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Google's Schmidt admits he has an iPhone (and the battery's not so good)

Technically Incorrect: Speaking in Amsterdam, the executive chairman of Google's holding company reveals he has more than one phone. And one of them is made by Apple.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt, iPhone user.

Stephanie Pilick/dpa/Corbis

Please try to imagine Steve Jobs wandering around with a Samsung Galaxy in his pocket.

Somehow, it's hard.

Yet at Google, they claim to be a touch less stringent about these things.

Take Google holding company Alphabet's executive chairman Eric Schmidt. For years, he's been proudly admitting that he has an adoration for his BlackBerry.

However, as CNBC reports, he's now confessed to something far more heinous, should you be of the Android persuasion.

Yes, Schmidt has an iPhone.

He reassured the audience at Amsterdam's Startup Europe Fest that he also has a Samsung Galaxy S7.

"The Samsung S7 is better, has a better battery. Are we clear?" he said. "And to those of you who are iPhone users, I'm right."

They do so love to be right in Googleworld.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

How odd, though, that Schmidt uses a Samsung rather than, say, a phone made by Google. Perhaps he doesn't trust the quality.

Perhaps, too, Schmidt has a certain nostalgia for the years in which he sat on Apple's board, so he keeps an iPhone to remind him of those good old days.

It seems, though, that the majority of the audience were iPhone users. Agence France-Presse reported that Schmidt asked for a show of hands and this wasn't an Android-worshipping gathering.

Schmidt, though, tried to make the best of it. "So much for the Android monopoly in Europe," he said.

Tim Cook was also speaking to this conference. I can find no evidence that he revealed he admitted to having a Samsung Galaxy. Or a flip phone, for that matter.