Vertu Is Back With a Folding Phone Powered by—Surprise—an AI Agent

Vertu is a institution known for making extraordinarily gaudy smartphones with outdated technology, luxe materials, and eye-watering prices. Now the marque is present to conscionable the AI infinitesimal with its first-ever book-like folding phone, implicit with an AI cause connected board.

The institution announced the AlphaFold smartphone connected Thursday—targeting concern executives—which comes outfitted with the Hermes Agent. This cause tin purportedly grip schedules and tasks connected a user's behalf and “connect to endeavor systems.” Agents are large successful the smartphone satellite close now, with companies similar Google and Samsung offering ways for Gemini connected Android smartphones to execute tasks specified arsenic booking an Uber oregon ordering DoorDash. Vertu is cashing successful connected that trend.

But the institution has a checkered past. Originally, Vertu was a Nokia subsidiary that made handcrafted luxury Nokia phones (in the UK!) successful the aboriginal 2000s. Each telephone came with entree to a unrecorded concierge service. The institution faced headwinds with the smartphone gyration and fell down the times. Vertu past changed hands implicit respective years, with assorted acquisitions, yet shuttering its UK mill and laying disconnected staff.

In the past fewer years, the institution has been churning retired luxury Android smartphones again—it debuted a folding flip telephone past twelvemonth that starts astatine $4,300 (with a calfskin backplate, naturally). In precocious 2025, it unveiled the Agent Q, which it calls the “world's archetypal AI cause telephone for entrepreneurs.”

While the institution inactive claims a British heritage, its phones are nary longer made successful the UK, and according to its website, its caput bureau is successful Hong Kong. Vertu spokesperson Viki You tells WIRED that the phones are “still handcrafted,” but they're assembled successful China. “We person antithetic factories,” You says, noting that the institution sources its high-end materials from different countries, similar the full-grain calfskin from Italy.

The AlphaFold has each the markings of a high-end Android smartphone. It's powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset from 2025 and is 11.8 millimeters heavy erstwhile folded, 5.4 mm erstwhile unfolded. Not rather arsenic svelte arsenic the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7, but not acold disconnected from competitors similar the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Vertu says the hinge and surface architecture were tested to withstand 650,000 folds, which is much than Samsung's assertion of 500,000 folds.

Inside is simply a 6,500-mAh silicon-anode battery, an up-and-coming artillery exertion that's been making waves successful Chinese smartphones and has lone precocious made its mode into Western smartphones from the likes of Motorola. There's 65-watt accelerated charging, a 120-Hz surface refresh complaint for the interior 8.05-inch screen, and a 6.53-inch outer screen. There's a triple-camera strategy with a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide, and a 5-megapixel telephoto.