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Travis Larchuk produces The Vergecast and Version History.
Until now, most mobile phone companies have worked to ensure their phones won’t start fires. (Occasional Samsung devices excepted, of course.) But this week at Mobile World Congress, we found a company that dared to go in a different direction. Oukitel’s WP63 rugged smartphone includes a built-in fire starter, and this is what it looks like:
On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Dominic Preston joins Nilay to explain the existence of this particular mobile device, as well as wrap up all the weird and wonderful gadgets he and the team saw at MWC. There was also a “robot phone” that dances to (and so far, only to) “Believer” by Imagine Dragons.
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But before all that, we share a rare moment of unfiltered gadget joy. Nilay just had “the single most incredible experience I’ve ever had watching a movie in my house, in my entire life,” thanks to the Kaleidescape 8TB solid-state server. Scenes of rain or confetti have never looked better. This is all it takes to make Nilay happy.
In the lightning round: Audience metrics indicate Verge readers are more interested in the Kobo Remote than most of Apple’s new product announcements, Dom’s charging his phone on a li’l racing car, and Sean’s on the plastic brick beat with Clear Drop’s Soft Plastic Compactor and disappointment about the Lego smart brick’s debut playsets. Plus, Brendan Carr is still a dummy.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on MWC:
And on Google / Epic:
And in the lightning round:
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