Tom Merritt on foldable phones, favorite apps & XREAL glasses

Jul 27, 2025

🎙️ TOM MERRITT INTERVIEW – TECH JOURNALIST & HOST OF DAILY TECH NEWS SHOW

Longevity & consistency
- “We’ve been doing it 11 years now… It’s been going great.”
- Still co-hosting with Sarah Lane and producer Roger Chang.
On tech news flow
- “I never feel like it’s slow. There’s always more than I have time to talk about.”

Carries both Android and iPhone
- “I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max and a Pixel Fold—the original.”
- Uses the Pixel Fold mostly for travel and portable video editing.
Why foldables work for him
- “The book-style foldable fills the spot my old Nexus 7 used to.”
- “I don’t even see the crease anymore.”
His wife’s take on flip phones
- “My wife has the Galaxy Flip and loves it—it folds small but opens to full phone size.”

Best for content creators
- “The Flip actually does have utility—it can stand on its own and shoot with the good cameras.”
Tom agrees
- “Yeah, the fact that it’s a built-in tripod is super useful for video or selfies.”

Most-used app behind Messages and Safari
- “I swear by Feedly. It’s the first thing I open every day.”
- “I’ve got sections for tech, sports, music, personal blogs… It organizes my world.”
Still useful in a post-Google Reader world
- “They’ve done a great job keeping it relevant—you can even pull in X or BlueSky feeds.”

Posts to multiple networks
- “OpenVibe lets me cross-post to BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, even Nostr.”
- “It doesn’t work on X anymore since they shut the API, but it’s gotten a lot more reliable.”
Free & open source
- “Great for people who want one place to write a post and send it everywhere.”

Personal use case
- “This morning, I watched Bob’s Burgers in the backyard while playing with my dog.”
How they work
- “They’re sunglasses with screens. You plug them into your phone or laptop via USB-C and they mirror the display.”
Movie viewing
- “You get a big 200-inch floating screen. I watched 3–4 episodes of Squid Game back to back.”
- “It was comfortable for a movie or two, but I started to feel fatigue after that.”
For work
- “They’re great as a second screen. I could look down at my keyboard while having a full monitor above me.”
Comparison to VR headsets
- “They’re way simpler—no setup, no heavy gear. Just plug in and go.”
- “You get fewer weird looks than if you wore a Quest on your head.”

Model-dependent
- “The ones I use, the Xreal Pro, start at $699.”
- “Older models go for as low as $299, but have lower resolution.”