Vertu just launched the Alphafold, a foldable smartphone starting at $6,880 that’s aimed squarely at chief executives. TechCrunch AI got a review unit and tested it, not with benchmark scores or camera comparisons, but by running it through actual executive workflows for several days. The verdict is more interesting than the price tag suggests.
The UK-founded luxury phone maker has always sold status over specs. This time it’s selling something different: an AI agent that promises to do your job admin for you.
What’s Actually in the Box
The centerpiece isn’t the hardware. It’s Hermes Agent, a pre-installed AI agent built on top of the open-source Hermes project. According to TechCrunch AI, Vertu says it can:
- Analyze local files, spreadsheets, and contracts
- Automate tasks across multiple apps
- Remember past conversations
- Hand off requests to a human concierge when it hits a wall
That last one is the luxury tell. Most phone assistants respond to prompts and stop there. Hermes is built to execute multi-step workflows on your behalf, which is a genuinely different design goal.
The hardware backs up the price on materials alone. The review unit came wrapped in genuine calfskin leather with titanium accents, shipped in packaging TechCrunch AI compared to a jewelry presentation case, complete with drawers holding a leather sleeve and cables.
The Hardware Question
Here’s where it gets awkward. During testing, TechCrunch AI noticed striking similarities between the Alphafold and the $1,100 ZTE Nubia Fold: hinge design, dimensions, speaker and microphone placement, fingerprint reader position. System information even revealed ZTE identifiers in parts of the software.
Vertu confirmed it. The company told TechCrunch AI the Alphafold was developed through a “specialist supply-chain partnership” involving ZTE/Nubia’s hardware platform, component integration, and production engineering. Vertu says it handled the luxury materials, software experience, quality control, and after-sales service. ZTE didn’t respond to a request for comment.
This isn’t new territory. Wired reported the same pattern with Vertu’s MetaVertu back in 2023, with Counterpoint Research noting Vertu had been adapting existing ZTE models with luxury materials and custom software.
How It Performed Against Gemini
TechCrunch AI ran the Alphafold against a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 running Google’s Gemini. Real tasks: analyzing spreadsheets and contracts, planning business trips, managing a schedule, automating actions across apps.
What stands out is that Hermes actually won on the thing that matters most for this audience. It impressed at analyzing local files and spreadsheets, an area where Gemini on the Samsung still relied on manually uploaded documents during testing. Hermes was also more willing to automate actions across apps and complete multi-step workflows without hand-holding.
But autonomy cuts both ways. TechCrunch AI notes that greater independence raised real questions about when an AI should just act and when it should stop and ask for clarification. Early software builds also struggled to upload files, analyze images, and connect to the concierge service. Vertu pushed server-side fixes after those issues were reported.
On ergonomics, the 264-gram Alphafold is noticeably heavier than Samsung’s 215-gram foldable, and you feel it during long sessions. The curved frame makes it easier to unfold, but Samsung’s flatter design is more comfortable one-handed when folded.
Why This Matters
Strip away the calfskin and this is a $6,880 bet on a specific idea: that executives will pay serious money for an AI that finishes tasks instead of drafting text. That’s the direction the whole agent market is moving, and Vertu is testing whether there’s a premium tier willing to pay early for it.
The hardware being a rebadged ZTE is a fair criticism, but it’s also beside the point. Vertu isn’t competing on foldables. It’s competing on whether agentic AI plus a human concierge fallback is worth roughly six times a flagship phone.
The more useful signal here is that a small luxury brand shipped file-level, cross-app agent workflows that outperformed Gemini on document analysis. That gap won’t last. When it closes, Vertu is back to selling leather.
Full hands-on details are available at the original source.