Searching for the perfect minimalist smartphone
Smartphones are great. They’re also… a lot. The idea of a more balanced device, one that gives you all of the most important and useful features of a smartphone but keeps you out of the infinite-doomscrolling loops, has been an enticing one for a long time. Nailing that balance, though, turns out to be almost impossible.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we try and get it right. The Verge’s Allison Johnson joins the show to talk about the new Light Phone III, and then we run through a list of a few dozen things your phone can do and we wonder if your perfect, sane, functional phone should be able to do them. Some things are easy, some are surprisingly difficult. We’re still not sure what to do with Snapchat.
After that, The Verge’s Andy Hawkins catches us up on all things Tesla Takedown. After this weekend’s coordinated set of protests, we talk through what the protestors want, why they’re pointing their anger at Tesla in particular, and how we’ll know if it’s working. Andy also walks us through the tariff chaos coming for the auto industry, and tells us a little about the surprisingly cool new Nissan Leaf.
Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast H …