seems like Ed Markey, in particular, with COPPA 2.0 is trying to do kind of as little as possible in order to make some changes without sort of blowing up the whole thing, which I guess probably goes back to what you're talking about, about COPPA being kind of tested and proven and constitutional. And it's like, okay, how much can we change that without having to sort of reinvent the wheel and do this all over again.

49:55Is it possible to do that stuff without making this other side angry? Like, what do they make of this new round of things? Experts are really freaked out by this. Okay. For a wide variety of reasons. I spoke to India McKinney from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about these bills. And I got the answer that I think everyone has been thinking about this is we need a strong, comprehensive data privacy framework for everyone. A strong, comprehensive federal consumer data privacy bill that is consumer-driven, consumer-focused, that gives power to consumers, that will actually help everybody, including children.

50:38And it may sound like it's harder. Like, children's privacy sounds easier because who was going to argue with children's privacy? But as soon as you introduce this new additional component of determining who is a child, that ups the difficulty level. You don't have to do that. You could just go back to doing privacy for everyone and a rising tide lifts all boats. Okay, I have two thoughts on this, and I'm curious what you think. One, this makes me think we're still in this phase of it's just impossible to suit everybody. That if you say the sort of buzzwords like comprehensive privacy framework, everyone's like, oh, cool, good idea.

51:14And then as soon as you drill one level further down, it all falls apart because everything is tradeoffs and nobody agrees. It also makes me think that the one thing India gets wrong there is that the only bipartisan thing in Congress in tech for years, and I don't know if this is still true, I'm curious what you think, but you could say children need to be protected online and everyone in Congress would agree with you. There's like no other sentence in America that you can say that everyone in Congress agrees with, but on that one, everybody agreed. And it seems to me that's why there's been energy to do this, because it is an actually functional bipartisan thing.

51:48And it's small enough and narrow enough that you can maybe possibly do something about it. Whereas if you say privacy online for everybody, like that becomes the size of the universe and everything explodes. What do you think? Like, am I am I thinking about this the wrong way? Or is she kind of maybe not giving it as much credit as it needs? Yeah, when you talk to people, you know, who are digital rights advocates, they are they want to shoot for the moon. You know, they want what they see as the best solution. Now, if that solution is actually viable, that's, you know, that's the real question.

52:21Actually, when I was talking to Marky, I asked him specifically, I said, well, why COPPA 2.0? Why not a, you know, comprehensive data privacy framework? And he basically said that it's so much more difficult and he doesn't imagine it happening anytime soon. The better target for now is to, yes, worry about people who are 25, 35, 45, 55, etc., but know that the politics of getting that done are much more difficult, in my opinion, in this environment than protecting kids 16 and under, because that's always been a special category that has been singled out in the courts, in political life for special protections while young people's brains develop.

53:04So we want a comprehensive bill, but my position is the least that we can do this year is to protect teenagers and children from the pernicious strategies of the big tech companies. I think that's the same sentiment from a lot of Democrats as well, especially because President Biden, the White House, has made it a priority to do something on this front. In the past two State of the Union addresses, Biden has explicitly called for child protections. We must finally hold social media companies accountable for experimenting or doing running children for profit. There's time to pass bipartisan legislation.

53:44They see this as, like you were saying, something that Republicans and Democrats can get behind and as something they can maybe do before Biden's term is over. So given all that, what do you think is the most likely outcome this year? We're about to head into a campaign season. So I think like prognosticating basically anything after like six months from now, I think is sort of crazy. But like you said, there is real energy to do this right now. And there's a possibility of doing something this year. Do you think we're likely to see one of these bills pass? Are we likely to see sort of an amalgam of them come together?

54:16What's your sense? Right. When we see lawmakers introduce these bills, they are not going to be the same as they were introduced if they were to be voted on on the floor at any, you know, that's just what happens. A lot of bills being introduced is a senator putting out their position publicly in language that they can then edit and work with other people to get it done. When we see bills with a lot of energy behind them, Marquis is not being talked about as much, which is why I wanted to talk to him specifically. It's the Kids Online Safety Act, the one that has all these moderation requirements, that has a lot of people supporting it.

54:55It's bipartisan in nature. It looks fairly viable. But the funny thing about this is that Blackburn and Blumenthal have been having all of these press conferences with parents and kids who support this bill and support something being done. But at the same time, you have all of these civil liberties groups being like, this is too far. This could have drastic consequences for everyone on the internet. And over the last couple of months, COSA has been edited a bit to dampen down these concerns, to make certain language changes that would better protect everyone and kids. I imagine that is still ongoing.

55:33So when I look at the timeline for this year, we are currently in June. I don't know if listeners know, but Congress doesn't really follow the schoolhouse rock framework where things go through committee, they go to the floor, and everyone's so happy and they vote on it. That doesn't really happen anymore. Bills get attached to certain must-pass vehicles. So there's like a defense authorization that basically authorizes all the money that we give to the Defense Department and the military every year. People love to stick things on that because they have to pass that. Otherwise, the military doesn't get funded.

56:08And then there's also another option when it comes to appropriating money to make sure all federal employees get paid, that all the federal agencies get paid. And that's normally done in the fall. So I imagine that if they want to get this done and they want to get it done before the end of the year, the best solution would be to spend the next couple of working periods editing down COSA, maybe implementing some COPPA 2.0 language, whatever that happens to be, and then attaching it to some kind of appropriations bill in the fall. that gets included in, you know, all that stuff. And that's how it gets passed.

56:44The final language just won't be clear until it gets dropped in the fall. But I do imagine if they want to get this done, and if this is a priority for Biden, if this is something he wants to run on, it's a kitchen table issue. We have seen Biden focus on kitchen table issues. I'm sure listeners know the Ticketmaster stuff that happened about junk fees recently. Biden is looking at these issues that people see every day and they get pissed about every day. And they want that to be front of mind to Democratic voters and all voters, technically. So I see if this is a priority, it'll get done around that time frame.

57:20So the real question here is how do we get Taylor Swift really riled up about children's privacy online? Because that's how we get this done. Organize the Swifties. Oh, my goodness. They can do anything they want. You know, and that's kind of the funny thing, too, because Taylor Swift actually got Congress upset enough to do something about Ticketmaster, like talked about a bunch of legislation and basically asked the FTC or in the DOJ to investigate Ticketmaster for an antitrust case to break it up. There's a lot of action there after Taylor Swift said some stuff. I don't know who would be the major figure here.

57:55The only person coming to mind is, I'm imagining like Blippi getting really upset about this, perhaps. or Bluey. Maybe there's a Bluey episode where Bluey is like, kids need to be protected. I don't know. I haven't seen Bluey. I just know kids love it. That was a perfect Bluey impression. That's all. That's all I'll tell you. So, okay. So the last thing, and then I'll let you go here is I wonder how we're coming to think about this even like structurally. Cause I think part of the question is, is there a middle ground between these questions about, you know, encryption and free speech and privacy and protection, which feels like it's this, that's also the debate about privacy frameworks for everybody.

58:31It's a question of like, does one side or the other win or is there a middle ground? And then there's the question of like, who is responsible for this? And I think one of the things that's been interesting to me about this round of bills is that some are still out there saying the companies that run these platforms ought to be responsible and the way that we hold them responsible is by punishing them. And then there are other people out there saying, you know, we need an age verification system that works across the whole internet and that's its own thing. But that's different from saying, like YouTube's job is to fix this, right?

59:00Or the questions about the online eraser button. That's different from saying each individual platform has to just do it themselves. But that also introduces all other kinds of complexity. So like, are we still in this kind of spaghetti throwing phase of trying to figure out how all this works? Or are we going to land on sort of broader ideas about how to even go about making some of this legislation? Does that make sense? Yeah, I want to point out the ticket master thing again, because how did Biden move something? and have like this meeting at the White House with Ticketmaster, Live Nation, Airbnb and everyone celebrating this.

59:34Well, it wasn't actually a lot that they agreed to. They basically agreed they don't get rid of junk fees, but they agreed to show them up front. Nothing gets less expensive. You just aren't surprised by it later. So when we think about this, maybe the most practical and real scenario is that there's some kind of little change that happens, maybe something updating COPPA a little bit, maybe just moving the age. I don't know what it could be. That could be the end game here. And I love that you brought up enforcement of this. How do you enforce something like this? Because that gets at another really consequential issue to all of this legislation, frankly, because you look at a lot of these bills and the language of these bills.

1:00:16There's a Texas one, for example, that does some similar stuff like COSA, where there is additional moderation requirements and kids can't see certain content. Everyone agrees that, you know, CSAM, gone, should be eradicated from the internet. But in the law, there is language explicitly calling grooming bad content that needs to not be online. And we've seen with the culture wars over the last however long, grooming being used as an excuse to discriminate against queer people, essentially. And I could see interpretations of that. And the interpretation is really important here because the people who are enforcing this, it could be the FTC.

1:01:02It could be the DOJ. But most of these bills allow state attorney generals to enforce this. So imagine a red state like Texas getting a law that has something about grooming and going after Facebook, Instagram, whoever, for just having queer people on their platforms or maybe saying that kids cannot see this content. It just gets into all of these conversations when we look at like drag queen story hours, all of this stuff. Those culture war elements that we see played out, book banning, all of this. This is a way to bring all of that to the Internet. And for it to be enforced by red states. And that's what spooked people a lot.

1:01:44All right. Well, Congress is back in session. This is all moving really fast. I suspect we're going to have more to talk about on this front very soon. But for now, we need to take a break. And then we are going to get into the Google Pixel Fold review and finally decide once and for all whether flippable or foldable phones or neither or both or whatever are the future. We'll be right back.

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1:04:36Welcome back. We've had two reviews on TheVerge.com the last couple of weeks that I think are a really big deal. The Motorola Razr Plus and the Google Pixel Fold. The Razr Plus is a flip phone and the Pixel Fold is a foldable phone. And both have a chance to give us a new glimpse into the future of phones. Plus, we're likely to see new flippables and foldables from Samsung this summer. So we've got to figure out what's really the future here. What do we want from these devices? What are they supposed to be? How do they change the way that we think about our phones? The Verges, Alison Johnson and Dan Seifert, have been using these phones for a while now.

1:05:11So I brought them both in and we're going to get into all of it. Allison, hello. Hello. Dan, hello. Hello. So we have a lot of things to talk about. I want to talk about the Pixel Fold first. And then I want to have a very long drawn out fight about flippable phones and foldable phones and which one is the future. So ready. Because I have feelings that I feel more deeply every day. And we're going to talk about them. This is when hot foldable summer gets real sweaty. That's exactly right. It's about to get real fiery up in here. Let's start with the Pixel Fold, because you both wrote stories about the Pixel Fold.

1:05:44You've been testing it for a while. This phone is a big deal. A lot of people have been talking about it. And I think I want to start with just like what it is like to figure out how to live life with a foldable phone. Because one of the things I got from both of the stories you guys have written and the stuff you've written about foldable phones over the last couple of years is that these are fundamentally sort of different kinds of devices. It's not like you like bought a phone with a bigger screen. Like you bought a different thing when you get a foldable device. So Allison, you go first. Dan is the foldable phone sicko here.

1:06:13So we'll leave him alone for a second. But tell me about like what it's like to live with and review a foldable phone as opposed to some of the other sort of more standard devices you spend most of your time with. Yeah. The way I keep thinking of like, and this is sort of falling apart with the thing Motorola just announced, but like a flip style phone, it feels like a foldable plus it's like a regular phone plus a smartwatch. The Galaxy Fold, the Pixel Fold, those are like a phone plus tablet. So that kind of dictates like what is enjoyable to do with it, what you get out of it. So really the Pixel Fold, it is a normal phone when you have it closed and it has that like lovely kind of normal phone shape as opposed to the remote control that is the Galaxy Fold.

1:07:00So that's where you do your quick texting notification stuff. And then you open it up. And in the case of the Pixel Fold, you have kind of like a landscape-oriented tablet out of the gate as opposed to the Galaxy Fold, which is more portrait-oriented. And that's where you multitask, you play a game, you watch a video, you set it up in the little laptop position and play Elmo so your kid will brush their teeth. All kinds of fun to be had. And this kind of gets at like the big sort of philosophical question. I feel like you're both reckoning within these stories, which is like, what are these things for?

1:07:39And I feel like, Dan, you kind of come at this from the point of view of like, I want to do as much stuff on this as I can. I have more screen, more stuff to do. Give me like a computer. I feel like you're the person who is like, I use the iPad as my primary computing device, right? And then, Allison, I feel like you come at this as like the iPad is like a thing for my kid to hold and a thing for watching movies. It's a bigger screen. And that's like it is sort of the tablet debate in a nutshell. And I feel like what a foldable phone should be is just like fundamentally the tablet debate again.

1:08:10And it feels like as we look at the Pixel Fold, which I think the sort of TLDR of your review, Allison, was basically like good first generation device missing some stuff. And I want to get into all the stuff that's missing. but it does still feel like it has a very different idea about what a foldable phone like is supposed to do than something like the Samsung devices. Yeah, I, Dan, I'm going to steal your line, but you mentioned that like the Samsung phone just feels like a little computer that you have in your pocket. You can do like an incredible number of things on it. And what I ended up doing with it was sitting on the couch.

1:08:43And when you're having that moment of like, oh, I need to put this expense report together. I need to get up and get my computer. You're like, no, I don't have to. I can run four apps on this thing and keep sitting here and do that. And the kind of person who wants to do that is a Samsung foldable person. The Pixel Fold is more like, I just found it more approachable. And it's sort of like a friendlier, more like guardrail device where you can only run two apps side by side and split screen. So that just kind of like cuts down what you're going to do with it, like productivity wise. But then there's there's really useful stuff like I'm looking at Google Maps and I'm opening up a restaurant website in Chrome and it's right next to it.

1:09:31I don't have to like tab around. It's good for stuff like that. But the gist of it that I kind of got is like, this is nice. I enjoy being able to do these things. I do not care to spend$1 ,800 on it and carry around like a very heavy phone for these moments. Whereas with the Galaxy Fold, it sort of felt like, wow, this is a lot. Like, I am getting a lot of value for$1 ,800. Yeah, Dan, I feel like the guardrails Allison is talking about sort of drove you slowly nuts over the course of testing this phone. Yeah, and I think Allison really hit it on the head with the price of the thing. The reason that I want to do so much or try to get so much out of a device like this is one, because it's always going to be on my person.

1:10:15But the other is because I'm paying$1 ,800 or if I'm getting more storage, like almost$2 ,000 for this phone, which is like a lot of money. So I want to be able to use it as much as possible. And for me, at least, if you're buying a folding phone like this that turns into a small tablet, the whole appeal is the big screen that fits in your pocket and all the things that you can do on that big screen. And I think it's like a lot of people are looking at the pixel fold and they say, oh, the outside screen is more usable because it's more normal looking. It looks right because it's like normal proportions and things like that.

1:10:48And yes, I agree to all of those things. It's easier to use the outside screen and it's like more normal looking. But then when you open the phone, and Allison kind of gets into this in her piece, the landscape orientation of the inside screen and the limitation with the software means that you can just do a whole lot less with the inside screen than you can on the Samsung. I think maybe an analogy that might make sense is the Pixel Fold feels like an iPad in terms of the guardrails that are sent around you. And like, obviously, Apple is like kind of changing this on its high end iPads. But if you buy a base model iPad, you're pretty limited with your multitasking abilities.

1:11:26You're limited with what you can do and things like that. It's a big screen for watching things like that's what the base iPad is. Yeah, it's a big screen for watching things. And the Pixel Fold is really great. A big screen for watching things. If you want to watch video on it, you want to play games on it. I think Allison pointed out both of those things as really excellent use cases. The Z Fold is like a PC in like every single way that can be. It means it's like super powerful. You can run four apps at the same time. You can be in your banking app and pop open a calculator on top of it and run calculations without ever leaving your banking app.

1:11:57And you can do all these things and you can split the screen multiple ways. And then you can save that setup. So you can always jump back to that setup quickly. And then you take out the S Pen and you could doodle things. And like that list goes on and on and on. You can literally plug it into an external screen and run a whole desktop environment off of it. Turn it into a PC. And I think Allison is like very correct in saying that like the approachability of that is way lower than the approachability of the Pixel phone where it's like, oh, I've got a thing that's twice the size of the screen that's on the outside.

1:12:25And now I can run two apps side by side and I can watch a video on this bigger screen. And so like introducing people to this concept, I think the Pixel Fold, to Allison's point, does a really good job of that. but it just like once you get there and once you figure it out it doesn't take long to be like oh i wanted to do something else or oh i could like make more use of this than it's letting me do and that's the same problem that like everyone's had with the ipad for forever is like i want to do more with this and the software's not letting me well and it's eighteen hundred dollars like not to just keep putting a fine point on this but like i would be very into the idea of like let's have sort of a sliding scale of power of these devices and like the ipad is actually a good example, right?

1:13:04You can get the souped up ultra bonkers, 12.9 inch iPad pro, and it will cost you $1 million. And you essentially know what you're getting, right? Like you, you get the iPad pro, you get the magic keyboard, you get the Apple pencil and it costs as much as a car and that, but like, you know what you're getting. And then on the flip side, you can spend$329 and get an iPad. And I feel like Samsung is doing the iPad pro thing and Google is doing the iPad base model thing, but Google forgot to make it cheaper. And I just feel like that to me is where the kind of value prop here falls apart is Google is like, here's less phone for the same money.

1:13:40And I have a hard time with that. Right. Yeah. And something else that just kind of bothers me is the durability is just a question mark. It's IPX8 rated. So it's like waterproof to like full water immersion, which is really good but it is a first gen product you know repairs you can't just waltz into any repair shop on the street not that that's a great idea anyway but yeah there's more of a process there's more cost involved i got i have a little tiny scratch on the screen protector inside my review unit and i was i didn't baby it but i didn't like put it you know next to my car keys with the screen unfolded.

1:14:22What does that look like after a year of using it? It's when you come back to like, keep coming back to$1 ,800, you're like, well, that doesn't seem great. Yeah. So the Pixel Fold, I would say on the, so like Samsung has had four tries at this, right? We think the next one is coming in August or in July or August, sometime this summer. Where on that history would you put the Pixel Fold? Because it seems to be clearly better than the first Galaxy Fold, which was a mess. Yeah. Hardware wise. Oh, totally. Is it like the Z Fold, the Fold 2, the Fold 3, the Fold 4? Like where would we put the Pixel Fold?

1:14:55I would put it at 2.5 or 3. Like there's like, it's a much better first generation start than Samsung had for very obvious reasons. It doesn't instantly break as soon as you start using it. It doesn't instantly break. You don't look at it wrong and it like, you know, the screen explodes. But Samsung fixed that pretty quickly. By the Z Fold 2, which was the next generation, the screen hinge was made much better. They started introducing some things to mitigate dust and water resistance and things like that. Google's already starting at that point. So they have the same, as Allison mentioned, the IPX8 rating as Samsung, which means you can get it wet.

1:15:31You can even submerge it, which is kind of fascinating for a phone that folds with moving parts and everything. And it has that level of water resistance. And the hinge is very smooth. It's strong enough to hold the phone open, like Allison mentioned, in like a laptop mode, if you want to prop it up to watch a video or something like that, which Samsung didn't have on its first generation things. So it's clear that Google has been paying attention to what Samsung is doing and learning from it. And that's great. Love to see it. There are areas, though, even in the hardware, I mean, we talked a lot about the software experience, but even in the hardware experience where Samsung is just kind of ahead just because it's had so many years to iterate on this idea.

1:16:09One of them is the screens. Samsung's screens are brighter. Like, they're just brighter. I don't know what else to put it. And it feels like the Google screens are a generation or two behind. Because if you look at Samsung's history, the Z Fold 3 to the Z Fold 4, the big change was they made the screens brighter. So it's like, oh, this feels like the Z Fold 3 screens. Is Google just buying parts from Samsung from a year ago? Is that basically what's happening here? I mean, it could be. The Pixel Fold's been in development for a long time. We've been reporting rumors on this for like two years.

1:16:38I mean, these things take forever. And so it could be that like the panels that they secured were at the Z Fold 3 generation level or whatever. Or maybe Samsung is just kind of like hoarding the good stuff for itself, which would not surprise anybody, right? The other thing, and Allison made quite a few points about this in her review, the Pixel Fold is heavier than the Z Fold. And on paper, it doesn't sound like a lot. It's 20 grams. But in use, you notice it. And you notice it every time you pick up the phone or put it in your pocket or put it in your bag or whatever. Older Z Fold phones were heavier.

1:17:09Samsung made them lighter over time. I believe the Z Fold 5 specs have now leaked, and it looks like it's going to be 10 grams lighter than the Z Fold 4. So, like, Samsung's been doing this, like, very small, iterative chipping away at these problems and making it a better overall experience that Google just hasn't been able to catch up with because it is its first generation. And I think Google will get there. And if they start off this far ahead, like, at two and a half generations or three generations in. And in a year or two, if they stick at it, they can very well keep up or surpass Samsung because Samsung has been moving very slow with the iteration on the full devices.

1:17:44So that's kind of where I'm placing it. It's a couple of generations behind where it is. It's still a very strong start. Okay. Alison, let's talk about the weight thing. Cause that was the thing in your review. I think of, of all of the imperfections of the pixel fold, that was the thing that bummed me out the most, because what you said was it was so heavy that you found yourself not wanting to use it in one hand. And so you end up sort of sitting down and opening the screen. And to me, the thing that has been compelling all along about the Pixel Fold is it has a usable outside screen, not like the TV remote, like the Fold is like we were talking about.

1:18:18But it almost sounds like you find yourself not wanting to use that much better outside screen just because of the actual physical size of the thing, which to me sort of kills the whole appeal. Was it as bad as it sounds? Yeah, I don't want to make too much of it. It's like, it'll bother people on different levels, I think. Maybe I'm more sensitive to a heavy phone. But, you know, I just found myself again and again, like you have it in one hand, sitting on the couch. And the way it just kind of weighs down on your pinky finger. I was like, I don't like this. I have to keep moving my hand. There's definitely that thing where you find yourself sort of stretching your hand every couple of minutes.

1:18:55You get the divot in between your knuckles. And you're like, is that a little divot there from using this phone too much? And it feels more balanced, like you're distributing the weight more when you open it up. So I ended up doing that more in instances where I didn't really need the big screen. Yeah, I think I would like a phone I could use more comfortably, you know, with the screen folded. And I feel like I'm asking for a lot. Like, I don't want to, you know, be like, oh, a phone that folds in half. It's too heavy. And like, this is an accomplishment and it's a wonderful device to use in a lot of ways.

1:19:33For me personally, for$1 ,800, I don't want to feel like my phone is too heavy when I'm using it for five or 10 minutes at a time. Well, I think this comes back to like, Dan, what you're talking about with this sort of philosophy of it all, right? Because I think the way you think about it would be that the goal is to kind of get to the inside screen as much as possible, because that's why you bought this thing. That's what it's for. Did the size of kind of holding the thing bother you in the same way? Or are you just like, whatever, just let me open up the thing. Who cares? It absolutely did.

1:20:04I think there's like a couple of factors with it. One, the weight, which I noticed right away. Two, just kind of like, if you look at the really nitty gritty design differences, the Pixel Fold folds flat closed, which is really awesome. There's no gap between the halves, which Samsung hasn't done yet. We expect the Z Fold 5 will based on the leaks so far. But for now, the Z Fold 4 has a little gap. It's also thicker when it's closed. The pixel fold is nice and thin when it's closed, but like the bottom bevel or edge of the pixel fold is not smooth and flat. And that kind of like hurts the comfort when you're holding it on your pinky and things like that.

1:20:38The weight is noticeably different. The other difference is the pixel fold has this like kind of noticeable bezel around the screen. So its footprint is larger, which means that it's more that you have to like deal with and wrangle in your hands, especially when it's open. That's That's mostly noticeable when it's open. And like we talked about landscape versus portrait orientation, you end up turning the pixel fold into portrait orientation a lot in order to get the best experience because Android apps don't expect you to be using a landscape screen. So when they open on the pixel fold, a lot of them will open with black bars on the side or they will stretch weirdly across the screen because it's like a landscape screen that it's trying to switch to.

1:21:16But if you rotate it 90 degrees, the app kind of knows what to do. It fills the screen vast majority of the time, and it just looks more normal. The layout makes more sense. It's a vertically scrolling app, which is like the vast majority of apps that we use today have that kind of vertical scrolling interaction. So portrait kind of makes sense for a lot of things. And when you turn the Pixel Fold to portrait, not only is that like annoying to do all day long, it's like a big platter that you're holding. Whereas the Z Fold is much more comfortable to hold in that orientation and much easier to hold in that orientation just because it's a little bit more compact.

1:21:46even though they both have the exact same size screen on the inside. So did you get to the point where you're using it, where you kind of, you hold the phone in one hand normally and it's like holding a phone. And then as you're opening it, you're like also kind of turning it 90 degrees in your hand. I do that all the time. It's just like the natural way of interacting with it now. Yeah. Like, I mean, I would like, basically I would open it. I would unlock it with the fingerprint scanner or whatever. I would open the app I want to use and then I would rotate the phone and hold it and then try and like prop it up on my finger.

1:22:13And like, that's how I used it the vast majority of the time. And then occasionally I'd want to split screen, like Allison mentioned, put maps next to a browser or whatever. Or if I was watching a video, I'd rotate it back to landscape. But the majority of my use case is in portrait orientation because that's what most apps are. Allison, does that match your use as you find yourself just sort of using it day to day? Is that what you're doing too? Well, I wasn't as smart. I didn't rotate it as much. But yeah, when I would open it up, I would find myself. You get the black bars on the other side of Instagram or whatever.

1:22:45it just made me want to open more apps just to put something there. Oh, interesting. So you end up just like side-by-siding apps just because that's what looks better. Yeah. I'm like, well, I've got this space. I might as well open something else. And then I'm sort of like scrolling two things at once. I don't know. I think my mindset is just sort of, I want to be like a little less engaged with my phone overall or like feel like I'm just more in control. and yeah just in that kind of scenario with the pixel fold i was like this is i do not need more phone here yeah that's very fair the last thing we should talk about before we get to flip versus fold and all of my strong feelings uh y 'all can leave for that part i'm just going to yell into the microphone for about 45 minutes but we should talk a little bit about android because i think my general stance on phones has always been that samsung goes about 250 too far with its stuff it just adds a lot of things you don't need and one of the reasons i have always defaulted to telling people to buy pixels is that Google's version of Android is just still the best one out there.

1:23:48That seems less true here. It seems like the Pixel Fold has some good ideas about larger screens and foldable devices. Android seems to have gotten a lot better. Google's own apps work better. But it seems like both of you are kind of of the opinion that all the crap Samsung has added is actually mostly a good thing and that actual Android has some catching up to do on how foldables work. Is that, Allison, is that your take? Yeah, it's, there's kind of a maximalist, like, ethos to the folding phone, and that vibes really well with Samsung, I think, and that's where it makes sense. Samsung never met a feature it doesn't want to ship.

1:24:27The full Samsung experience can only be had on a folding phone, and they're going to give you everything. It's the ultimate Samsung experience. Yeah, but is Google catching up there, do you you think? Because again, like we were talking about with the sort of slightly more guard-rally, less chaotic way, it does seem like there's a middle ground there that I believe in Google for. And it seems like at least with like the Maps and some of the other Google apps, it's pushing in a good direction. It just kind of needs, I guess, the rest of Android to catch up, which is the same story of a decade of larger screen devices.

1:24:58But is there, does it feel like progress now at least? It does. Yeah. And there's, there's a lot. Yeah. The work they put into optimizing a lot of the Google apps for the folding phone is really good. I mean, I, you know, I opened up Google Meet, which we all love, and you fold the phone and the content just kind of flows into the right place in your meeting. Like that is great. I think what they're approaching is a folding device that a lot of people can come to and pick up and just, and feel like welcome. and I think I'm going to really like that in a few generations when maybe it's less expensive and doesn't weigh as much as a brick.

1:25:42Yeah, that is very fair. Dan, you, even more than Allison, seem to appreciate the full Samsung. In this context, yes. And I don't appreciate experiencing the full Samsung all the time. And when I say the full Samsung, I mean you are running the three apps and then you put the pop up app up and then you pull out your like I don't recommend people do that and then Bixby shows up and is like do you want help with your phone it's good times yeah what I what I appreciate is the ability to do that if I so want it if I don't want to go the full Samsung maybe I want the half Samsung or like the three-quarter Samsung for whatever job I need to do and like the pixel just doesn't let you get there because they they put those guardrails in place that means that you can only do certain things like one thing that kind of blew my mind was like no pixel phone allows you to plug into an external display.

1:26:26You can't mirror the screen. You can't put your video on a bigger screen or whatever over a USB-C cable. Rumors are saying that like the Pixel 8 line will change that, but we're not there yet. So those are like kind of like small productivity things, but they all add up and like they make a difference when you're thinking of like, I could live with a Z Fold 4 as my only computer. I couldn't really get there with a Pixel Fold, at least for my needs and my desires. And again,$1 ,800, that is like a big ask. for something that like only does certain things and doesn't do everything I want to do with it.

1:26:59Yeah, I just I really I'm so I'm so much more hung up on the price with this device than most because just at this price, it is such a self-selecting thing for people who are going to want to do a lot more stuff with this device. Like no one is buying it to just like put it in a case and look at TikTok. Like if that's what you're buying this for, you're you're insane. Like don't buy that in this phone these people are going to want to do more stuff and i think google is trying to build a phone that seems like it's going to be way more compelling like you're saying allison like in three years at half the price whereas samsung i feel like might continue to be able to make an interesting case for a device that costs this much just because of all the stuff that it can do for you and i like i kind of hope they both stay on that path because they'll end up in really different really interesting places in foldables yeah i think like software wise the The Pixel Fold is the kind of phone I would recommend to a lot of people.

1:27:51Like my dad, you know, I think he would get a lot out of using all those apps on the big screen. But there's just no way in hell I'm going to tell him to buy an$1 ,800 phone. Right. So someday. All right. Let's switch gears just for a minute and talk flip phones. Because the other phone you just reviewed, Allison, is the Motorola Razr Plus, which is a phone I have been eagerly looking forward to your review of for a very long time. And it seems like it's great. It's like the perfect flip phone does not exist. yet, but we're getting much closer very quickly. The price is good. The phone is good.

1:28:24It seems like the Razer Plus is like, it's a good thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I was kind of waiting for it to betray me a little bit because everything did seem so promising, but yeah, it pretty much delivers. The really notable thing, of course, is the outer screen is that big 3.6 inch, like big, relatively speaking small but big it's just a full kind of phone on its own you can run any app you want like speaking of guardrails motorola is like go for it you have to tap on a little tiny text box that says like this app might not look great on this little tiny screen but you can do it it's just like you got to live with your choices there i always like to think that i call that the the Hey Idiot pop-up.

1:29:12Yeah. Where they can't say like, you're stupid and this is a bad idea. They're just like, this is stupid. Don't do this. Please don't. And Allison's just here being like, whatever. Yeah. I'm like, you don't tell me how to live my life, Motorola. But I think, and you said this with the foldable phone too, that one of the things that you like about this new kind of device is like control over your experience with devices. And to me, that's the whole appeal of flip phones, right? Is there is, there is something real about this idea that like, I can close my phone. And even on the smaller screen, you can sort of tap at a text message.

1:29:46I loved the screenshot that you had that it was the keyboard takes up the whole screen on the audio display, which is like a little bit ridiculous, but also kind of works. And it works just well enough that I'm going to like respond to my text message and then put my phone down and move on as opposed to just like swiping back to the home screen and then getting lost in Instagram for three and a half hours, but it does feel like I think running full apps on your outer screen is insane and no one should be allowed to do that and you should be thrown in prison for doing that. But the idea of having this sort of not quite phone, like you said, it's a smartwatch on the outside and a smartphone on the inside.

1:30:20That really works for me. Dan, I feel like you and I are probably very different on this given that you just spent the whole weekend with your phone plugged into an external monitor. How do you feel about flip phones as a concern? I think they're really cool. I don't know if they're the right device for me. If we're talking just like flip phones versus foldables or whatever, I kind of will lean towards the one that gives me the biggest screen possible in my pocket. But I think to Allison's point, the Razer is the first flip phone that's actually intrigued me. I think I reviewed one of the Z Flip models, one of the earlier generations.

1:30:52And that one really annoyed me because the outside screen was so useless. And then in order to do anything with the phone, you had to open it up. And it requires two hands to open it. And then it's just a S20 or S21 at the time once you open it. And then there's no novelty about that. Whereas the Razer, to Allison's point, you can do things on that outside screen and you can be more intentional with your actions on the phone and actually respond to the message or check the upcoming directions or skip a track on your music or whatever it is that you're doing really quickly without getting sucked into whatever distraction might be there if you're using the full-size screen.

1:31:29all the time. I end up picking my phone with a specific reason. Like I need to like add something to our shopping list or look up the price of something or whatever. And I pick it up and I get distracted by notification. And then like five minutes later, I'm like standing there, like not remembering what I wanted to do on my phone. I feel like that's less likely to happen if you have to be so intentional to open up the phone, but you can still, you know, have a useful device. That's like the level of a smartwatch in capability on the outside. And I think that the Razer is really interesting on that front.

1:31:59It's also like, it's about a thousand dollars, which is premium and expensive, but not$2 ,000. So it's much more approachable. I think it makes a lot of sense for a lot of people at that level, you know, to be, people already spend that much on most phones now. So it's not like a reach to, to get this like more intentional compact experience and actually still be useful and still be usable. Totally. Yeah. And I also, So Allison, I appreciate that you keep banging the drum in all of these reviews that the fact that you can put it down on a table, flip the screen up and either like look at something or use it as a camera.

1:32:34And this is true of foldables and flippables. But the thing where it's like halfway its own kickstand is awesome. And it sounds so stupid and so small, especially for devices that expensive. But it's great. And I love it. And I appreciate that you do too. I mean, I take a lot of pictures of my child, like all of us do. I also take a lot of pictures of your child. I mean, he's pretty cute. So no, you can prop it up like that and like, and you can stay engaged in what's going on. Like it's not, it's not going to work in every situation, but it's just nice to have the option. You're like, oh, I can, I don't have to be like glued to having my phone in front of me.

1:33:14I can set it here, play with stickers, whatever we're doing. Yeah. It's just nice. It does seem like the big holdup for both the flip phones and the foldable phones is durability, both in terms of like real sort of measurable things like the IP ratings and the scratchiness of the internal screens, but also just the sort of feeling that you get using them. And we're all used to carrying slabs of glass in our pocket, but there is something about these devices. They have the crease. You feel something using the hinges. Like, Allison, you talked about that last little push to kind of go from like 160 degrees to 180 degrees open and it feels bad.

1:33:51I wonder if it's just going to take a while both for us and for the technology to get to the point where I don't have to treat this thing like it is a very fragile object. Yeah. Yeah. Something that people are always asking me about when they see a foldable for the first time, like, oh, so you can open it with one hand? I'm like, no, no, no. That actually feels terrible. Like, I think it will take some adjustment, like just even in our mindset of like what we expect to be able to do with them and what they're actually capable, like up for right now. I think as a price comes down, that becomes easier to manage as well.

1:34:27I mean, again,$1 ,800 phone in six months, you don't want to have the hinge breaking or the screen breaking or whatever. I think that all of the companies can do a lot better with support, not only just like giving you places to go and options if your folding device breaks, but making them in a way that it is easier to repair them when the inevitable happens. because we've had Samsung's foldables for about four years now, but there were lots of reports in the early generations of the screens just randomly cracking or failing and things like that. You can look back to lots of user reports about those things.

1:35:04And I think Samsung has slowly been addressing those as the generations moved on, but that requires buying a new$1 ,800 phone every time. So it's like, it is how iteration works and improvement works, but we're not there where it's just like you can just carelessly, or not carelessly, but like not worry about it as much. It is something that you think about. Like when I go to the beach this summer, probably won't be bringing my foldable phone to read something on the beach because I'm terrified of getting a grain of sand in there still after four years. So like there's definitely lots of progress that needs to happen on that front, both in how durable the things are, how easy it is to get them fixed and how repairable the devices are in the long run.

1:35:42Yeah. And the thing that gives me hope on all of those fronts is that both the Pixel Fold and the Razer Plus represent like real competition in those spaces kind of for the first time. It's just been sort of Samsung off on its own island. There are a bunch of Chinese manufacturers doing really interesting work, but especially in the US, it's just basically been Samsung and nobody. And now it feels like there is at least a good alternative in both foldables and flippables. And I'm very excited about that fact. I am also just glad the Razr is back. Like I'm realizing as I talk about this, just saying the Razr like brings me joy as a person who grew up in the time the Razrs were the coolest like this just makes me happy the best part about the new razors david is that you can launch the old razer experience complete with the keypad and the apps and everything you can make it on the inside look like a 2003 razer yes oh okay well done i have to buy one now that i didn't know this this changes everything all right well we need to wrap this up but before we do there are three of us so we get to decide right now majority rules once and for all flippable phones foldable phones both will exist forever but only one gets to be the like default phone choice for everyone forever which one is it allison you go first flip dan i gotta go with foldable two to one flip phones win i love it i knew i was losing this one all right before we go let's get to the Vergecast hotline.

1:37:06And a reminder, the hotline number is 866-VERGE-11, or you can always email vergecast at theverge.com. Ask us all of your deepest, darkest, weirdest, best tech questions. We love them. Here's one from Rob. Hi, my name is Rob. Calling to see if you guys have some suggestions as to how to best play my PC games on my TV. I built a really great computer, but I find that sometimes I just want to sit back on the couch, relax, and play some video games on my TV. I'm hoping you guys have some suggestions on how to do that. Thanks. All right. True story. As soon as this one came in, Liam James, our producer, was like, oh, me, pick me, pick me.

1:37:50I have to do this one. So here we go. Liam, take it away, my friend. Hey, Rob. Thanks so much for this question and for calling in. Okay. So I just built a gaming PC. So you have perfect timing. I had to answer this very same question. And it turns out that the answer is the same no matter what your situation. Let's say your gaming PC is in your living room or across the room or in another room. A long HDMI cable is still going to be the best way to go. It is the most reliable, the lowest latency, and obviously those things are really important for gaming. It's the only thing that's going to not give you headaches.

1:38:24There are some wireless solutions out there. They're expensive, they're flaky, they're unreliable. I can't recommend them. As far as controlling your gaming PC, though, from the couch, you may have heard of Steam's big picture mode. But if you haven't, it's a great solution. If you're especially buying games in Steam, it just lets you navigate your library and pull up games and start them and move around without needing a mouse and a keyboard. Okay, hope that helps. Good stuff. All right, that is it for the VergeCast today. Thanks to everyone who came on the show. and thank you as always for listening.

1:38:56There's lots more from everything we talked about, especially the Microsoft and FTC trial. There's a ton going on. Keep up with our story stream at theverge.com. We'll put links to everything in the show notes, but you know, go to the website. It's a good website. I'm a fan. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or really just please, dear God, a way to fix my patio, you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. We want all your questions. It's so fun. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio.

1:39:28The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk more about Microsoft versus FTC. We're going to talk about what's going on at Reddit. We're going to talk about the Mac Pro. We're going to talk about all kinds of stuff. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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