Vertu's $6,880 AI Phone Promised to Replace an Executive Assistant. We Tested It.
The Alphafold is wrapped in calfskin leather and titanium, and its AI agent can handle real workflows. But does it do them well enough to justify the price?
Key points
- Vertu's Alphafold foldable phone starts at $6,880 and targets senior executives who want an AI agent to manage their working day.
- The device's Hermes Agent, an AI assistant built to carry out multi-step tasks automatically, completed more workflow steps than Google's Gemini in testing, but produced less accurate results.
- Vertu confirmed to TechCrunch that the Alphafold's hardware was built on a platform supplied by ZTE/Nubia, a Chinese phone manufacturer, with Vertu adding luxury materials and its own software on top.
- Early software builds had significant bugs, including failures to upload files and connect to Vertu's own concierge service, which the company fixed during the review period.
Vertu, the UK-founded phone brand that has sold hand-finished handsets costing tens of thousands of dollars to wealthy buyers for decades, has a new pitch: pay a premium not just for the materials, but for an AI agent, software that can carry out multi-step tasks on your behalf, that runs your working day so you don't have to.
The Alphafold is that bet. It's a foldable phone, meaning the screen opens like a book to reveal a tablet-sized display, wrapped in genuine calfskin leather and titanium accents. The starting price is $6,880.
At its heart is Hermes Agent, a pre-installed AI assistant built on an open-source project of the same name. Vertu says Hermes can analyse documents, automate tasks across apps, remember past conversations, and hand requests off to a human concierge when it gets stuck. Most phone AI assistants simply answer questions. Hermes is supposed to act.
TechCrunch tested it for several days as a working executive tool: planning trips, analysing spreadsheets, managing schedules, and running multi-step errands across apps.
The results were mixed.
In one test, a writer asked Hermes to message a contact saying they were running 20 minutes late, open navigation to the airport, switch the phone to Do Not Disturb, and set a 15-minute reminder. Hermes sent the message, turned on Do Not Disturb, and opened maps. But it set the reminder for 9:08 p.m. when the request was made at 2:32 a.m., missing the target time by hours. The same request on Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7, running Google's Gemini AI assistant, produced the correct reminder time. Gemini asked clarifying questions first; Hermes acted immediately and got it wrong.
In a second test, Hermes was asked to plan a Mumbai-to-Pune business trip with a morning flight, a hotel, and calendar entries. It reported no suitable flights and offered a button to escalate to Vertu's human concierge. It also added the trip to the calendar on the wrong dates. Gemini, finding the same flight problem, kept going and suggested alternatives instead of stopping.
Should buyers worry about the hardware?
Yes, at least enough to ask questions. The Alphafold shares a hinge design, dimensions, speaker placement, microphone layout, and fingerprint reader position with the ZTE Nubia Fold, a phone that costs around $1,100. System software also contained ZTE identifiers. Vertu confirmed the hardware platform came from a ZTE/Nubia supply-chain partnership. Vertu says it controls the leather, the software experience, quality checks, and after-sales service. ZTE did not comment. This is not the first time: a 2023 review noted similar overlaps with an earlier Vertu model.
The hardware issue matters less than the software gap. Hermes showed genuine promise analysing local spreadsheets and contracts, areas where Gemini still required manual file uploads during testing. It was bolder about acting without being asked. But boldness without accuracy is a liability for an executive who needs things done right, not just done fast.
Early builds also had serious bugs that required Vertu to push server-side fixes during the review. A $6,880 device should not arrive needing repair before its core feature works.
For executives weighing this up: the Alphafold is a real luxury object and Hermes shows what autonomous AI assistance could look like on a phone. But the accuracy gap, the hardware questions, and the launch-day bugs suggest the promise is ahead of the product.
