The US smartphone market is pretty boring. There are iPhones, there are Galaxies, Google will happily give you a Pixel if you remember it exists, and that’s about it. But as soon as you get out and see the world a little, you realize: there are a lot of new ideas about smartphones out there.
China has some big ideas about smartphones
On The Vergecast: Phone cameras, Digg, and the bleak future of printers.
On The Vergecast: Phone cameras, Digg, and the bleak future of printers.
is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we explore a few of those ideas. The Verge’s Allison Johnson and Dominic Preston join the show to talk about their trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, the annual smartphone extravaganza. They saw phones that twist, phones that fold, phones with inexplicably enormous camera lenses attached, phones with lots and lots of AI, and phones with speakers so loud you’ll be ostracized from polite society. Now they’re back to tell the tale of interesting smartphones, and try to figure out if any of it might change our devices forever.
After that, we pivot to a new take on an old idea about social networks. Digg is back! Sort of. Right now, it’s a landing page and a waitlist, but an all-star roster of social veterans is serious about rebooting one of the internet’s first huge social hits. Kevin Rose and Justin Mezzell join the show to talk about why they’re bringing the platform back, how communities have changed online in the last two decades, why they think AI can make lives so much easier for moderators, and more.
Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [email protected]!) about printers. More specifically: why won’t Apple, or anyone, make a good one? The answer seems to be pretty simple, but it’s also pretty disappointing. Don’t hold your breath for better printers.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
- MWC 2025 was all about the odds and ends
- What if your phone’s camera was much, much bigger?
- You spin me right round, baby, right round.
- What if Nintendo Switch, but foldable?
- Xiaomi 15 Ultra review: ugly phone, beautiful camera
- Digg Reboot
- How Digg helped invent the social internet
- Digg is coming back, with founder Kevin Rose and Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian
- From The New Yorker: Why Paper Jams Persist
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