GoKawiilIt takes a week to switch phones. First, there’s the technical process of moving eSIMs across devices, which takes either a few minutes (if you’re switching from one Android phone to another) or two days, a half-dozen calls to Verizon, a verification text message sent to your mom, and approximately 11,000 restarts of your phone (if you’re switching from iPhone to Android). Then comes a few hours of app downloading, settings tweaking, and personalization, because every phone has a bunch of unique ideas about everything.
You can be up and running on a new phone in an afternoon, but by the time you’ve downloaded all your Kindle books, synced your podcast queue, moved all your two-factor code generators, and reconnected to all your Bluetooth devices, it will have been a week.
I know this, because I spent the last few months switching phones just about every week. I’d grown tired of my iPhone 16, a phone I bought almost entirely because it was blue, and decided to see what other options I really had. I’m also in an unusual position: I used to be a phone reviewer, which meant I spent nearly a decade switching phones every few months, but for the last five years or so I have been almost exclusively an iPhone user. I think I qualify as a normal phone owner at this point. But I do have one distinct advantage: I can ask a bunch of phone manufacturers to send me their devices to test, and some of them will! So I spent the winter on a Tour de Android, looking to see whether there was a phone — or, more exciting, a whole new concept for a phone — that might entice me.
I’ll just spoil the end: Last week, I went to the Apple Store and bought an iPhone 17. I know, I know. I’m not thrilled about it either. But I can explain.
For even more of our thoughts on the state of phones, check out this episode of The Vergecast.
The first phone I tested was the one for which I had the highest hopes: the Motorola Razr Ultra. I remain convinced that flip phones are a good idea, and that the combination of smartwatch-style outer screen with a normal-sized inner screen is a compelling one. The Razr Ultra’s hardware is pretty close to right, at least for my purposes. Flipped open, the phone is a little tall, and can be hard to navigate with one thumb, but that’s true of every big phone now. I didn’t mind the slight crease in the middle, and I love the squareish shape of the phone when it’s closed. I found myself treating the closed phone like a tiny Gemini-specific walkie-talkie — bring the phone up to my mouth, hold the side button, and ask inane questions about cherry blossoms.
The problem, which would become a theme in my tests, was the software. Neither Motorola nor Google has figured flip phones out. There are a few useful widgets for the outer screen, but the organization system for them makes it hard to add or find stuff. More often than not, what you get on the outer screen is just the full-bore Android app smushed down small, which is all well and good until the keyboard opens and covers up the message you’re responding to and the text box you’re typing in. Even if I could get past that, I eventually couldn’t take all the “allow this app to access the external display?” warnings. Some apps manage to shrink and expand well enough, while others just shrug and demand you open up the phone. I spent days changing settings, downloading utility apps, trying to make the Razr Ultra feel seamless. It never did. So I switched.
Flip phones: love the shape, hate the software. Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge
I had a slightly different experience with my foldable phone, a Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. (I tried to get my hands on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, by most accounts the best foldable on the market, but couldn’t get one in time.) My foldable problem is all hardware: The phone feels big and blocky in my hands, it’s not easy enough to pry the thing open, and foldables come with lots of durability, battery, and camera sacrifices. I did enjoy having the larger inner screen for watching YouTube videos and a bunch of Champions League soccer. But faced with this many sacrifices — and the eye-watering $2,000-ish price that comes with every foldable phone — I gave up on Bigger Screen.
Next I tried the Unihertz Titan 2, a rectangular monster of a phone with a big, roomy physical keyboard. It felt like using a BlackBerry again! I discovered almost immediately that I do not miss using a BlackBerry — while I loved having the keyboard for quick access to numbers and symbols, I never typed as fast on the physical keyboard as I did on the screen. Plus, this phone is just gigantic (which is why I’m intrigued by the much smaller Titan 2 Elite coming later this year).
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