Samsung’s S25 Ultra and the end of the flagship phone

28:28Yeah. But they're out there. Like I saw one in a coffee shop this morning. It's just a person sitting there eating a bacon, egg, and cheese, and they had a flip phone on the table. And I was just like, let's go. I love that. They were almost certainly an Amazon employee because I was like at HQ2 at this coffee shop. So make of that what you will. But I think if it's going to be anything this year, there might be a folding phone that gets closer. uh that's i i have no particular reason to bet on that but it feels like that is pushing towards being the right size and shape faster than the foldable phones are and i say that the the pixel 9 pro fold stupid name kicks ass like it's a great phone there's so many good things about it but the problem with those is they're still 1800 and so i i wouldn't be shocked to see samsung come out and like try to knock that price down substantially.

29:25But also the fact that these phones now didn't go down substantially doesn't necessarily give me great faith that that's going to come. I know. And they've been so stagnant on the fold. It's like every year for the past three years has been like, well, it's like two millimeters wider. Right. They're just very slowly pulling at the edges of the thing. They're just stretching it a little bit. I don't know. That's the only thing that's making me pessimistic about the foldables, particularly Samsung's foldables. I haven't seen it. I don't know. Is there really like a fire there to go out and capture the market for it?

30:11Or are they just kind of like, I don't know, people aren't buying these things like we thought they would. it sure seems like it's that uh but i think there is a chicken and egg thing going on there um last question and then i'll let you go if there was going to be one phone company that shocks us this year does something no one would have expected who would you bet it's going to be i feel like wow i feel like the wild card is nothing that's what i was gonna say too yeah okay because they've been kind of like not on the radar for a minute i'm like what what they might they be doing? I feel like it's a company with like enough interesting ideas and enough kind of like they've established connections and supply chains.

30:55And I think maybe they're going to be in a place to like flex a little bit. I would be really interested. I don't have any specific idea of what that could be. It just sort of feels like, yeah, they could do something. Yeah, Carl Pei, Nothing's CEO, has always said that they did not exist to be a phone company. And it does seem like they're not a real competitor in this space yet next to Apple and Samsung, but like you said, they're established. That company has proven they can do the thing. And I kind of hope this is the year that they're like, okay, here are our actual ideas. yeah I'm with you I think if anybody's gonna do it in a way that is like cool and exciting I would bet on nothing I have high hopes on that one yeah alright Allison thank you as always there's gonna be so many more phones it's MWC soon are you going to MWC yeah yeah I am booked I'm ready for some jamón and phones that is the one and only thing I miss about MWC is the jamón it's a good good thing well we're gonna have to hang while you're in Barcelona but thank you as always it's great to see you All right.

32:03Thank you. All right. We've got to take a break and then we're going to come back and talk about China. We'll be right back.

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34:27All right, we're back. So one of the questions that has been swirling really in the last few weeks, but also over the last few years, is this question about how we should think about China's role on the Internet. As we've talked about the TikTok ban, we've talked kind of ad nauseum about this idea of the Chinese government being able to get our personal data from TikTok and do something with it. Then people left TikTok and went to RedNote, which is an app that is much more straightforwardly connected to China. There have been all these questions about DeepSeek's connection to China and how we should think about using an AI model from China or an AI model from a company from China.

35:08this question of what we should be thinking about china not like big macro politically but like as people on the internet is a thing that i have struggled with and would love to have somebody just talk me through so that's what we're gonna try and do in the next little while here i asked cooper quinton who's a senior staff technologist at the eff the electronic frontier foundation to come on and just walk me through how he thinks about all of this cooper does things like help activists think about security training. And he works with nonprofits and vulnerable populations, all thinking about how to operate online in a safe and productive and private and useful way.

35:51And he's also somebody who's been thinking about China specifically a lot for a long time. And he is just going to walk me through how we're supposed to think about all of this, how it should weigh on our decisions about what we use and what data we reveal and whether we want TikTok to be banned or sold or whatever. We're just going to try to make sense of it all. So let's just dive in. Cooper, welcome to the show. So I guess maybe the easiest place to start is like, let's just lay the land a little bit in terms of like, what are you thinking about and researching and talking to folks about right now as it pertains to China in particular, but also just kind of the internet more broadly?

36:27Like, what's your angle on this space right now? So for me, there's two topics that I'm interested in and that I think both come up when we're talking about this. One is surveillance capitalism and this sort of industry of data brokers and selling your data and like all of this industry that the internet has really been built on, right? And how your data flows and like whether you have control of it and what can be done with that, right? And there's some really interesting things in there like law enforcement buying access to that data so that they don't have to deal with pesky things like warrants, right?

37:09So that's all really interesting to me. The other thing that I've studied pretty extensively in my time at EFF is malware and spyware. Specifically, the types of spyware that are used to spy on activists, journalists, human rights defenders and, you know, people who are trying to exercise free expression and trying to, you know, improve their lives and fight against, you know, their governments or governments, you know, of countries which they used to be a part of oftentimes, right? Like oftentimes these are people who have left their countries for fear of repression and are still doing the work of, you know, fighting against corruption in the country that they left.

37:51And so in the conversations around TikTok and around Redbook and around DeepSeek, I see echoes of all of these topics. Interesting. What echoes are you seeing right now? To go back a little bit, right? I think that the reaction to TikTok going away and people starting to join Little Redbook is really funny. The fact that Red Note is actually technically called Little Red Book is one of my favorite discoveries of 2025. Enjoyed that to no end. It is the funniest and most direct beyond parody thing we could have possibly done in that moment. Should we break that down? Because I think it's really interesting.

38:35Sure, please. Little Red Book is Mao's Little Red Book. This was one of the main tracts of Maoism that was given out to people in revolutionary China. right? Like, this is, this is like the, you know, it'd be, it'd be like calling an American social network, the Federalist Papers or something like that, right? Like, it's so on the nose, right? Like, this is, you know, this, this is an application of the CCP, right? Like, absolutely, 100%. We're not, you know, we're not pretending otherwise, right? But the reaction to me was so funny. It's such a like, like a prototypical reaction of like a 13 year old, right?

39:17To like, well, you know, we're going to have to ban TikTok because we don't want your data going to China. And there's some serious privacy issues and national security issues here. And people's reaction was, oh, you don't want me to like China, huh? You don't want me to like China? guess what? I love China. I'm going to give China all my data. I am mailing a copy of my birth certificate to Xi Jinping right now. And I saw videos of people pretending to put data in an envelope and mail it to the Chinese government. And it's a really funny reaction because people are like, yeah, I know. I know that they're taking all my data.

40:03I don't care. Why should I care? You took all my data anyway. U.S. companies took all my data. Meta took all my data, right? Twitter took all my data. The U.S. government has all my data and is constantly being leaked. So why do I care if China has it? And in fact, because you don't like that, it makes me want to do it even more. Right. And that's it's so interesting to me. I'm forever somewhat compelled by that argument. Like, I think it's it's so easy in this time that we live in to fall into that particular brand of nihilism, which is like, look, if if China wants to know information about me, China has so many ways that are more efficient than developing a social network that like I struggle go with this personally of like how much is the a how much of this is sort of real threat versus like potential maybe possible several steps down the road threat and what does it mean in a practical sense that someone in the chinese government can theoretically find out what i watch on tiktok like who cares right i like i sort of intellectually know that that's an argument that will lead only to ruin and trouble, but I kind of understand how people land there.

41:22It's, yeah, definitely. I mean, like, it is a form of privacy nihilism, right? Yeah, yeah. At the end of the day, absolutely. But, like, it's understandable that people have come to privacy nihilism, right? Like, we don't have anything that anybody can do in, like, a, you know, like, in terms of laws, in terms of litigation. There are no legal protections for people's data, right? Zero. Unless you happen to live in California, right, where there's like some okay privacy laws, right? That's still like, don't seem to prevent this data from ending up in the hands of these corporations. It just means that you can go request your data and remove your data, which is better than nothing.

42:08For sure. But like, people, I think it's understandable why people end up with this sort of privacy nihilism, right? Because we've just, like, we've accepted as a, maybe accepted isn't the right word, but, like, we have, as a society, this is where we're at, right? Like, you will give up your data in exchange for some kind of crappy services from Facebook, and, like, there's nothing you can do about it, because if you want to participate in society, you have to be on these kind of crappy services. So how do you understand the difference between what it means to do that to a company like Google or Meta and doing that with a country or a government like the Chinese Communist Party?

42:56Like, are those meaningfully different things? I think we have a hard time talking about what China is and what that threat looks like and why that is dangerous in a way that having it in Google servers isn't or is differently dangerous? Like, how do you think through the difference there? I always say it depends on your threat model, right? Like, if you have family in China, if you have friends in China, right? Like, or if you, I don't know, work in national security, right? Or if your work is, like, related to something that has historically been a target of Chinese espionage, right? Then that's one very specific threat model.

43:36where the CCP actually should be in your threat model. You don't want to search for Taiwan or Tiananmen Square and have that come back to investigation of your family in China. And if you're in an industry that is the target of Chinese espionage, this information that you give could be used for fishing or, you know, other sort of targeted, more targeted espionage attacks, right? Right. Phishing is a really interesting one, by the way. I think I've heard a couple of folks mention that in this context in a way that I have actually found really instructive because that's a good example of things you know about what I watch on TikTok become ways in which to appear to be someone I know or have information about me that you can then use to get other more dangerous information about me.

44:37And I think that to me is, because it's like, if I'm not taking a picture of my bank account information and posting it on TikTok, the sort of direct threat there is lesser, but there's this data you can use to understand me better, which you can use to get other information out of me. It's like, that's the kind of step I think people often fail to understand. But it's still hard for me, though, to see actually a meaningful difference, right? Like, because this data already exists anyway, right meta has this data google has this data right and like and so do a dozen data brokers right like you can you know journalists keep showing that that you can get people's location in near real time just from the advertising bid stream which is where like when you are using an app or whatever and ads are showing up though people are bidding in real time on who gets to sell you ads.

45:32And that data is like, and there's data in there about like your demographics, how old you are, what kind of phone you have, what your interests are. There's data about your location, right? Like all of this data is just flowing around the internet all the time. And there's no reason that the CCP can't just get that data from that source, right? Like there's no reason that they can't get it by taking out ads in Meta, right? Like there's no reason they can't create a U.S. cutout and make a partnership with Meta or with Google to get this data. So, like, they can get it directly from, you know, Little Redbook or, you know, possibly from TikTok.

46:15There are easier ways to get the data, actually, right? Like, the target audience for Little Redbook was not, like, data collection of Americans, right? Like, This was like a kind of Pinterest-like application, like kind of an intersection between Pinterest and TikTok, right? That was primarily targeted at women in China and people talking to relatives or whatever in China, right? This was targeted at Chinese people in China, right? So there are other ways to get this data. And it's all, none of it is good, to be clear. I was going to say, you sound an awful lot like a privacy nihilist. Right.

46:57No. Yeah. It's so easy to go into privacy nihilism talking about this, right? But I think people are correctly frustrated with Silicon Valley oligarchs and U.S. surveillance capitalism, right? It's a bad industry that should not exist, right? This is not a good thing. I don't think that trading in that for CCP surveillance is going to make anyone's lives meaningfully better, right? Like, they are both bad. Two things can be bad, right? They are both bad in different ways. And in a lot of the same ways, right? Like, in the end, the most useful, like, for 99 % of people, the most lucrative use of this data is going to, for the CCP, is going to be to sell it and sell advertisements off it the same way that it is for Silicon Valley, right?

47:56Like, surveillance capitalism cuts both ways for both organizations, right? So I guess if the way of thinking about it is it's definitely not a better choice to give that data to the CCP instead of to Google or Meta, is it a substantially worse choice to do that? Again, I think we should carve out the people who have, like you were saying, the sort of obvious threat models. I think there's a set of people who should think about all of this like minute to minute and day to day more carefully. And we can talk about those people, but I think for the people who ask you questions like, who cares? I have nothing to hide.

48:35Is it that different a trade? I really don't think that it is. Like, I don't see any good argument that it's that different of a trade, right? Like, and what we need, and maybe I'm, stop me if I'm jumping the gun here, but like, we need desperately federal privacy law. We desperately need federal laws that let us control our data, that let us stop our data from being sold, that let us actually have meaningful opt-in consent into who we give our data to and understanding of what's being done with that data, and a private right of action to sue when companies misuse our data or take our data without our consent.

49:18This would go a long way to solving the problem of the CCP stealing people's data. This would go a long way to solving the problem of Silicon Valley surveillance capitalism and Meta and Google stealing people's data, right? This would go a long way to solving the problem of the constant background noise of data breaches, right? And data being breached and then used in phishing campaigns and everything else, right? Data breaches are another angle. One could argue that Google and Meta have pretty good security teams and your data is safer from a data breach with them than it is in the hands of some of these Chinese apps.

50:00But I don't think that that's a strong argument because data breaches still happen all the time in the U.S. There's all sorts of data breaches every day. And, you know, even if Google and Meta themselves aren't getting breached yet, and I think, you know, on a long enough timeline, the probability approaches 100 % that there will be a data breach from one of these companies, right? But, like, even if those haven't been data, like, breached yet, they still have that data and they still sell it in the form of ad targeting, right? So, like, it doesn't need to be breached when you can just buy it.

50:35Right. Right. So is is it possible then that one reason to think about keeping this data in the United States is that, you know, in theory, we live in a democracy that can, in theory, pass laws. And that if we are able to regulate this, at least we can like retroactively make some of this stuff better in a way that whatever you're dumping onto Red Note is is gone and lost and there's nothing you can do about it. I feel like I just said like 11 glass half full things in a row to get to that point. But is that at least an argument that sort of makes sense? I think it's a very optimistic argument.

51:11Yeah, I would agree. Listen, I said theoretically a bunch of times. But, yeah. I mean, you know, certainly if we one day have a functioning Congress and, you know, certainly if we were ever to get any sort of federal privacy law, right, domestic privacy law. So yeah, it is possible that that could apply to retroactively gather data about you. And that is, I guess that is one reason. It's not, I mean, I think you yourself would admit it's not the most compelling reason. No, it's not. Yeah. There's another compelling reason not to have any of these apps on your phone, which is just that like, and the compelling reason is who do you trust to run code on your phone, right?

51:59Like, who do you trust to have control of your phone? And I think a lot of people will say, I don't care if Meta or the CCP has control of my phone, right? As a form of, again, privacy nihilism. I don't know. I think each person needs to do a little bit of threat modeling and think about that, right? Like, for whatever it's worth, Google and Facebook have pretty good security engineering, right? And, like, people have looked at these apps, whereas, like, some of these other apps don't have as good a security engineering necessarily, right? So like the possibility that you'll be putting an app on your phone, which is poorly programmed and is not using things like HTTPS, is not using other kind of standard technologies and is therefore like leaking your data and causing potential security issues.

52:50Right? Like that is a thing that I think people should consider. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can you walk me through how you think about kind of the average person's threat modeling? I mean, you mentioned kind of that first rung of people who have some direct threat in sort of the one degree removed from a real possible threat. But I think that's a big group of people. I think that's a bigger group of people than we often give it credit for. But that's not everybody. And I think there are lots of people who are not even sure how to think about those threat models. Like, how do you talk people through how to think about that stuff?

53:28Sure. Unfortunately for a large percentage of Americans, the U.S. government is a very big, obvious threat, right? Like anybody who is an immigrant here, right? Anybody who is not a born citizen, but on a visa or a citizen through a green card or anybody who is trans, right? Or gender non-binary, right? Like, the obvious threats from the American government, unfortunately, are much more real than any sort of perceived threats, future threats from the CCP. But, like, the way that I would kind of walk people through this is to, you know, first think about, like, what you know, where you work, what access you have that could be interesting to other people, right?

54:20Like, for example, if you work in telecom, right? Like, if you work at AT &T or Verizon, right? Like, or one of those phone companies, look at what just happened with Salt Typhoon, right? Like, you are definitely a potential target for espionage. You know, anybody who works for the government is a potential target for espionage, right? You know, obviously people that have family there, we kind of went over that, right? Like, that's a pretty obvious threat model there. I think some of the less obvious threat metals are like industry, right? Like anybody in any industry can obviously be a target.

54:55Like we know that, you know, there's been espionage from China on like, you know, the medical or, you know, the sort of drug industry in America, right? And like aviation industry and things like that. you might also not really care about that, right? Like, you might look at your situation being paid poorly in the drug industry and be like, what do I care if, you know, if Chinese spies want to use me to get to patent documents? Fish away, friends. Yeah. Right? Like, they should pay me more if they want me to care about that. And that's pretty understandable. The consequences for you could actually be pretty severe right like even if you were an unwilling participant so it's i don't i don't think it should be actually treated that cavalierly overall i think that most people like don't face that severe threat of like chinese espionage and if you do i don't think it's going to significantly matter whether you use tiktok or little red book or not right like the cia existed long before the internet did, right?

56:02Espionage can be done just fine without this sort of data. This sort of data does help, for sure. So you think there are people who could do a pretty rational threat modeling of their own life and come out of it and say, I'm good, let the CCP have my data, it's going to be fine. Like you think that there are people for whom that is a reasonable, rational outcome? I don't think that that is totally reasonable. That is a rational outcome in the lens of privacy nihilism, right? Sure, that's fair. Like, the rational outcome is I don't want anybody to have my data, right? Like, my data is mine. I want to control it.

56:45Nobody needs to know what I enjoy thinking about and looking at, right? Like, that's actually just not data that needs to be out there because I don't trust the CCP to handle it any more responsibly than I trust Facebook to handle it, right? But for somebody who's looking at it through the lens of privacy nihilism and is saying, like, Facebook already has all my data anyway, how is it different? I think that there's a large percentage of people out there for whom a reasonable answer is there's not a meaningful difference. Yeah, that's totally fair. So given that then, why do you think kind of societally we talk about China and data privacy and security so differently than we talk about companies like Meta and Google.

57:30And I do think there are maybe more examples than often get credit for of us talking about them the same way. Right. Like, I think the idea that these things are all collecting data, they shouldn't be and using it in ways they shouldn't be is pretty true across the board. But even now, like, the way that people have worked themselves up about the personal data being shared on TikTok and collected by the CCP hit a fever pitch that I don't remember with Google or Facebook or really anything. Why do you think China is so different? I mean, I think there's a couple of reasons. One is the sort of the openness of government surveillance in China, right?

58:17Like, government surveillance and, like, control of speech is done openly in a way that makes Americans very uncomfortable. With a strong First Amendment history, right? I think Americans are definitely uncomfortable with any time the government says you're not allowed to say these things. Anybody who's ideologically consistent should say that. Oftentimes people are comfortable with the government truncating speech they don't like. People want to make it legal to run over protesters on highways. Or not to seem partisan here. people, you know, aren't comfortable with people talking about guns, right?

59:03But for the most part, we tend to not want the government to curtail that, right? We also, I think as Americans, like our government surveillance kind of hidden from us, right? Like, we don't really want it in your face, right? We're okay with police having license plate readers, and we're okay with, you know, whatever the NSA has to do as long as it's to get the bad guys. You know, in China, the surveillance is very much more in the open, right? It's sort of targeted at everybody, right? And I think that even if you could argue like surveillance in America is just as bad, right? Or it is just as prevalent, at least, I think that there's a difference in how it feels to Americans.

59:50And then the other part of this is, of course, just, you know, good old fashion xenophobia right right china is scary uh like you know just just all the sort of old you know like well you don't want to be like china right like this is america this isn't china we don't do things like that here you don't want china to have your data right like it's it's just kind of like well that's those other guys and like you can trust us but you can't trust them i honestly i think it's that right like i think i think that's a big part of it at my most cynical I'd say a big part of it is just is being mad that they're not getting a cut of the data or a cut of the profits, right?

1:00:34Like, you're like, we are okay with Facebook collecting this data and then China buying it from Facebook or buying ad targeting or whatever from Facebook because U.S. companies are getting a cut. We're not okay with it just going straight to China, right? Like, that would be my most cynical take on it, right? Yeah. Like, we gotta get our cut. That's a good take. I hadn't heard that one, but that rings truer than I would like it to. It does, and I hate it. It does. I don't like it, but I'm gonna keep hearing that in my head for a while. Let's end on a positive and productive note here. Yes. We want to keep people out of privacy nihilism.

1:01:17I think it is an understandable place to go, but it is a place we should all do our best to avoid going. uh what what in in the absence of these kind of big structural improvements you're talking about that i think we we absolutely are in agreement ought to exist uh what can people do like what's what's a useful thing that people can do to start pushing this stuff at least a little bit in the right direction for themselves so the privacy nihilism is so rampant right now i think it's more rampant than I've ever seen it. And I'm going to say clearly and unequivocally, privacy is not dead. You can still have privacy, right?

1:01:57Surveillance capitalism is not an inevitability. And there are lots of things you can do, right? Getting off of meta products is a great place to start, right? Like, you know, uninstall Instagram from your phone, Get off Facebook, right? See if this improves your life, right? There are a lot of really interesting social networks which are popping up right now, which are not based on the model of surveillance capitalism and which are not owned by tech oligarchs, right? So things like Blue Sky, things like Mastodon, I think are really interesting models for what social media without surveillance capitalism could look like.

1:02:39And doing things like looking at what apps are on your phone, right? Like, if you can uninstall most of the apps on your phone, and you can, right? That's a great place to start, right? Like, do I really need an app from my grocery store? No, no, I don't. And I don't need it, and I don't want it, right? Like, I think pushing back on those things, right? Like, there are so many places now which want us to install an app just to get basic services. And just kind of refusing to do that. I'm with the boomers on this one, man. No, I refuse to install an app to eat at a restaurant. I refuse to install an app to shop at CVS.

1:03:17Yeah. I will not be doing this. I think that that's a good place to start, right? Installing ad blockers. There are some really good ad blockers out there. EFF makes one called Privacy Badger. There's another one called Ublock Origin. Those are both great ad blockers, right? If you're a bit more technical, there's a project called Piehole that lets you set up your own sort of ad blocking DNS on your network. You can sell, like, this is something you can set up on your home network to prevent a lot of the tracking that goes on. If you want to go even a little bit more down the rabbit hole, Things like turning off location services on your phone unless you're using it for navigation.

1:03:59This is a great way to stop your location from ending up in these sort of data broker repositories. There are a lot of services which will delete your data off the internet and try to scrub your data wherever possible. Things like DeleteMe, they all have pros and cons, but checking one of those out can definitely be worth it. If you're in California doing things like requesting copies of your data from companies using the California Privacy Rights Act, the CPRA laws, right? Like this can be really interesting too, right? Request copies of your data, request to delete your data. Yeah, there's lots of things you can do, right?

1:04:38And also the biggest long-term thing you can do because these are all band-aids, right? Like I want to acknowledge that these are all kind of similar to telling people to like turn off the lights to stop climate change, right? Like, the privacy problem that we have is a systemic problem that's not going to be solved by, like, individual piecemeal action. We need a systemic solution for this, right? And that is comprehensive federal privacy law. And so a good thing you can do is call your representatives, right? Call your senators, call your congressmen, and explain to them how important this is, how important it is to you, why it's so important, right?

1:05:19and get them to understand that this is important, get them to understand that this is important to their constituents, right? So that maybe one day we actually can have this systemic real solution to this problem instead of just having everybody try to solve it for themselves. But the important takeaway here is if you give up on privacy, they win, right? These companies win if you give up on privacy. and if it was impossible to have privacy they wouldn't spend so much money on trying to convince you that it was impossible to have privacy and that it was a great thing to give up all your data.

1:05:59I like that. That's a good place to end on. You've just made me realize it's been a really long time since I did a full delete of all the apps on my phone. It's time to get rid of some apps. This is good advice. This is now my weekend project. I'm going to get rid of every app on my phone that I possibly can. And I assume that the answer to that is pretty much all of them. Yeah, I love deleting apps. It's my favorite thing. It makes me feel so good. Cooper, thank you so much for doing this. This is helpful. I learned a ton and I'm very grateful for your time. Yeah, thank you for having me on. It was my pleasure.

1:06:33All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to come back and do a question from the Verticals Hotline. We'll be right back.

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1:08:12All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. We love all your questions. Thank you again to everybody who has been emailing and calling about how you use AI in your regular day-to-day life. It's been so interesting. I have enjoyed every single one that we've gotten. Please keep all your responses coming on that and on everything else. This week, we have a question about a somewhat surprising gadget that I haven't thought about in a very long time. Let's hear it. Hey, VertiCast. It is Rob. I might be the only power user of this device, kind of a pandemic holdover, but around the pandemic, I had children and thus was calling my parents, my kids' grandparents, quite often using the Facebook, now Meta Portal.

1:08:59That device was kind of part of Facebook's push into hardware, and they've since deprecated it. It worked for about a year after the announcement was made, but it's recently started dying. And the main use case for us is literally just calling my parents at dinner when we're with our kids. Kind of a nice hands-free FaceTime type experience. And I was wondering if you all have any recommendations for other dedicated portal calling type devices I could use for my kids and me to call my parents their grandparents. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Thanks so much. Appreciate what y 'all do. All right, Jen Toohey is here to help me.

1:09:35Hi, Jen. Hi, David. Did you ever have a portal? I tested the portal Go. I never owned one myself. I do have several friends who owned one, though, because it really did, I think it appealed to a lot of non-techie people during the pandemic. So I'm sad to hear that they're pretty much dead and dying now though that's that's really sad it is a real bummer i bought the portal tv during the pandemic and we used it a ton it was i was so shocked at how good that thing was for like as a as a microphone especially like we would just sit on the couch and we would like play games with our friends over zoom which is a like insane to remember and think about all of the time that we spent doing that but like the thing kind of worked and i'm sort of bummed to hear that i i frankly have not plugged mine in in a long time but like i'm sad that they're going away and i will say i looked this up and meta claims that it is continuing to support existing ones so the first thing you can do is is reach out to meta there is a i would say small but non-zero chance they might do something for you but uh i'm curious where where your head goes as far as replacement devices i i think of a couple of possibilities that we can get into it i'm curious if there's anything that immediately comes to mind for you?

1:10:52Yeah, well, I think the most obvious alternative, and probably the one I would actually have recommended to people rather than buying this in the first place, except for one reason, is an Echo Show. Because Amazon really has kind of perfected the Alexa calling experience as much as it does still have some rough edges, but it is very universal. Like the other person doesn't have to have an Echo Show for you to use it as a calling device. They just have to have the Alexa app on their phone. So they know you don't you're not limited by hardware. And it works very well. And the new Echo Show devices have the kind of tracking.

1:11:32So if you're sitting, having your kids talk to your to their grandparents, you know, you don't have to like, make sure they're sitting right in front of the camera. And the portal had a good had that too, has that kind of the what is it's got a technical term. Yeah, it's like the automatic pan and zoom that keeps you in frame, which I find sort of unnerving in a lot of cases. But for this one use case, I think is like exactly like chasing a child around is the one good use case for this technology. It is. And the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 10 would be sort of my go to's. The Echo Show 8 is the less expensive, similar size to the portal, similar features.

1:12:10You know, it doesn't sound like he used any of the other features of the portal, but you can, you know, it works as a photo frame. There are other things you can do with it. Obviously, it has the voice assistant built in. And the Echo Show, the current one has the framing, the auto framing. And then the Echo Show 10 is actually on a robotic arm and will follow you around. So, like, if you're having a conversation in the kitchen, it will follow you as you go. So it's an older device now, and it's still quite expensive, though. It's$250, so. Okay. I mean, the portals are pretty expensive, too. So I think on that front, that's not so terrible.

1:12:48Yeah. Like, it's definitely like$100 more than I'd like it to be, but I feel like that's still in the realm of, like, if it solves this problem, so be it. Okay, I have two questions about the Echo Show, though. One is, like, convince me that Alexa Calling is actually good. Because, A, I used Alexa Calling when it first came out, and it was not good. like not good to the point that I kind of stopped trying. And B, I do occasionally have to use Chime, which is Amazon's like own video calling service. And like the people who make Chime think Chime sucks. Like that is reporting. Like they don't like it.

1:13:23It's bad. Everyone agrees. But you're telling me Alexa calling now is good. Yeah. I mean, it's is there a really good video calling service out there? I mean, maybe FaceTime. But the problem with FaceTime is everyone has to have an Apple device. And if grandparents have an Apple device and everyone has an Apple device, maybe use an iPad if you don't already have one. That's a good choice. We are hearing rumors that there's going to be an iPad on an arm that will move around one day. So if you can wait, wait and see if that comes out, if you're an Apple household. But you're limited with iPads to people that can use FaceTime.

1:14:01And Alexa Calling, with its universal aspect, I feel like is a good bet. And they've been refining it and making it better over the years. You can also use your Echo Show to make phone calls too. So you can just call someone's landline or cell phone, not video calling, but it's like a phone for your home, which is kind of weird because we don't have those anymore. It is true. And there is something to the phone that is just in a place on a table that you kind of go to when you want to, particularly for kids. Yes. It's like having them, it's one thing, like I try to hand my two-year-old my phone and he just like throws it on the ground and runs away.

1:14:38But there's something too, it's like, this is where the phone is and they go to it. Like that actually kind of works. For sure. And when you have young, older than you, but younger than my kids who don't have phones, but are maybe old enough to be home alone for 30 minutes. Sure. They don't have a phone. So if something happened, you know, now you can actually use Alexa to call, like you can, they can say, call mom and call you or call 911. You know, that having, not having landlines in our homes has kind of opened up this kind of weird gray area, especially when you have kids at home. So I think, I feel like an Echo Show is a good solution here.

1:15:16If you aren't a fan of the Amazon side of things, you know, I think the The Apple option, the iPad, is probably your best other choice. Video calling as a whole has kind of dropped off the cliff since the end of the pandemic. You know, when the portal launched, it had like seven different services you could use. So it had Zoom, you had WhatsApp, Facebook, all of that. I don't think there is any other way you can use WhatsApp or Facebook on a video calling device today that I can think of. That's right. I've done a fair amount of research on this now because I assume the people... A, I think there are a lot of people out there whose main connection to family is through one of those two apps, Messenger or WhatsApp.

1:15:59And I also think there's a strong chance that if you are still now a portal user, it's because it works. Of those, yes. Because of those two things, right? So my assumption, Rob, our caller didn't say, but my assumption is that the reason this is hard to replace is because of WhatsApp and Messenger. And on that front, you're just hosed. No. There just isn't a good answer. No, a laptop. Yeah, a laptop works fine. An iPad works fine. Yeah, you could do an iPad for WhatsApp video calling. They're just such overkill. And I kind of feel like... It's overkill, yeah. And movable. Well, yeah, true. An iPad.

1:16:37If you think it's hard to take a cell phone out of your kid's hand, try taking an iPad. I mean, it'll get used for other things. Again, this is why I'm kind of excited about whatever Apple is going to come up with in terms of a home device. Because yes, you could use an iPad as a WhatsApp calling device if it was fixed somewhere in your house for children. Obviously, you can use it if it moves too. But the kid aspect is a tablet isn't going to stay fixed. Although speaking of, as we've mentioned this, I'm sitting here staring at my Pixel tablet, which could be another option. You could do WhatsApp calling through that.

1:17:14Again, it's not fixed, but you can take it off the speaker. Um, but that would, that would be another option. Um, I just don't feel that comfortable recommending pixel hardware right now. That is, that is very fair. Um, well, I have another Google question, which we should come to in a second, but I will say, I think a non, a non ridiculous answer to sort of solving this problem is just to find the cheapest Android tablet you possibly can. Yeah. Because like the camera will be fine. Yeah. We'll run all these apps on Android, which is, I think, the way to solve your compatibility problem. It's not going to be nearly as clean and useful and dedicated as something like the portal was.

1:17:53No. But if you're just like, I just need a thing I can prop on a coffee mug and put in front of my kid, a cheap Android tablet will do that job fairly successfully. Yes. Yes, that's true. So I think that's one way to go. But I do think the dedicated device experience is real. There's a reason people gravitated to things like the portal in the first place. You have not mentioned a Nest Hub one single time. Oh, no. Why? Yeah, okay. Because they don't do that. They had some kind of calling feature at some point, but it keeps changing and going away and is not helpful. I mean, the Pixel tablet would be better than a Nest Hub at this stage, definitely.

1:18:30The Pixel tablet with its dock, speaker dock too, is a nice little device. I think it's about ready for an upgrade, and there were quite a few rumors that Google wasn't going to upgrade it. So again, I just, if he's been burned by one device dying and losing support, I honestly feel like an Echo Show is probably, or an iPad are going to be, you know, those aren't going anywhere. Right. Yeah. With Google, it's like, can I interest you in another dead product that its company doesn't care about at all? I mean, how you talk to the person at the other end is the ultimate decision here. And he didn't mention that.

1:19:08But as you say, but if they were using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, you know, Alexa app is going to work in the same way on your phone. It'll call. It comes through like a call on their end when you call them. I think I do think that's the simplest, most straightforward. Sorry, I have like seven of them around and I thought I muted most of them, but apparently not. So clever. Oh, it's okay. I know why. Because you made me get the Echo Show 10 out. So this, we didn't, we didn't come up. Yeah, we did not discuss this. But I should mention in case Zoom was the way you were calling, because you could Zoom through the portal, you can Zoom through Echo Show devices.

1:19:53So if that was the way that they were communicating with the grandparents, although only the Echo Show 10 works with Zoom or the first or second gen Echo Show 8. The third gen Echo Show, the most new one, which you would expect to go buy if that's what you were hoping to buy, you know, or buy the latest gen, does not support Zoom. So... What a perfect explanation of Amazon's entire product strategy. There's just like... No idea why. They have a grab bag of things that it does and somebody just reaches in and pulls out a bunch and that's what their devices are. And actually the Zoom experience on the Echo shows is quite good.

1:20:31I tested it. I did a how-to on our site if you want to check it out. And it was a good experience. We stopped using Zoom for work calls, but I actually used it for work a lot because it would just pop up and say, are you ready for your call? And I could just press it and it would be there. And that was what I used the portal for too. It was a good integration. It had a similar experience on the portal as it did on the show. So if that was the way you were going, then the show is definitely the best option. Just don't get the latest Echo Show 8 because it won't work with Zoom. Yeah, I think I'm increasingly convinced as you talk that the Echo Show Alexa calling is the way to go.

1:21:07Because the Echo Show microphones are going to be better, especially for like people moving around a room than even something like an iPad is going to be. The speakers are very good. The calling stuff is very good. The technology for calling is very good inside of those devices. And I think the pitch to family members of like, all you need is the Alexa app is probably doable. Not so bad, yeah. It's not great, but it's doable. And it gives you the opportunity of like, Christmas 2025 gift, here is your own box for calling your grandchildren, which is like a spectacular victory of a device. I will put all pictures of your grandchildren and you can press this button and call them.

1:21:51Yeah. It's a win. Okay. I think that's it. So which, if we're doing calling, it means you can get any Echo Show you want. We're doing this all through Alexa. Which Echo Show would you recommend for our caller here? I think 10 because of its rotating arm. I think the Echo Show 10, it is$250 though. and the Echo Show 8 second gen would be a perfectly acceptable alternative and about half the price. So it just has, I think the camera's not as good. The speakers aren't going to be quite as good, but it will work in the same, the software is the same. So I would, yeah, I mean, the Echo Show 10 would be more fun, especially if your kids are moving around a lot.

1:22:38Right. They can't run away from grandma as easily with the Echo Show 10. True. But if you can convince your family to download the Alexa app, pick your favorite code. Yes. Yes. Well, I wouldn't do the five. That's a bit too small. And then there's the new huge ones. There's like the 21 just came out. Now you're talking. Put that on your dining room table. See what happens. I'm into that. It's a bit large. I think these are better. All right. So, yeah, I think the eight or 10 seems like the right place to live. All right. Jen, thank you. I hope this helps. You're welcome.

1:23:12All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about in this episode, from our S25 reviews to the rest of our phone coverage to all the stuff with TikTok and Red Note and DeepSeek and everything China at TheVerge.com. I'll put lots of links in the show notes. But as always, read the website. Lord help us, there is a lot going on right now. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, or feelings, you can email vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11.

1:23:42I have terrible news for you. The Slack room broke, but it also comes to the email and we're getting the Slack room fixed. So the hotlines keep coming. Don't you worry. And we love hearing from you. This show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez and Brandon Kiefer. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nila and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the politics, all the news, whatever weird stuff is happening at the FCC, more gadgets that are still to come and everything else. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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