A supercheap Android phone with looks to spare

  News, Rassegna Stampa
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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 45, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry I love productivity apps so much, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

I’m back from a few days off, feeling rested and sunburned and ready to rumble. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes! This week, I’ve been reading Made for Love and stories about AI gamers and AI musicians and Ferrari EVs, watching Turning Point, replacing my weather app with Lazy Weather, raging at Ira Glass for listening to podcasts at 2x speed, and spilling all my feelings to the Dot AI bot.

I also have for you a new phone, a new smart ring, a new / old podcast reunion, a sci-fi show everyone seems to love, a nice update to a great recipe app, and a wild new AI pod to check out. A lot going on for the middle of July! Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be reading / watching / playing / eating / downloading / storing for winter? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

  • The CMF Phone 1. A nice-looking, long-lasting Android phone for $200? With an OLED screen and interchangeable backplates and a bunch of really cool accessories, one of which is a kickstand? Yes. Please. In orange, of course.
  • The Samsung Galaxy Ring. I’m still a fan of Samsung’s Fold and Flip phones, even though the new models are very same-y and even more expensive. But I’m most excited about the Galaxy Ring, which seems to have pretty much nailed the smart ring hardware — and even has some interesting ideas about gesture control.
  • “The Diggnation Reunion Part 1.” If you’re a tech lover of a certain age, there’s a strong chance you grew up watching Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht drink and make jokes about tech while sitting on a couch. Watching the guys get back together was a delightful blast from the past. And there’s a part two, too!
  • Delta 1.6. Delta’s game emulation is on the iPad! I’m actually not sure how much I’ll use this given how much of my retro gaming is on an iPhone with a Backbone controller. But this update, with a bigger screen and support for multiple games at once, does sound pretty great.
  • Amazon’s new Echo Spot. To me, this is the exact right balance of things for an Alexa speaker. It’s small, it’s $45 (for now), it has a touchscreen but no camera, and it’s the right size for a nightstand. I keep promising to leave my phone out of my bedroom, and maybe this’ll replace it.
  • Sunny. A woman loses her husband but gets a robot from his tech company to help her through it. Strangeness ensues. Such a good premise! And by all accounts, this show continues Apple TV Plus’ run of great sci-fi stuff. I’ll definitely catch up before episode 3 drops on Wednesday.
  • Openvibe. Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and Nostr, all in one timeline in one app. This is basically a clever hack, not the interconnected social universe of my dreams, but it’s a pretty good hack! And I like that it basically hides which network people are using; it’s just people, in a timeline.
  • Pestle. I love a good recipe app. I mostly use Crouton and Mela, but Pestle’s new ability to import recipes from Instagram Reels is pretty awesome. Just drop in the link, give it a name, and it’ll turn a video into a bunch of ingredients and steps.

A million years ago, I was an intern at Wired, and one of the stories I got to help work on was this wild thing where a writer had decided to completely disappear and see if the internet could find him. The story turned out awesome, and the writer was Evan Ratliff, who has been one of my favorite journalists ever since. He cofounded The Atavist Magazine and did a ton of great work there, created the terrific Persona podcast, and until recently, was one of the cohosts of Longform, the journalism podcast I always dreamed I might one day get invited on. Alas.