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What does $5,400 get you with a phone?
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00:00Okay, this is a $5,400 smartphone from a company called Virtu.
00:05And it is so luxury that I can just press this rupee button
00:09and be immediately connected to a personal concierge who will try to solve my every need.
00:13Are you a real person?
00:16Virtu is a fascinating brand.
00:18Because unlike every other luxury phone company who just takes an iPhone and covers it in gold,
00:22this is its own piece of tech designed for the ballers of the world.
00:26And it seems super legit.
00:27It's a British brand that was started by Nokia.
00:30Their official social media accounts hit hundreds of millions of real views.
00:34They sell in Harrods, which is a really well-established uber luxury department store in the UK.
00:38I even took a trip myself just to make sure.
00:41And there they were.
00:42Oh, they just got back to me.
00:43The concierge service is provided entirely by real professionals.
00:46Okay, can you book me a hotel in London?
00:51Send.
00:52This seems amazing.
00:54But there's something not right here.
00:56There is something very odd going on with this Virtu company.
01:00And so we've gotten our hands on all the key Virtu products to get to the bottom of it.
01:05So that starts with probably the plushest packaging I've ever seen come with a tech product.
01:11Inside of which is their $4,300 smartwatch.
01:14Then we've got their $6,300 Meta Virtu 2 smartphone.
01:27Their $7,940 flip phone, the Virtu Quantum.
01:31All finished off with their main new flagship phone, the Agent Q, that I showed you a minute ago.
01:38And all of these products have extremely beautiful presentation.
01:41They're just slightly strange.
01:43Like in this bottom box, we have a drawer which contains this tiny cable and a pouch for it.
01:47But they're just sitting there, loose inside.
01:50Their other phones had chargers.
01:51This one didn't.
01:52And then above that is an envelope with a big, chunky manual.
01:57But it's very interesting that the first language is Arabic.
01:59For a phone brand that has England literally as part of their name.
02:03Maybe they sell more in Arab countries?
02:05And then the phone itself comes in its own completely separate, very fancy compartment.
02:17Okay, they got back to me.
02:18They said, it's my pleasure to assist you.
02:20May I know your preferred check-in date?
02:22I want to make this specifically complex.
02:24Check-in, December 25th.
02:26Christmas, one of the busiest days of the year.
02:28Room that has a view of the London eye.
02:31So this is going to absolutely require human involvement.
02:34And then a receptionist that can speak Hindi.
02:40Whoa, they just responded.
02:42Got it.
02:43Well, while that's happening, I got to say, when I first saw these online, I thought they
02:47look like they would feel cheap.
02:49But I can confirm they don't.
02:51Every single one of these products is about 50% heavier than they look, thanks to hundreds
02:55of stainless steel components that are all clearly designed to flex the craftsmanship
02:59that's gone into them with this hand-assembled aesthetic that has as many screws and mechanical
03:03pieces as possible.
03:05It has helped them to achieve their very clear objective, which is to make the iPhone look
03:09relatively plain by comparison.
03:11And it is making me feel like a freaking Bond villain with things like this hidden mechanism
03:15on the back.
03:15You push into the middle screws from the sides to pop out not one, but two physical SIM card
03:21trays that are completely tool-less.
03:23Which is actually such a big improvement from fiddling around with the SIM ejector.
03:26Okay, I forgot to give him the checkout date, so we'll say two days later, 27th.
03:30And then he said, because we need to verify both the room view and the availability of
03:34Hindi-speaking reception staff, it will take approximately 20 minutes.
03:39That's really fast.
03:41And I can see the appeal of the software too.
03:42Like the screen lock animation is absolutely sick.
03:45There's a whole bunch of different themes.
03:47There's Prada and Louis Vuitton and Hermes.
03:50It's hard to tell if they're genuine or not.
03:51But if Virtu has legitimately gotten all of these extremely high-end brands on board,
03:56fair play to them.
03:57And I've never seen a volume up and down animation like this.
04:00Although, horrible, worry, vibration, motor sound.
04:05And that's kind of the issue too.
04:06Every time I notice that something is great, I notice something else is terrible.
04:10Like the speakers.
04:12So, this is the iPhone.
04:18And this is Virtu's latest and greatest.
04:21Very shocking.
04:26Or the sheer inconsistency of having the sharpest, most angular phone body that I've ever used,
04:31but then paired with the most rounded-looking display that makes the end result feel like
04:35an afterthought.
04:35Or the watch.
04:36This thing is so weighty.
04:38And materially, it does feel like it would nicely match your gold-plated supercar.
04:43But when I use it, the main thing that I see is just the fact that the display is not
04:46very high resolution.
04:47So, all of these supposedly luxury watch faces just look a bit soft and not convincingly
04:53like real watch faces.
04:55Plus, the crown is not very consistent at picking up when you're scrolling.
04:58And there's lots of apps where text doesn't feel properly formatted.
05:01Also, I'm not being funny, but where is the time?
05:04Or just the fact that this flip phone, intricately hand-assembled as it may be, with extra fancy
05:09cover screen customization befitting of its price, has a hinge that makes a concerning
05:14amount of noise when you open and close it.
05:16Let's see what Arthur has cooked up.
05:18Wait, what?
05:19They actually found a hotel room that has the London eye perfectly framed in the middle of
05:24the window to fill the entire view.
05:27It's so perfect.
05:28It almost makes me think they've AI generated it.
05:31But they are saying to me, I can book this room right now.
05:33It's an executive studio, two nights, £580.
05:36I'm actually curious, though.
05:38That £580, is that the same less or more than what I would pay if I booked it myself?
05:43Oh, that's the room.
05:44So it's real.
05:45But this is £409 per night, which means this would cost me £818 to book on the site.
05:50Maybe they're using another site like Booking.com.
05:52And then because this is the Opera browser, our sponsor, I can just drag one tab into another
05:56to instantly split screen them.
05:57Executive Studio City View.
05:59Wait, so they charge exactly £818 too.
06:03Book, please.
06:04Booking name, Richard Astley.
06:07Send.
06:08And now they want me to pay them on their PayPal account.
06:11That feels like such a Facebook marketplace thing to ask.
06:14Send money, £580.
06:17Add note.
06:18Thank you, Arthur.
06:19Okay, and now I guess I just take a photo and we send it to him.
06:24What a strange way of doing things in 2025.
06:26But I've got to say, I've never seen anything like this concierge feature before.
06:29And if it has actually just saved me hundreds of pounds, then that's kind of insane.
06:33Although, this is actually so unsettling.
06:36So you've got six different people that you can chat to.
06:38There's Arthur, Fiona, Samuel, Eleanor, Clara, and then Amber.
06:43These aren't real.
06:44Those are AI generated images.
06:45Can we expand to see more?
06:48Oh.
06:48Oh my God, yeah.
06:50That cannot be a real person.
06:52I mean, whose room looks like this?
06:53Chat with someone else, Fiona.
06:56This is the same chat.
06:58So how is it possible that they're real people if whoever you select has the same set of messages?
07:06It's got to be AI.
07:07But then they're straight up telling me that they are real people.
07:09They seem to be texting like real people.
07:12And they're doing real people things like taking my money.
07:15I have an idea.
07:17How may I help you?
07:19I just wanted to check.
07:20Has a booking been made for me?
07:22The name is Richard Astley.
07:2425th of December till the 27th of December, correct?
07:28That is correct.
07:29Yes.
07:30How was that booking made?
07:31Was it made over the phone?
07:32Over the website.
07:33Website.
07:34Okay.
07:34Do you have a contact detail for who actually made the booking?
07:38No, I do not.
07:40So the booking is legit.
07:41And I don't think an AI alone could have done all that.
07:44So there must be a person involved.
07:46But then it's not for this person.
07:48So who is it?
07:50Okay.
07:51I think I've got it.
07:52But it's really strange.
07:54So I was in the process of booking another hotel using one of the other Virtu phones.
07:58The concierge had recommended one and we got to the stage where all the details were essentially
08:02put together into one summarized message for me to confirm.
08:06Okay.
08:06Fine.
08:07But then, bizarrely, they actually got back to me with a photo of the room that I was
08:10about to book.
08:11And they told me not to book it because it would be a bunk bed situation that wouldn't
08:15be comfortable.
08:16That feels smarter than any AI I've interacted with.
08:19But this is the crazy bit.
08:20They then recommended a different hotel, which they said they could get to me for £170.
08:24So I paid the money.
08:26But then I got this message.
08:27While we were in the process of verifying your payment, the final room at the previous
08:30property was regrettably taken.
08:32And I thought, oh, okay, this is it.
08:33This is where I find out I've been scammed and my money has actually been taken anyway.
08:37But instead, they upgraded me to the much higher end Waldorf Hilton Hotel without me
08:42paying an extra penny.
08:43I checked the room rate online and this Waldorf hotel would have cost me £527 a night.
08:49And I've got the booking receipt from the hotel here.
08:51I can see that Virtu paid them in Chinese yuan, by the way, which is a little odd for a company
08:56with England in their name.
08:57But the point is, what they paid is the full price on my behalf, but without charging me
09:02any extra.
09:02So it looks like when you first message about anything, you're talking to AI.
09:05So up until this message, where all the details of my ask were in one place, all AI.
09:10But then this is the point where that seemingly got handed over to a real person in China,
09:14who checked what I was about to book, realized the bunk bed red flag, and then stayed with
09:19me until it was completely sorted.
09:20So everything about the way this concierge works feels so shady, but it does seem to
09:26pull through.
09:27I even asked it to organize me a trip to Korea.
09:29And in 24 hours, they came back with a full 17-page Virtu-branded PDF of all the stuff
09:35to do that even has a detailed budget breakdown and factors in my peanut allergy.
09:39It's just, how much can you trust a company who makes a website that looks like this?
09:44It might look pretty on the surface, but there are some very fundamental problems with it.
09:48And look at this, I've collected them all into one neat tab island that I can just collapse
09:52like this.
09:53So for starters, I can't see a single product photo that actually looks real.
09:57You can just tell from the lighting and the shadows that these have been edited in, which
10:01to me implies that there aren't actually a lot of people physically involved with these
10:06products.
10:07A little bit dodgy, but okay.
10:08I've got one of their guides over here, and I can't believe what I am reading.
10:13This is a post on the official Virtu website, which talks about the top seven high-performance
10:18flip phones.
10:19I mean, just for starters, it says the best overall phone is the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip
10:247 Ultra, a smartphone that is not theirs and also doesn't exist.
10:30It could not be clearer that this is just AI-generated slop.
10:33They probably made hundreds of pages like this, designed with the sole purpose to just create
10:37more opportunities for people browsing the internet to stumble across Virtu.
10:41But the fact that this company is in Harrods, on the same floor as very established luxury
10:46brands and, funnily enough, also the over $100,000 Luve headphones that we just featured
10:53in Luxury Tech, plus the fact that Virtu themselves are selling phones all the way up to $100,000
10:58and beyond.
10:59Yeah, I only got the base models.
11:01The fact that this company is stooping to that level is mind-blowing to me.
11:06And it really doesn't end, to be honest.
11:07There's a section here which shows the camera slider in action.
11:10But it's just so clearly faked.
11:13Like, between 0.4x and 1x, there should be a massive difference in magnification, but
11:17there just isn't.
11:19Or, like, between 1x and 5x, that is very clearly not 5x zoom.
11:23They've just taken one very high-resolution photo that they are punching in and out of,
11:28but not even by the right amount.
11:30Intrusive thoughts are getting the better of me.
11:32Let's say we reverse image search that photo.
11:35Did they even take it?
11:35Oh, it's on Unsplash.
11:37Taken by a photographer on a Canon EOS R6.
11:41This is not just sloppy.
11:42This is fishy, right?
11:44And also just half the stuff they write in their promo materials, it doesn't make any
11:47sense.
11:48Quantum coating weaves stardust, folds in hand holds universe.
11:53It's really making me feel like this is not as big of a team as the company wants you
11:57to believe.
11:58The customer service number, plus 86.
12:00That's China.
12:01And then the head office is in Hong Kong.
12:04The only other thing I'm wondering is there's a personal concierge phone number on the phone.
12:08That's the same as the customer service number.
12:10Also, China.
12:14Started to make sense why they paid the hotel in Yuan.
12:17This is it.
12:19I think we've got to the crux of it.
12:21So Virtu Now is a very different company to the Virtu that first started.
12:25So they were actually founded as a subsidiary of Nokia.
12:28They were making ultra high-end phones handcrafted in Britain.
12:31But then Nokia sold them.
12:32Virtu got sold to a Swedish private equity group, then sold to Hong Kong-based Golden
12:36Holdings in 2015, then sold to a Turkish businessman in 2017, only for the company to then run into
12:42some pretty serious financial problems.
12:44I've got a report right here from the Telegraph that says Virtu had an accounting deficit of
12:48128 million in 2017.
12:50That led to all of their 200 UK staff being laid off, and then the closure, and then later
12:55demolishing of that UK factory.
12:58No way.
13:01We're here.
13:01I'm literally standing at the exact spot where that factory used to be, and it's an Aldi.
13:07I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they aren't selling Virtu phones in there.
13:12So everyone thought this company was dead forever, only for it to then magically reappear a year
13:17later in 2018.
13:18Same brand, but quietly in the background, seemingly a new company with a different director, a different
13:24set of accounts, and now Hong Kong-slash-China-based operations, as opposed to this lovely establishment
13:30in Church Crookham in the middle of England.
13:32And also, clearly, a brand new strategy for social media.
13:36You know, the only way I even realized Virtu was back is because this TikTok popped up
13:43completely unprompted on my feed.
13:45There's three people who have Virtu phones, it's one person who has an iPhone, and then
13:48they just throw the iPhone away.
13:51Great burn, bro.
13:51This video has over 170 million views.
13:55There's another one over here, 36 million views.
13:58It's just an unboxing of their phone.
14:00But then, doesn't it seem a little bit weird that this is an uber-luxury brand that isn't
14:04verified, by the way, and has very clear grammar errors in the bio?
14:08Like, they don't seem to understand when to use a comma and when to use capital letters.
14:13And the fact that they're using emojis to direct you to where to go for special offers,
14:16it comes across like the kind of company that writes their invoices in Comic Sans.
14:21They've got a camera test here.
14:22When you realize your $1,000 iPhone, it looks like a toy next to Virtu.
14:26That's an easy one to test.
14:28Okay, same photo on both.
14:30Oh, well, they were right about the toy thing.
14:31It's just not the iPhone.
14:33My teeth blend together on the Virtu.
14:35Now, the phones do do some pretty interesting AI camera things.
14:38Like, you can pull up any image and use text to change things in that image.
14:41And you can even convert an image into a video with seemingly no guardrails, even when you're
14:47using it for human subjects, too.
14:48But the other thing I noticed while messing around with the camera is that this app looks
14:52very familiar.
14:53This is the Virtu camera app.
14:55And this is the Chinese phone maker ZTE's camera app.
14:58And this makes a lot of sense.
15:01A phone company that now has its operations in China feels like a small team, not nearly
15:05enough to develop an entire Android skin from scratch.
15:07So instead, licenses the Android skin from another company that is still niche enough that it wouldn't
15:12be obvious who they're copying from.
15:14And niche enough that they'd be willing to do so.
15:17It turns out, when you start looking for it, you can see traces of ZTE all over these
15:21devices.
15:22Virtu have tried to hide them.
15:23Like, if you download a device info app, it will tell you that the manufacturer is Virtu.
15:27But when you dig deep, if you go into the legal documents or you find the actual names of
15:31the processes running in the background, the evidence is there.
15:34The good news is that there is no ZTE device that exactly matches all the hardware specs of
15:38any of these phones.
15:39So what they haven't done is just taken a ZTE phone and stuck some leather on it.
15:43The bad news is that what they've done is also not that far off there.
15:47Because this Virtu Quantum, for example, when you look closely, it starts to resemble the
15:50ZTE Nubia Flip 2, a remarkable amount.
15:54It's got the same camera layout.
15:55It's got the same cover screen size.
15:56And yeah, this Virtu has a much more powerful Snapdragon chip than the MediaTek one in the
16:00Nubia.
16:01Then I was just curious.
16:02So I delved into the device info on this and 4,325 milliamp hour battery on this Virtu.
16:08That is such a specific, unique number.
16:11And it is also exactly what ZTE has on their Flip 2.
16:14So this isn't exactly a let's take a ZTE and stick a Virtu logo on top, but it is a let's
16:20look at all of the available ZTE parts and pick and choose the ones we want for the Virtu,
16:25which ultimately makes all of these a very weird set of products.
16:28You're paying five times the price of a top-end flagship for a phone experience that's worth
16:33about half of one, a website experience worth, let's just say, negative points, but then
16:37a concierge service that is actually pretty interesting.
16:41It's just, you're effectively paying so much excess just for what will probably end up
16:45as two days worth of someone's admin time that you might as well just book that hotel
16:50yourself.
16:51And to do that, I've actually got a separate workspace on my Opera browser.
16:54So if you look at the top right now, this is all my work tabs.
16:57Then the second I decide I'm done, I click travel and it all disappears.
17:00So link below to download the Opera browser for free.
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