Luxury phone brand VERTU ALPHAFOLD is the company’s latest attempt to stay relevant in the smartphone era, and this time it’s doing it with a book-style foldable phone aimed at executives and premium buyers. The new model starts at 39,800 yuan and went on sale on May 28.
Vertu built its name on jewel-studded and leather-backed devices with extremely high price tags. The brand later struggled through bankruptcy and a difficult transition into modern smartphones, releasing only a limited number of new models over the past decade. Its previous launch was a high-end clamshell device powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite and priced at about $7,300. Now the company is shifting to a new form factor with ALPHAFOLD.
The central pitch here isn’t just materials or status. Vertu says the new phone is designed for the “AI era” and places its biggest bet on a built-in AI agent called Hermes. Unlike more basic smartphone assistants, Hermes is described as a system-level agent that can break down tasks, coordinate work across apps, keep long-term memory, and call tools when needed.
According to the official description, Hermes can directly access the phone’s calendar, mail, contacts, meeting notes, and third-party services to carry out more complicated requests. Vertu says users can issue natural-language instructions for travel planning, meeting coordination, and related workflows, allowing the system to handle scheduling, information syncing, and team collaboration instead of stopping at simple Q&A or text generation.
Vertu is also pushing enterprise connectivity as a major selling point. The company describes a “Phone-to-ERP” concept that would let the handset connect to ERP, CRM, approval, inventory, finance, and business analysis systems. In theory, that would let users ask for business operating data in natural language and receive AI-generated analysis and follow-up tasks.
The company says private data is processed locally on the device, while enterprise workflows follow user-defined settings and connect only to authorized apps. It also says high-risk actions such as transfers and role assignments would still require manual confirmation before anything is executed.
Beyond productivity, the phone can also tie into Vertu’s concierge service for custom requests such as private jet bookings or access to premium events.
On the hardware side, the phone uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor rather than the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. It features an 8.05-inch inner display and a 6.53-inch outer screen, both using LTPO OLED panels with 120Hz refresh rates. Power comes from a 6,500mAh silicon-carbon battery with support for 68W wired charging.
The rear camera setup includes a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide camera, and a comparatively modest 5MP telephoto lens. For the exterior, Vertu offers multiple rare leather back finishes, a titanium mid-frame, and a branded decorative pattern on the rear frame. The company also says the hinge uses titanium and carbon-fiber reinforcement and is rated for 650,000 folds. When closed, the fold is said to take on a teardrop shape to reduce visible creasing.
Whether buyers will see it as a real productivity device or mostly a status product remains to be seen, but VERTU ALPHAFOLD clearly wants to position itself as a luxury foldable phone with deeper business tooling and a more ambitious built-in AI agent than what most mainstream phones currently offer.
