International jet-set elite, your new phone is here! That’s right, Vertu and Ferrari have teamed up yet again to produce the phone that serves two important purposes: showing the world that you own a Ferrari, and showing the world that you don’t need a phone that does much besides receiving calls from your accountant. Essentially the recently announced Ascent refresh, this bad boy features a 2-inch QVGA sapphire crystal display and quadband 3G. The case itself is constructed from forged titanium with a matte black PVD finish and the same hand stitched leather as the interior of the car it’s inspired by. But you better be fast! Only 2,011 will be made. (Get it?) Hit the source link to order three or four for yourself.
Book of Music has released some very uniquely styled speakers termed the Teti Extreme Loudspeakers. These speakers don’t come with your conventional enclosure system- the two towers are built on open frameworks allowing the drivers to work freely.
Truthfully, they show a striking resemblance to that revolving skyscraper built within the city of Dubai. Whether they revolve or not we haven’t a clue. Designed in Italy, these speakers are up for only $20,000 on the manufacturers website.
If you have a Lamborghini, a surfeit of money, and an absence of good taste, have we got the phone for you! Out now in Hong Kong, the Tonino Lamborghini Spyder Series of handsets feature a 2.2-inch display, 3 megapixel camera, 4GB internal storage, 316L-grade stainless steel casing, and — if you shell out a little extra — a crocodile skin back. Sort of makes Vertu look reasonable in comparison, eh? No, we suppose not. Prices start at HK $13,800 (that’s about $1,781 here in the states) and climb upward fairly quickly. Get a closer look after the break.
Microsoft’s serious about making Kinect a success. A $500 million kind of serious. That’s the latest report, courtesy of the New York Post, on the change Steve Ballmer and company intend to drop to make sure that every living and breathing creature in the US knows about the controller-free controller this holiday season. That mirrors earlier analyst estimates placing the Windows Phone 7 marketing budget at a similar figure, which in total would amount to a cool billion dollars in advertising expenditure. We already know Microsoft’s scooped the Old Spice Guy for WP7, but Kinect is getting the extra special carpet bombing treatment with Burger King, Pepsi, YouTube, Nickelodeon, Disney, Glee, Dancing with the Stars, People and InStyle magazines, and even Times Square all having a role to play in spreading the word. Yup, it’s gonna be pretty hard to miss it.
When you make it your business to deliver outlandish new looks for mobile telephony, it can sometimes be a challenge to just outdo your last effort. So Gresso‘s decided the only way forward is to collect all the fine materials it had lying around — black diamonds, pure gold, diamond-cut sapphire crystals, and 200-year old African blackwood — sprinkle them atop an otherwise nondescript featurephone, and slap on the spectacular price tag of $1,000,000. Only three Jackpots are being made, while there’ll be a Las Vegas handset without the black diamonds and sapphires for the more mundanely rich among us, priced at $20,000. Oh Gresso, just one tip: next time, try to align your earpiece to your fancy designs, we hear wealthy folks appreciate some attention to detail.
For all its luxurious sapphire crystal glass and genuine alligator skin, the TAG Heuer Meridiist has always struggled to keep up with the times — but don’t expect that two megapixel camera or 1.9-inch QVGA screen to change in the handset’s latest iteration. No, the Merediist GMT’s only new feature is — you guessed it — to literally keep track of Greenwich Mean Time. “Switch between home time and destination time,” a flashy new ad teases, as a pair of (presumably) filthy rich individuals take the TAG Heuer Tesla for a cross-country drive. We’re not quite sure how one originally forgets about world time with 150 years of watchmaking experience under one’s belt, but at least the company has pledged to include the function in all future $4000+ models.
There are iPhone cases, and then there’s Magellan‘s waterproof Toughcase. Priced at $199.99, it’s actually just as expensive as a new iPhone 4 on contract, and double the price of an iPhone 3GS (which it actually houses). So, what does two Benjamins get you? Most would argue “not nearly enough,” but argonauts may beg to differ. The case meets IPX-7 waterproof standards, enabling it to be submerged at a depth of one meter for up to 30 minutes, and there’s also an integrated 1,840mAh battery that’s able to “double the life” of your iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or second / third-generation iPod touch. Moreover, there’s a built-in high sensitivity SiRFstar III GPS chipset for superior GPS reception, and nothing here prevents consumers from accessing the touchscreen. ‘Course, the sex appeal of your iDevice goes right out of the window once you strap this monster on, and there’s no official support for Apple’s newest iPhone, but it’s hard to knock the approach here.
From the front it looks like any other iPhone 4, but flip it around and a glint might catch your eye — that’s the doing of Russian technology tailor Gresso, who’s embedded Swarovski crystals and an 18-karat golden Apple logo in a sheet of African Blackwood attached to the device. As usual, one wonders why anyone would bother, but honestly we can’t complain — the design is worlds more tasteful than the solid gold and diamond-encrusted contraptions we’re used to seeing. Expect the dainty dillantante to arrive in December at a surprisingly reasonable $3,500, or $3,000 for the male-targeted version at right. Of course, if you’ve got that kind of money to spend, you want one now, right? Good news: the iPhone 3GS gets the same luxurious treatment — and price — in July.
Overkill, thy name is Vertu. Nokia’s luxury handset division has rarely gotten much love on these pages, but that’s mostly to do with the excessive use of “high end” materials on its phones and zeroes in its prices. Both are present and accounted for here, with the stainless steel and leather-bound Constellation Ayxta starting at somewhere around $7,500. Still, we retain a curiosity to see such exclusive devices in the glaring lights of reality, and Gear Diary has treated us to just such a treat. The handset before you can crank out 6 hours of talk time over GSM or 300 hours of standby, navigate preloaded maps over GPS, or hook you up to an instant Concierge service if you don’t feel like doing the work yourself. And why should you? Mosey on over to the source for the full unboxing gallery.
What’s a distinguished person of taste and refinement to do when smartphones nowadays are all so bulky and, well, ubiquitous? He or she should go take a look at Vertu‘s store, of course, which has today been populated for the first time with a new, even more exclusive Signature collection, composed of four models — one for each season. There’s a load of talk about delicate hand-crafting and latest technology with these, but the truth of the matter is that you’ll be buying one solely for the purpose of puling it out of your carefully pressed, kerchiefed Armani suit in the hope of impressing any and all nearby members of the opposite sex. What this phone will then say, nay, scream, about you is that you have the money to buy things that are neither functional nor physically appealing — the surest way to signal wealth and prestige. How much money? Try a million Yen for each handset, which roughly translates to $10,830.
Update: Our sage readers have noted a failure in our machine-translated pricing. The handsets in fact cost 20 million Yen a piece, which equates to $216,600. So sorry to have misled you if you were heading off to the bank to get that 10 grand.
