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.
- Its Hermes Agent 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 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, and remember past conversations, handing requests 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, 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, 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, hotel booking, and calendar entries. It reported no suitable flights and offered a button to escalate to Vertu's human concierge. The calendar entries landed on the wrong dates. Gemini, hitting the same flight problem, suggested alternatives rather than stopping.
Should buyers worry about the hardware?
Yes, at least enough to ask questions. The Alphafold shares a hinge design, dimensions, speaker placement, microphone position, and fingerprint reader location with the ZTE Nubia Fold, a phone that costs around $1,100. System software also contained ZTE identifiers. A supply-chain partnership with ZTE/Nubia was confirmed by Vertu to TechCrunch; the company says it controls the leather, software experience, quality checks, and after-sales service. ZTE did not comment. We first covered Vertu's AI ambitions on 17 July 2026, and the hardware-origin question was present then too.
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.
The honest read on the Alphafold: it's a real luxury object, and Hermes sketches out what autonomous AI assistance on a phone could eventually look like. What it doesn't yet do is earn the price. The accuracy gap is real, the hardware provenance will bother some buyers, and shipping a flagship with broken core features is a choice that reflects on Vertu's seriousness about the software half of this pitch. Watch whether the accuracy improves through updates, because the hardware story isn't going to change.
