Not all expensive things are classy. If you need proof, just take a look at this new, shockingly garish gold-plated Android smartphone by Lamborghini. Feature-wise, the phone is nothing special: It has a 3.7-inch 800 x 480 pixel screen and runs Android Gingerbread. But the screen is covered with sapphire glass, and the phone, aside from being gold-plated, has crocodile skin trimming. All those fancy additions means the phone will cost more than the usual Android fare — roughly $2,750, in fact.
But that's not all — Lamborghini is also releasing a slightly less expensive Android tablet. It has a 9.7-inch screen, with a 1.2 GHz processor, and unimpressive 512MB RAM. For $2,300, its features sure are mediocre, but we have to admit it looks infinitely better than the gold-plated phone. According to a Russian website, both devices will be released in Russia in August, and it's presumed other European countries will follow afterward.
While these Lamborghini devices are already super pricey, they're hardly the most ridiculously expensive gadgets we've seen. Last year, Tag Heuer released a $6,700 calfskin-covered phone, and a Danish luxury retailer designed a solid gold handset worth $60,000.
The one thing that I do like about this phone is the sapphire glass. Sapphire is extremely hard and as such is very scratch resistant. To put this in perspective, I have a two year old stainless steel watch with sapphire crystal (glass). There are scratches on the stainless steel case, the stainless steel band, and the stainless steel bezel around the face of the watch but there are NO scratches at all on the sapphire glass.
ReplyDeleteI would like to have sapphire glass on a smart phone, but with the price of sapphire glass for a single wristwatch I would imagine that it will be quite some time before this becomes a standard feature on mobile devices.