Vertu's $6,880 AI phone underdelivers against Samsung's Gemini

Vertu, the UK-founded luxury phone maker known for hand-finished devices that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, is betting its foldable Alphafold — which starts at $6,880 — on an AI agent called Hermes Agent rather than on specs. Built on the open-source Hermes project, Hermes is designed to analyze files, automate tasks across apps, remember conversations, and hand off requests to a human concierge, positioning it as the centerpiece of Vertu’s pitch to executives rather than the hardware itself.

Physically, the Alphafold — wrapped in genuine calfskin leather with titanium accents — looks and feels like a luxury device, arriving in packaging closer to a jewelry case than a phone box. But beneath the premium materials, TechCrunch found striking similarities to the $1,100 ZTE Nubia Fold, from the hinge design and dimensions to the placement of speakers, microphones, and the fingerprint reader, plus ZTE identifiers in parts of the software. Vertu confirmed the Alphafold was developed through a specialist supply-chain partnership involving ZTE/Nubia’s hardware platform, component integration, and production engineering, saying it was responsible for the luxury materials, software, quality control, and after-sales service; ZTE did not respond to a request for comment. It isn’t the first time this pattern has surfaced: a 2023 Wired review found Vertu’s MetaVertu appeared to be based on a ZTE Nubia handset.

Testing Hermes against Google’s Gemini on a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 across executive-style tasks — messaging, navigation, calendar reminders, business-trip planning, and spreadsheet analysis — produced a mixed picture. Hermes acted more autonomously and impressed at analyzing locally saved files without requiring a fresh upload each time, but it also set a reminder for the wrong time and, in a trip-planning test, created a calendar entry for the wrong dates and escalated the request to Vertu’s human concierge instead of completing it. Gemini asked clarifying questions before acting and produced more accurate outcomes, including correctly retaining document context in a later session that Hermes could no longer access.

Vertu says Hermes’ conversations are encrypted, aren’t used to train public AI models, and that users can choose where their data is processed, backed by a dedicated A5 security chip — claims TechCrunch couldn’t independently verify. The Alphafold also lacks wireless charging, unlike the Galaxy Z Fold 7. With Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 expected soon and the Z Fold 7 already offering a more mature experience at a fraction of the price, the review concludes the Alphafold’s premium is difficult to justify.

Why it matters

Vertu’s bet suggests luxury device makers now see AI agents as the next premium differentiator, but the Alphafold’s hardware kinship with a $1,100 ZTE device and Hermes’ inconsistent execution suggest the AI layer isn’t yet mature enough to justify the price gap over cheaper alternatives.