Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 137, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy phone season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Google Zero and armored cars for rich people, watching a lot of That’s a Bad Idea videos now that YouTube knows my love for Curry Barker, testing the new 2Do redesign for my tasks, watching this excellent doc about the legendary designer Susan Kare, obsessing over every sound on the Jauffre’s Sounds TikTok, sending myself lockscreen notes with the new Mononote app, and trying to vibe-code a searchable archive of everything that’s ever been in Installer. I think we’re gonna need more tokens.
I also have for you a couple of exciting new ideas about phones, a tiny e-reader you might love, a fun way into the Linux world, and much more. Let’s do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / plugging into a generator this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. I haven’t held this new wide foldable yet, but almost everyone who does seems to immediately think it’s the right shape and size. Yes, it’s still twice the price it needs to be to really be competitive, but I think Samsung is finally starting to make a compelling argument for foldables. Also: love the purple.
- Tagline. Fun new game from the folks at Merriam-Webster in which you have to solve three puzzles with words made from the same seven letters. It is tough! It’s also a perfect middle ground between word games and trivia games, and I’m very much enjoying failing at it every day.
- The Xteink X4 Pro. Tiny e-readers are officially a thing. (Even Boox is making one!) I could take or leave the touchscreen on the new $99 model, but the built-in light makes it immediately the best of the bunch. I cannot believe how many people tell me they love these little devices.
- “Technically Competent: Installing Linux.” I love the McElroy family (MBMBAM forever), but I did not expect to be here appreciating their tech prowess! But this is a fun, funny video that is also a helpful and approachable intro to the Linux world. It’s nice to know dongles break for everyone, you know?
- The Dink. Is this recommendation completely biased by my love for Jake Johnson and New Girl? Very much so. But I do think pickleball culture is a perfect setting for jokes, and boy are there not enough 100-minute comedy movies out there now. I’m in on this one.
- Splatoon Raiders. The Splatoon aesthetic, with paintball fights and hyper-colored everything, is very much my thing. Online team-based shooters… aren’t, really. This one is much more single-player, much lower-stakes, and much more my speed.
- “It’s been a wild year.” I’ve really enjoyed C. Scott Brown’s YouTube channel, and really appreciated his raw take on his first year as a YouTuber. Lots of real talk about how hard it is to make it as a creator, the ups and downs of the life, and the deep strangeness of life at the mercy of YouTube.
- The Peak Design Field Bracket. A really clever camera accessory from a company that knows how to make ’em. Between the two models, it supports most cameras, and in addition to more easy vertical shooting it also adds Find My compatibility, new straps, and ways to add even more accessories. I’ve been starting to slowly shop for a new DSLR, and this makes me want a new one to play with ASAP.
- Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. The Avatar lore is so deep that this new movie apparently has a whole “Previously On” sequence at the beginning! Love that. The consensus for this one seems to be something along the lines of “looks great, meh story,” which means it’ll probably at least be a good time.
I’ve been following the journey of the Light Phone since the very beginning. The Light Flip, which the company announced this week, looks like both its best idea and its best product yet. It’s a beautiful, $299 block of a minimalist flip phone, designed not to replace your phone but just to convince you to leave it at home from time to time. It’s not shipping until early next year, but I’m getting on the preorder list as soon as I can. I think Light may have finally nailed it.
To mark the launch, I asked Kai Tang, Light’s CEO and cofounder, to share his homescreen with us. I told him I knew he was hiding a smartphone somewhere, and that I wanted to see it. He swears he’s not, he’s all in on the Light Phone life, and sent his homescreen in the smallest image file I’ve ever received. Here it is, plus some info on how Kai’s device is set up:
The phone: A Light Phone III.
The wallpaper: There is no wallpaper or background setting on the Light Phone III. So it’s either matte black or light grey. I have it in black. I like my phone visually muted.
The apps: Phone, Alarm, Weather, Directions, Music, Language.
Most of the tools on my phones are pretty straightforward: phone for calls and texts, directions / maps, music, etc. The “Language” tool is a customized tool we created for Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar’s pgLang back in 2023. The limited edition Light Phones that have this tool preinstalled sold out in the first few hours, which was so exciting. We are also big fans of their music. The tool is basically an Eight Ball tool but named “Language.” You can shake the phone for a random answer, i.e., “ask again, but less aggressive,” “not much doubt,” or “I’d rather not say.”
It’s not available publicly, but it was almost sentimental for me from that collaboration three years ago, so I kept it on my homescreen.
I also asked Kai to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- NASA’s public image and video library! I can spend hours looking at those and pondering how insignificant and at the same time magical we are here on this spinning/flying ball called Earth.
- I also joined a local astronomy club called Rockland Astronomy Club, a non-profit astronomy education organization. I found them while I was trying to find a real dark site near NYC to stargaze, and they are only a few hours’ drive away from the city! Although I wish I had more time to go to their events.
- I saw Hamilton, one of the best Broadway shows, and I loved it.
- And lastly, I have been enjoying the Lincoln Center’s “Summer For The City” $5 pay-as-you-wish Orchestra events. Highly recommended!
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email [email protected] or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“The Incident at Galley House was released last week and I finished it yesterday. It’s a brilliantly voice-acted, lushly-illustrated remake of last year’s Type Help, one of the best deduction games I’ve ever played.” — Andy
“The Hawk on Netflix. Will Ferrell is like a comfort hug for a millennial 😂” — Tyler
“The New Guys audiobook is a delightful author-read book about the Shuttle series of astronauts. I cannot recommend it enough as a sequel to A Man on the Moon.” — James
“My wife and I have been playing Unrailed on Switch Online with her sister and husband… it’s like Overcooked but more laid back.” — Dan
“The Boroughs is a really cool show starring an older cast and it’s very cool to see a hip, relevant sci-fi show led by an older cast, touching on really relevant social topics. It’s fantastic so far.” — Shane
“The App Store is full of great film-simulation camera apps, but those kinds of apps on Android are sketchy garbage that take bad photos. Not Candela Camera, though! It properly uses the Android camera API with high-quality film simulation, built-in & imported LUTs, and it’s $5 for a lifetime license!” — Evancito
“Reading Dead Hand Rule by Max Gladstone. Necromantic lawyers, magic capitalism, it’s a real vibe. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve enjoyed every book he’s written in the setting.” — Vernacular Ham
“Open Minis. After reading Federico Viticci’s article, I immediately installed it and linked it to Claude. Watching it do agentic things ON MY PHONE is mesmerizing. I’m an iOS-first kind of person, and being able to describe a complicated Home Assistant automation, from my phone, and watch it figure out the APIs, is truly next level.” — Burns
“I recently started playing some video games again. I was doing some Game Boy emulation. Touch controls kinda stink, so I grabbed a used Backbone Pro and was instantly a convert. The experience is great and is a great way to turn any phone into a top-tier game console.” — Tanner
Last week, when we talked about reading setups, I ended by asking you for tips on dealing with newsletters. I got a bunch, but the vast majority of them amounted to something like: “I just get them in my email and deal with it.” Fair enough! Same, honestly. But there is one tool I heard about a few times. It’s called Kill the Newsletter. It gives you an email address with which to subscribe to newsletters, and then dumps everything sent to that address into a feed you can read anywhere. Pipe that feed into an RSS reader, show it to your favorite AI chatbot, do with it all as you please! If I were starting a newsletter habit now, this is exactly what I’d start with. Let me know if you use it, or have any other great newslettering tips!
