MKBHD Let Me Borrow His $5,000 Smartphone

[00:00] Once upon a time, my good friend MKBHD decided  to buy a $5,380 smartphone. It's called the Vertu   Agent Q, which supposedly is the world's first  ultra-premium AI agent phone for entrepreneurs,  

[00:15] and it has a very lucrative promise  of literal gold-plated interiors. (cute startup flute song solo) But he found out that the phone is kind  of a little bit of a scam. I asked Marquez  

[00:29] if I could borrow the phone since I really  like—I mean, "destroy"—making phone calls. (left speaker) "Be honest." (right speaker) "I just want to see what it's  made of on the inside."

[00:43] Look, maybe if there's real gold inside, MKBHD  can get some of his money back, and there's only   one way to find out for sure. I'm really doing  him a favor, if you think about it. Uh-huh. At first glance, though, the $5,380 Vertu  Agent Q phone is falling apart without me  

[00:59] even doing anything. So, we're not  off to a very good start. Overall,   the phone feels pretty normal. There is  a shiny red button over here on the left;   this apparently lets you instantly chat with  AI or a real person to book hotels and buy  

[01:13] You might think that a $5,000 smartphone would  have some top-of-the-line material on the screen,   like sapphire or diamonds or something,  but as we work our way up through the  

[01:25] Mohs scale of hardness, we see that the  Vertu Q is using regular tempered glass,   which scratches at a level 6  with deeper grooves at a level 7. Now, one of the main selling points listed on  this rather strange Vertu website is that the  

[01:39] phone has a ceramic pillow forged  at 1,200°C for jade-like warmth.   First of all, jade is not warm, and  a "ceramic pillow" is a misnomer,   but ceramic material is forged at 1,200°C,  so at least they got that part right.

[01:55] Pulling out my diamond tester tool to  double-check the glass just for fun:   if the screen or back camera lens  were sapphire, it would trigger my   diamond tester tool, just like we see on  this Tissot watch face. But they didn't.

[02:10] We'll come back to that ceramic pillow in  a second. What Vertu doesn't appear to be   fibbing about, though, is the calfskin leather  on the back. Apparently, calfskin is one of the   more expensive and luxurious leathers, but it's  also not as resistant to scratching and scuffing,  

[02:24] and it would definitely not be my first choice  for a phone material. Fully grown cowhide leather   is far superior and way more resilient,  as any cowboy can attest. But exploiting   younglings is something billionaires just  can't get enough of, so calfskin it is.

[02:40] Something Vertu definitely needs more of, though,  is glue. Since the reason our ceramic pillow is   lifting off is because Vertu only applied glue  to the left half of the ceramic pillow during   the build process. Not super great, but if we just  put it back quickly, maybe Marquez won't notice.

[02:57] and each of the side panels appear to be  screwed in place with stainless steel screws.   The 65-watt USB-C charging port is on the top  right side, so you can look like a psychopath  

[03:10] while charging your phone. On the left  side, we have a volume rocker and the   "Red Magic" agent button. I still might  push this later just to see what happens. And again, it looks like the leather on  the back of the phone is legit—stitching  

[03:22] way it was mechanically added in the first  place, with the red leather wrapping around   the bottom edge of the phone where the  charging port is usually supposed to be. There are two "Falcon Wing" flaps on the  back. These hide SIM card tray slots.  

[03:37] There's no expandable memory cards, but there is  1 terabyte in total of built-in storage. The top   right camera is a 50-megapixel main unit, then  a 54-megapixel telephoto camera in the center,   and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera  right above the dual LED flash that's  

[03:52] nestled between the two Falcon wings. This  would be a pretty unique phone if it was   like 500 bucks or something, but they  added one too many zeros for my taste. The 6-inch 1080p 120Hz AMOLED display does last  for more than 23 seconds under the heat from my  

[04:09] lighter without sustaining any permanent damage.  So, it's got that going for it, which is nice. fares in the bend test. With the stainless  steel sides being screwed on and segmented,  

[04:23] it'll be interesting to see what  happens. And just like we would expect,   separation immediately appears right  at the antenna line. Remember, this   $5,000 smartphone is not water-resistant, so  we aren't compromising any ingress protection  

[04:37] with this new gap. Since it never had any to  begin with, you can't lose what you never had. But alas, even though the Vertu Agent Q is  permanently kinked, it is still alive, which means   it's time to harvest up all the gold remaining  inside—if, and that's a very big "if," there is  

[04:54] any to be found in the first place. Even though  Vertu said it is in there, I have my doubts. Getting inside is easy enough. Just a few screws  hold down the stainless steel rails to the phone   body. And no, that's not your imagination: we  have both red and blue Loctite on the screws at  

[05:10] the same time because, why not? There's nothing  wrong with more than one layer of protection. Speaking of multiple layers of protection:  you might have thought I was at home   making this video, which indeed I am, but the  government thinks I'm currently in Greenland,  

[05:25] which might explain some things. All  thanks to today's sponsor, NordVPN. A VPN,   or Virtual Private Network, allows me to be  anywhere I want to be in the world without ever   leaving my house. With a VPN, I can watch  geo-locked content or just avoid getting  

[05:39] put on a list while I search the informational  schematics of a guillotine, as one sometimes does. NordVPN scrambles my internet traffic so from the  outside, no one can see what I'm doing or where   I'm at. Since NordVPN has 8,900 servers in more  than 180 locations—and just like the theoretical  

[05:57] gold that we're looking for inside the phone is  being physically protected by modular bumpers and   double-threadlock screws—NordVPN is a world leader  in online protection. You can try NordVPN with a   30-day money-back guarantee with the link in my  description: nordvpn.com/jerryrig. You can even  

[06:14] get a dedicated IP address, an ad blocker, scam  call protection, and you can protect up to 10   devices with one account. nordvpn.com/jerryrig.  Get four months extra on a 2-year plan,   and hopefully we find more than two bucks'  worth of gold inside the Vertu Agent Q.

[06:29] The side panels appear to clip into some  gold contact pads inside the phone frame,   probably so they can help transmit signal  better for the phone calls and data. But   seeing gold so near the frame makes me think  we might be about to strike the mother lode.  

[06:44] With the left side rails off, the red agent  button comes loose. And surprisingly—extremely   surprisingly—this button is actually sapphire.  Well, I guess technically it's a ruby.

[06:59] But before Marquez gets too excited: natural  rubies this size might go for 100 bucks or so,   but lab-grown rubies this size go for about  five bucks, which is what I'm betting this one   is. So far, we've recouped about 0.00943%  of MKBHD's purchase price. It's a start.

[07:16] Inside the Falcon wings are more stainless  steel screws. About seven more screws are   found under the top leather portion, and even more  unfortunately placed screws are found underneath   the camera lens glass. Vertu is definitely not  winning any repairability awards with this one.

[07:31] But finally, the back panel comes off,  revealing... no gold. We were expecting a   cave of wonders and all we got was a cave of  plunders. And by plunders, I mean MKBHD was   robbed. The image on the website shows some Fort  Knox-level adornment, but inside, Vertu isn't  

[07:48] even pretending to have any gold. To be fair, I'm  probably the only person on the planet who would   actually go and check for the gold. So, Vertu had  a 1-in-8 billion chance of no one finding out. But maybe I'm being a bit too hasty. Let's  dig a bit deeper. With the graphite cooling  

[08:02] pad lifted up and the phone actually turned off,  I can lift up the motherboard shield. And still,   more "nothings." There is copper tape  on top of all the Lego-style connectors,   channel for the past decade and a half.  Thanks for subscribing, by the way.

[08:18] I'll unplug the power button, the volume  rocker, and the large main 50-megapixel camera,   along with a few of the long extension  ribbons. And finally, the battery. It   just unclips like a little Lego. It's hard to  say if the 48-megapixel telephoto camera has  

[08:32] any of the optical image stabilization,  because sometimes these do internally,   like on Samsung's periscope units.  The large main camera does have OIS,   but I do not see any mechanical apertures  or mechanical zooms like we were promised.

[08:45] I'll lift the battery out of its enclosure.  Thankfully, it's pretty easy with its own   battery pull tabs. Thumbs up for that.  It's got 5,565 mAh worth of capacity.  

[08:58] I'll pull out a few more screws from the lower  board. This one's not a charging port board,   but there is a loudspeaker and rectangular  vibrator motor. Definitely no balls. But yeah, to be fair, every smartphone on the  planet technically does have some gold plating  

[09:12] inside of it—usually between $0.60 and $2 worth  of gold. This is electroplated onto the circuit   board pins or connectors since gold is super  conductive and corrosion-resistant. So, Vertu   isn't totally lying since there is just as much  gold in this Vertu phone as there is in a Samsung  

[09:28] or iPhone. But the way the website displays the  gold in the picture is just a little disingenuous. The only way for Vertu to save face this time  around is if they gold-plated the vapor chamber,   like Red Magic did with the Red Magic Gold Saga.  We already tested and verified the gold inside  

[09:44] the Red Magic which, by the way, costs 1/4  the price of the Vertu Agent Q. Immediately,   it's pretty obvious to the naked eye  that the coloring of each of the vapor   chambers is very different. But there  is one tool that we can use to verify.

[09:57] I'll cut out and remove a portion of  each of the vapor chambers and use an XRF   analyzer. This tool determines the elemental  composition of materials. And on top of the   $5,000 Agent Q's vapor chamber, we only  see iron and chromium. While inside the  

[10:12] Red Magic Gold Saga, we see the same  iron and chromium with a spattering of   real gold plating. The vapor chambers are  physically made with the same material,   but only Red Magic has real gold on the outside.  It's safe to believe your eyeballs on this one.

[10:26] The final verdict is that the Agent Q  has no more gold inside than any other   regular iPhone or Android. And the only  truly valuable thing we found inside of   this phone is the knowledge that you can't  trust everything you read on the internet.

[10:40] Thanks for letting me borrow  your $5,380 smartphone,   Marquez. I did forget to ask,  though: did you want it back? Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.