All eyes on Samsung’s thin new foldable

It’s always felt to me like there’s a threshold foldables need to hit before they can truly become mainstream: they need to be no bigger than a regular old phone. And now Samsung has finally gotten its flagship there with the Z Fold 7, which is just barely thicker than an iPhone 16 Pro. I got to see one in the office this week, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It really does feel different.

This week on The Vergecast, Vee Song and Allison Johnson join me to talk all about Samsung’s new foldables and smartwatches. Then, we dive into corporate shake-ups across the tech world. One of Tim Cook’s possible successors is on his way out, Mark Zuckerberg is buying Meta a new AI team, X’s CEO has departed (and, remind me, did anything notable happen with Grok this week?).

And finally, some big news about the Lightning Round: I’ve had enough of it. Instead, we’ve got something bold, something new, something altogether original and unheard of: the Thunder Round. And yes, we have sound effects. Lots to discuss: AI web browsers, Lorde’s see-through CD, and HBO Max finally does the thing we’ve all been waiting for.

If you want to know more about the stories we discuss in the episode, you can check out a whole bunch of our coverage below: