We play a brutal quiz of our gadget memories

0:02David Pierce:Hello and welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of many, many Nokia phones. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show, we're playing a game. This is a thing I've actually been wanting to do for a while. One of my great aspirations on the VergeCast is to make Nilay play a lot of TikTok games. Like I want him to blind rank things and I want to do the fast money games. There's just so many silly fun things you can do that we're going to start playing more of on this show. And today we have our first one. Travis Larchuk, our producer, has put together a whole game. I don't know a ton about it, but I know it has to do with gadgets.

0:35David Pierce:I know it has to do with history. I know I am in big trouble and I'm pretty excited about it. Before we get into it, if you have ideas, if you've like seen a TikTok where they're playing a fun game and you want to send it to me because you think it would be fun to watch or hear us be terrible at it on the Vergecast, send them all my way. Vergecastattheverge.com is the email. 866-VERGE11 is the hotline. More games on The Verge cast is my goal for the future, and I want to hear all of your ideas. Our game is coming up in just a second, but first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today.

1:04I'm David Amell, and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, August 24th, 2026. Amazon's first-party products just got a big price bump, up to 60%. The cheapest products in the lineup were hit the hardest, with the Echo Dot smart speaker jumping from$49.99 to$79.99. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max rose by 40 % to$84.99. And the base level Kindle now comes in at$149.99. In a statement to The Verge, a communications manager blamed memory and storage component costs for the price height, like everyone else. Apple also recently increased its competing HomePod Mini to$129.99 from$99.99, though Google's smart home speaker is holding stable at$99.99 for now.

1:47Today, the New York Times reported that Netflix has discussed making Peacock and Fox One available through the Netflix app. Other services like Amazon Prime Video and Roku have long made competing streamers available in their app, but Netflix has always kept its app pretty isolated. The change comes amid YouTube, Netflix's biggest rival announcing that it will be bundling Peacock as part of its premium subscription starting next year. While there are reportedly no imminent plans to make this happen, Netflix has already dabbled in third-party streaming partnerships in France, where it folded live channels and streaming content from TF1 into its app.

2:20And finally, the 9.58 second 1 ,000 meter dash set by Usain Bolt in 2009 has been smashed by Chinese robots participating in the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday. The record set by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center ran that distance in 9.39 seconds, though most of the robots had to collide into crash pads and some of them had to be carried away on a stretcher afterwards. The games are a sort of robot Olympics designed to showcase innovation and bipedal robot technology, with other sports like jumping, football, and boxing also being showcased. You can read more on TheVerge.com.

2:56That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, August 24th, 2026. Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands you need. From athletic stuff, like a full-court pickup game, swish, to athletic-ish stuff, like a half-mile stroll. Get those steps in! And for morning hikes up the mountain trail, good pace. It's a nighttime ghost choice from the camping chair. What a twist. Whatever level of active, Sierra loves it all. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

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3:57David Pierce:All right, let's play some games. I'm joined now by Neelai Patel. Hello, Neelai. Hello. I don't even think you have any idea what you've signed up for here. Not at all. Fabulous. Also has no idea the verge of Sean Hollister. Hi, Sean. Hi. And our producer and game master, Travis Larchuk. Hello, everybody. What have you done to us today? Okay, gamers, we are going to play a game about the linear nature of time, which proceeds, as always, at the rate of one year per year. This game is called... When did that come out? So if you've ever played the card game Chronology or Timeline, this is a ripoff of that.

4:38So together... Now we just got sued. I think we're playing a game called Verge Cast Enters Existential Litigation. I can't debate it until I'm a property expert on this, but I believe that you can only patent game mechanics, not copyright. Decline. So I think we're in the clear. I think we're in the clear. Okay. This is inspired by the card game's chronology and timeline, but is legally distinct and different from them. That's what I'm looking for. Nailed it. Okay, great. So the way that this is going to work is that we are collectively going to build a timeline of gadgets. You will be given a random gadget on your turn, and you have to figure out where in the timeline that gadget goes.

5:21If you are correct, it will be added to the timeline, and you will get a point. If you are incorrect, it will be discarded from history, and you will not get a point. This could butterfly effect the world and change events forever, so be careful. We will continue to play the game until we get bored or until we've recorded enough to reasonably insert a mid-roll break into this episode. Perfect. Okay. Nilay is going to kick us off. Nilay, your categories are, and these are loose categories, phones, wearables, or anything goes. Could be anything. I'm going to have to go with phones, please. All right.

6:07Phones. All right, so we are starting the timeline. The timeline is seeded with the Nokia 9000 communicator. And the object that you have to place on the timeline before or after that is the Samsung Galaxy Fold. And I just have to pick before or after. I don't have to say year? After. Okay. Nailed it. Are you sure? Are you sure? I was doing the math. I think I could get the year. You sure it came out after 1996? I'm correct here.

6:32David Pierce:This is actually a trick question. The Nokia 9000 communicator is timeless. It is all years, forever and ever. Eli, you are correct. Great job, Eli. Okay, David, you have the Nokia Lumia 520. I'm realizing we could play this game with just Nokia and numbers, and it would be impossible. Yeah. And also there would be a thousand options. Does anybody know what this was? The 520 was okay. It was a plasticky Windows phone, if I remember correctly. Sean? I'm remembering like a baby blue. Is this right? Yes. Yeah, that feels right. Yep. Yeah. This was back when they had that really like sharp design.

7:15David Pierce:It was great. Those are good times. Anyway, this goes between 1996 and 2009. Okay. You are correct. 2013. Later than I thought, actually. Just little babies. Sean. Oh, okay. You have the fire phone and things are getting spicy now. I do. The timeline is we have 1996, 2013, and 2019 on the timeline. So where does it go? Fire Phone. This is difficult because I think the Fire Phone is only one year away from the Lumia 520. And I cannot remember if it's 2012 or 2014. Is this a group project or is this a Sean project? It's a Sean project. This is Sean's point, but if you would like to collaborate and make this a cooperative exercise, that's fine.

8:02Absolutely not. Here's what I know, and this is like a weird sense memory of these phones, and this tells you exactly how poisoned my brain is. I associate every one of these devices with a different office. Like, I remember what office we were in when the Fire Phone came out, which is going to help me immensely. It is a damn shame that I don't. Having worked from home for most of that period. I'm going to go with after 2014. I think it's 2014. Let's do it. Okay. Between the Nokia Lumia 520 and the Samsung Galaxy Fold, you are correct. Yes. 2014. Well done. Going back to Neelai, you have the first Google Pixel.

8:48So on the timeline, we have the Nokia 9000 Communicator, 1996, Nokia Lumia 520, 2013, Fire Phone 2014, Samsung Galaxy Fold 2019.

8:59David Pierce:Neelai, would you believe me if I told you there was a Google Pixel in 2002? and then Google just forgot about it for like 15 years. I will give you a hint, which is it will not be between 2013 and 2014. It's good. And also presumably not between 1996 and 2013. Thanks for the hint. Sometimes you get a lucky break. Pixel not next. Wait, what happens if, so they're not, just to be clear on the setup here, there's not two things that happened in 2014. Yeah, if a year is already on the timeline, it will not show up again in that timeline. I love how invested Nilay is in waiting this. I'm just experiencing my youth again, Sean.

9:46I'm just feeling all the feelings. And I believe, it's funny, my strong memories are the Pixel 2. But I'm going to say between Fire Phone and Galaxy Fold. All right, between 2014 and 2019, you are correct, 2016. 16. That's a Fidei office. That's what I remember. What were the snacks like in that office? You're in it right now. At the time, what were the snacks like? Because the snack vendor has changed since then. When we moved in that office, the snacks were glorious.

10:17David Pierce:Yeah, there are rumors of overtime snack deterioration. Anyway, it's the IBM Simon. Does anybody know what the IBM Simon was? Remind me? I'm not sure that I do. What was the IBM Simon? I'm going to go ahead and say it was a phone. All right, David, this would be a good time for me to introduce the concept of lifelines. You have three lifelines. You can use a lifeline once for the entire game. Your lifelines are Wikipedia. I will read you a random sentence from the Wikipedia page of this thing. Picture. I will look at an image of this thing and describe the image to you. Love it. This is good. Or this is a lifeline that no one's ever thought of before.

11:01It's called one out of two, which is, I will tell you, two possible places on the timeline where this thing could go. I'm going to go picture. Okay, picture. Great. I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

11:13David Pierce:I'm just enjoying this now. This thing is like a very long black rectangle. So it's a phone? Yeah, that doesn't help at all. Also a very long screen on it, like an LCD screen. And it comes with a thin black stylus on the side. Dude, you're just like, Samsung Galaxy Fold. The picture I am looking at, let me see. It looks very skinny. And the picture that I am looking at has a picture next to an older iPhone. And it is definitely longer than that original iPhone. I confess you've made my answer slightly more nerve-wracking for me, but I'm going to say this goes at the very beginning, before 1996.

11:58David Pierce:Okay. You are correct. 1994. Barely correct. Well done. Okay. Sean. You said stylus, and I was like, maybe this is 1999. Like, that was just what we were doing. The Blackberry Pearl. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that there's nothing between 1996 and 2013 yet. Truly. All right. This is the stages of our career, Sean. Where did we work then? Does anyone remember what the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 was? Apparently it was an Engadget. It was an Engadget. Yes, the office was in Union Square. It's now the Instagram office, which just says everything about everything. But this was one of Joanna Stern's favorite phones.

12:42It was a consumer BlackBerry.

12:44David Pierce:Yeah, the Pearl was the skinny one, right? It was like they did away with the wide and they tried to smush the keyboard into a much skinnier thing. All right. Did the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 come out between 1996 and 2013? It did. 2006. All right. Back to Neal. This will be once the timeline reaches eight things, we will begin a new round. So this is the Surface Duo, potentially the last one this round. If you will recall, Panos Panay announced these devices on our podcast at our office, the one that Travis is sitting in right now, and then it was the pandemic. So this one is easy. How were the snacks then?

13:24It was the height. After that, it was all over. They realized that no one was coming there. The snack budget fell to nothing.

13:31David Pierce:I'm really realizing, Nila, you have organized your adult life by phone launches. It's really bad. Who you are. It's really, really bad. Okay, so you are putting it after the most recent object on the timeline, which is the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2019. Yeah, it almost has to be. Okay, let's see. 2020. Okay. Very good. You have those pre-pandemic memories, right? You remember when you were where Kennedy got shot? I remember the service duo being announced in the podcast room you're sitting in, and then it was like the world was over. Brutal. There's a Surface Duo timeline that never happened. It's true.

14:14Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands you need. From athletic stuff, like a full-court pickup game, swish, to athletic-ish stuff, like a half-mile stroll. Get those steps in. And for morning hikes up the mountain trail, good pace, to nighttime ghost stories from the camping chair. What a twist. Whatever level of active, Sierra loves it all. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new.

14:51It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+.

15:35Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

16:10Everybody's doing great so far. I don't think we've had any wrong answers so far. And now it's time for a new round. David, you get to pick the category. Would you like computers, gaming, or anything goes? Let's go anything goes. Full chaos. Anything goes, full chaos. All right. The timeline begins with Snap Spectacles 2016. What is happening? Flickr. did flicker come out before or after snap spectacles flicker was before and i'm gonna say it was 2004 oh no bonus points are available but let's find out it was 2004 i think you should have made travis describe a picture of flicker you've already burned that lifeline Sean Kindle did it come out before the before Flickr in 2004 or between Flickr and Snap Spectacles which came out 2016 or after Snap Spectacles I was not in an office for this one either um boy let's let's go between I'm just gonna go between between this was Engadget do you remember this Jeff Bezos gave a demo to us 2007 you're correct What the F is this, dude?

17:27Come on. The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13. Neil, I'm finally screwed. We've got Flickr, Kindle, and Snap Spectacles on the timeline. Guess what I don't have built-in emotional memories of?

17:41David Pierce:Windows PC launches? I know the year. Neil, I feel like this is the one that's flippy. Don't forget about your life. This is the iPad killer. Yes. My friend Helen Rosner once told me all food writing is just ruminations on memory. And it was definitely true of phones, right? You show me the name of a phone and I'm a young man again, like Ratatouille. You show me this. And I'm like, yeah, that didn't work either. And nothing occurs in my brain. I remember debating review scores with Dan Seifert retroactively for this. I think I remember debating review scores with Joanna Stern in real time for this.

18:24Oh, that's a good hint. Oh, wow. It's a great hint. Okay. A random sentence from the Wikipedia page. It's between, I don't need it. I don't want your dumb life. It's between 2007 and 2016. I've destroyed all of this and given Eli the way. That's so rude. I vibe coded a random Wikipedia sentence maker just for this lifeline. Oh, thank you. All right. Where are you putting it on the timeline? Between Kindle and Spexicles. All right, between Kindle and Spectacles, so it's between 2007 and 2016 is your guess. It is 2012. And just so you know, the random sentence would have been, oddly, because Lenovo is kind of known for making ugly but incredibly usable keyboards.

19:02That wouldn't have helped me at all. I wonder if that's from a comment on the page. I don't know how this thing works. All right, David, you're up. And your item is the DJI Phantom.

19:14David Pierce:I was really hoping this was going to be Sean, because there's straight up a decade in here, I believe. We've got Flickr, Kindle, Yoga, IdeaPad 13, and Snap Spectacles on the timeline. Sean, I'm sure, knows the answer to this. Because Sean has a catalog of now illegal drones just in his head at all times. I flew a drone one time and I crashed it and I'm still nervous to fly a drone again. And so here we are. I'm going to say after 2016. So I'm going to put it at the end of the thing here. it is 2013 our first wrong answer alright Sean would you have gotten that right be honest I would have gotten it right but only because I would have guessed that it was after the yoga 13 I could not remember if there was a DJF anim in 2011 it was either put it between the yoga and the spectacles or after the spectacles and like it just was one of those when in doubt 10 years ago was a long time ago and I just went for it and I was wrong.

20:19Can I tell you how I remember? It's very bad.

20:22David Pierce:Again, this is just... What phone did you use at the time? We sat in Paul Miller's apartment making an index of all of the kinds of things we are going to cover. We came to almost murderous blows about it and drones weren't on the list. Incredible. What were the snacks like in that apartment? Paul lived above Bite Cafe. The snacks were amazing. Alright. Pretty good. Okay, whose turn is it? Sean. Sean. We've got the Nexus 1 for you. We are also missing a DJI on the board. It's gone. It is evaporated into history. Not allowed in the United States. It's been removed from history. That's exactly right.

21:08Flickr, Kindle, Lenovo, Ideapad, Yoga 13 and Snap Spectacles are on the timeline, we need to place Nexus 1. The Nexus 1 is going to go between the Kindle and the Yoga 13. How confident are you? 100%. Okay, great. You're correct, 2010. That's an Engadget phone. It's not a Verge phone. But like a late Engadget phone. Yeah, I mean, obviously, yeah. I remember chasing down Eric Schmidt in a hallway to go see and be the first person to touch the Nexus S, which came out after that in 2011. So I figured this is just the one year before. Yeah, see, this is literally just being like, and then we were children.

21:51We were sitting on the dock of the bay. All right, Sonos 1. We've got Flickr, Kindle, Nexus 1. We got two ones on here. Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 and Snap Spectacles. Looking for the Sonos 1. um i'm just gonna work this out the sonos one we have them in our house they have voice assistants in them which means they're post alexa alexa is 2013 that didn't come out that fast so i'm gonna go after 2016 at the end of the list after 2016 2017 wow i would have gotten that one wrong too done sam i pegged that at like 2014 2015 david it is your turn you've got the apple watch uh between the idea pad and the spectacles between 2012 and 2016.

22:36David Pierce:This one I actually feel good about for the first time in like four of these. You're correct. I wrote a giant feature about the Apple Watch in 2015 for Wired Magazine. And they never forgave you for it. It literally never forgave me for it because I wrote down the things that their executives said out loud to me and printed it in a magazine. Apple got very upset.

22:59Yeah, 2015, it's a good year. Sean you've got a tough one to end this round Betamax Describe a picture of Betamax Sean would you like to burn a lifeline and have me describe a picture Yeah let's just burn a lifeline This is worth hearing We're going to google Betamax Okay