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Hello friends! Welcome in Installer #45, your guide to the best and Verge– the best thing in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry, I love productivity apps so much, and you can also read all the back issues on Installer Homepage.)

I’m back from a few days off, feeling rested and sunburned and ready to rumble. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes! I’ve been reading this week Made for love and stories about AI gamers and AI musicians and Ferrari electric carsi look Turning pointreplacing my weather app with Lazy time, mad at Ira Glass for listen to podcasts at 2x speedand pour out all my feelings to Point AI bot.

Plus, I’ve got a new phone for you, a new smart ring, a new/old podcast compilation, a sci-fi show that everyone seems to like, a nice update to a great recipe app, and an unusual new AI capsule for you to check out. There’s a lot going on in mid-July! Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer are your ideas and advice. What are you currently doing? What should everyone else be reading/watching/playing/eating/downloading/stocking for the winter? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy it Installertell them to subscribe here.)

• The CMF 1 phone. A nice-looking, long-lasting Android phone for $200? With an OLED screen and removable back panels and a bunch of really cool accessories, one of which is a stand? Yes please. In orange, of course.
• The Samsung Galaxy Ring. I’m still a fan of Samsung’s Fold and Flip phones, even though the new models are much the same and even more expensive. But I’m most excited about the Galaxy Ring, which seems to have pretty much nailed down the smart ring hardware — and even has some interesting ideas for gesture control.
• “The Diggnation Reunion Part 1.” If you’re a techie of a certain age, there’s a good chance you grew up watching Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht drink and make jokes about technology while sitting on the couch. Watching the boys reunite was a delightful blast from the past. And there is a second parttoo!
• Delta 1.6. Delta game emulation is on the iPad! I’m not really sure how much I’ll use this considering how many of my retro games are on an iPhone with a Backbone controller. But this update, with a bigger screen and support for multiple games at once, sounds pretty cool.
• Amazon’s new Echo Spot. To me, it’s just the right balance of things for an Alexa speaker. It’s small, costs $45 (so far), has a touchscreen but no camera, and is the right size for a nightstand. I keep vowing to leave my phone out of my bedroom and maybe this will replace it.
• Sunny. A woman loses her husband but gets a robot from his tech company to help her survive. A strangeness ensues. Such a good premise! And by all accounts, this show continues the streak of great sci-fi stuff on Apple TV Plus. I’ll definitely catch up before episode 3 drops on Wednesday.
• Openvibe. Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Nostr all in one timeline in one app. It’s basically a clever hack, not the interconnected social universe of my dreams, but it’s a pretty good hack! And I like that it basically hides which network people are using; it’s just people, in a timeline.
• pestle. I love a good recipe app. I mostly use Crouton and Mela, but Pestle’s new ability to import recipes from Instagram Reels is pretty cool. Just drop the link, give it a name, and it will turn the video into a bunch of ingredients and steps.

A million years ago I was an intern at wired, and one of the stories I got to help on was this wild thing where a writer had decided to disappear completely and see if the internet could find him. The story turned out to be great, and the writer was Evan Ratliff, who has been one of my favorite journalists ever since. He is a co-founder The atavist Magazine and I did a lot of great work there, I created the great Persona podcast and until recently was one of the co-hosts of Long form, the journalism podcast I’ve always dreamed of being invited to one day. alas

Evan now has a new podcast called Shell game, in which he uses an AI clone of his voice to cause all kinds of chaos in his own life. It’s the first episode great, and I’m very excited for what’s next. I asked Evan to share his home screen with us to see if there were any podcasting tricks I could steal from him and to see how AI his life has become.

Here’s Evan’s home screen plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 13 Mini.

The wallpaper: The one I sent here is my cat Henry, an 18-year-old icon who was once a mini-celebrity on Vine and is the sweetest creature on earth. (It’s usually my kids, but I don’t allow photos of them on the open internet.)

Applications: Google Maps, Photos, Apple Notes, Slack, Settings, Clock, Phone, WhatsApp, Signal, Freedom, Google Translate, CloudBeats, Scrivener, Instapaper, Spotify, TuneIn, Libby, Gmail, Google Calendar, Messages, Brave.

My home screen rules are no social media, no news. I’m a certified news junkie, but at least I want this to be a little out of sight. And no Twitter app on the phone. As for some applications:

• children [group]: Something they don’t tell you about parenting in the 2020s is how many school, camp, and bus apps you’re forced to acquire and check.
• Ships / Planes: The only AR apps I’ve ever used. I feel like a magician just pointing Flightradar24 in heaven or MarineTraffic at sea to see where ships and planes come and go. My father studied logistics and it made me curious about how things get from place to place.
• CloudBeats: Essential for listening to podcast drafts while running and walking around; with Shell game in production, sometimes I’m on this thing for hours a day.
• Libby: Any New Yorker who doesn’t have it is missing out. You can check out eBooks and audiobooks from the library and listen to them right here!
• Instapaper: Anyone else still using Instapaper? I don’t even know who owns this thing anymore. But it’s still how I read long stuff I’ve saved.

I also asked Evan to share a few things that are on his mind right now. Here’s what he shared:

• Moss. I made a moss garden this year and am interested in all things moss related. Websites on how to maintain it and its amazing properties, moss gurus (eg. Mosin Annie). Moss!
• The new Charlie Crockett album. Just a genius songwriter and singer with an amazing story. Perfect listening while walking on your moss (which you should).
• I’m revising right now The Braindead megaphonea collection of essays by George Saunders, parts of which feel very much Shell game– important to me.
• My sister-in-law, who is 50 times more culturally aware than I am, turned us on to this British comedy show, Boss. The perfect decompression after a day working alongside your AI doppelganger.

here’s what Installer community is in this week. I also want to know what you’re up to right now! Email installer@theverge.com or send me a message on Signal — @davidpierce.11 ​​— with your recommendations for anything and we’ll feature some of our favorites each week. For even more great recommendations, check out the answers to this post in threads.

“I just wanted to share an app that (and this is a shock to me) no one knows about. Is called Elegant inbox. The idea is very simple: it allows you to create your own inbox just for newsletters. I hate reading newsletters in my personal Gmail inbox and this is a very convenient solution to my problem.” – Dennis

“I just binged all six episodes on Netflix Supacell. This is like heroes but darker, set in South London, with an almost entirely black cast and work by Rappman. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year, and such a fresh show in a genre that’s basically been monopolized by Marvel.” – Guillerme

“I’m reading right now The singularity is closer by Ray Kurzweil. We are lucky to see human evolution in real time.” – Matthew

“Ball’s Best Drafts Fantasy for outsiders. What was once a niche version of fantasy football is now an (absurdly?) popular sports betting format where players put together an entire team in an hour or less and then compete against strangers. It’s kind of like trying to win March Madness but making a fantasy football roster.” – Noah

“Using VR exercise tracker app created by VR Health Institute. They use science-backed VR activity measurement to help you measure your VR workouts. Connects to Apple Watch and other Bluetooth fitness devices.” – Dan

“As a new dad, Dungeons & Daddies resonates with me in a special way. This (self-described non-BDSM) podcast gives it a fun twist D&D, following four dads navigating a fantasy realm to rescue their lost sons. It made me laugh more than a long time and made me cry more than once. I’ve watched the first season three times now (that’s over 180 hours of listening) and now I’m re-listening to the second season.” – Mark

“I just bought a Boox Go 10.3 E Ink tablet and I really enjoy it. Very slim, nice design, no front light and pretty great for typing when needed. It’s meant more as a competitor to the Remarkable 2 (i.e. a note-taking device), but I enjoy reading articles through Omnivore.” – Patrick

“I recently started reading a book called Deep work by Cal Newport on the benefits of taking time to focus on a task with minimal distraction. My attention span, along with many others in recent years, has been wiped out, so I picked up this book to try and repair my ability to focus deeply.” – Dave

“Apple PenLite: iPad before iPad.” I’ve been watching Colin Holter’s channel for a few years and really like his stuff, but this video is really something different for him. He interviewed several former Apple employees and I thought it was really well done. I was very young during the time period in question, so I don’t remember news about these things, but it was so interesting to get that perspective from the engineers and product managers working at Apple at the time.” – Ian

I truly believe that “Each frame is a picture” is the best YouTube series of all time. If you haven’t seen them, watch them all. (If you’re only watching one, watch that of Edgar Wright. Or David Fincher’s. Or that of the sound of the Marvel movies. Just watch them all!) So when the channel released its first video in seven years — short trailer for a new limited series and a short film—I immediately started refreshing the page every 10 minutes and re-watching every single thing on the channel all over again. It’s like going to warp speed film school and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Chairs, you all! Chairs!