Vertu, the British firm behind a variety of expensive smartphones released over the past decade or so, has just revealed a new phone, the Vertu TI (read our Vertu TI hands on). It’s made of titanium, sapphire crystal and should you so desire, alligator skin, plus it uses Google Android as its OS. It’s a luxury product and as such, has a luxury price tag: at least 7,900 euros or roughly, $11,000. Bizarrely, its arrival has met with considerable animosity, which makes us ask, what’s wrong with a luxury smartphone?
The comments on our news story ranged from the phone being, “A waste of money,” and someone else saying an HTC Evo 4G was, “better.” Reviews of the phone from around the Web question the Vertu TI’s value, its technical specifications, and many seem stumped at who would buy such a device.
It’s as if nobody has ever seen a needlessly expensive product before. Yes, the Vertu TI is ridiculously priced, but it’s hardly alone in the world. We recently ran a news story on the Lotus Evora Sports Racer, a $95,000 two-seat sports car that’s $20,000 more than already pricey base model. Someone left a comment saying, “I would love to put one in my garage.” And where are the comments about the Mazda MX-5? It’s $70,000 less expensive and will probably be just as fast in the real world. Or what about an Ariel Atom? It’s lip-quiveringly fast, provides an equal amount of thrills and starts at $56,000, so why isn’t the Evora labelled a waste of money?
How about home theater? The complete Sonos PlayBar system costs $2,000. Why isn’t that shot down in flames when you can buy a soundbar from a decent brand for $500? Instead a commenter calls it, “Pretty great.” We could go on and on, but you get the picture; in every other product category, luxury, high-price items are revered, admired, and lusted after.
Double standards
So, this weird double standard seems to be limited to the world of computing and mobile. To be fair, it’s partially understandable, because almost every luxury tech product has either been some awful piece of cross-brand marketing like the Asus Lamborghini laptop, or vulgar nonsense from Goldvish beloved only by the terminally tasteless. With hateful filth like that, it’s no surprise consumers are skeptical. However, this problem is compounded by our obsession with spec sheets.
Yes, there are many phones with “better” specifications than the Vertu TI, but anyone who points it out as a reason the TI isn’t “good” is being deliberately annoying or is an idiot. Its specs match up to many high-end phones in the market today. It’s like saying fuel consumption as a reason the new Corvette Stingray isn’t a good car (another example of the double standard, as the tawdry C7 seems to be universally adored), or deriding the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph watch for not having a calculator. How do we put this bluntly? It. Doesn’t. Matter.
Now, if you consider the Vertu TI a waste of money or unattractive, that’s fine. Such products aren’t for everyone, and it’s at least provoking an emotion inside you. But like every other luxury product, value and specification are utterly irrelevant.
Vertu’s Chief Marketing Officer, Massimiliano Pogliani, said true luxury is about subtly, individualism and elegance; like a meal prepared by a two-star Michelin chef. When judged nutritionally, or as a meal for satisfying a deep hunger, there will be other, better options; but as an experience, it’ll probably be second to none. When you buy a Vertu TI, the very first call you receive will be from your concierge, who’ll introduce themselves and make sure your happy with the phone and everything is as it should be. Was Samsung calling you on the phone minutes after you stuck the SIM card in your Galaxy S3?
Built to last
The Vertu TI is hand built and signed by the engineer who did so. It’s made from high tech, expensive materials (each tiny screw holding the titanium side plates in position cost at least 9 euros), all of which are carefully selected and take months to prepare.
The phone comes with your very own personal assistant built in, and it’s not some electronic Siri-like slave relegated to searching Wolfram Alpha or Yelp either; it’s a real, live person. The phone weighs 180 grams because it’s built to last, not to be replaced each year, during which time the leather will a chance to mature and instill the device with some character.
The Vertu TI shuns the increasingly tedious race to be the fastest, thinnest, and lightest smartphone available, rising above the talk of clock speeds and screen resolutions; yet it’s still quite capable of keeping up with the competition.
We need to get over this preoccupation with specs and embrace the Vertu TI. It’s the first truly luxurious, price-is-no-object smartphone, and that’s OK.
A $2000 soundbar might ostensibly have higher quality construction and sound than a cheaper sound bar. A $100k car might have better materials and driving dynamics than a 30K car. But the Vertu is objectively a bad phone: dated OS, slow processor, small screen, etc. People aren’t upset that the price is high; they’re bothered by the fact that you’re buying literally a bad, bad phone just because it has alligator skin on it. People would scoff at a Honda Civic with a gold-plated hood as well.
I beg to differ. A dual-core Snapdragon S4 is not a slow processor, the screen is small, but not small compared to some devices but not the most popular smartphone on the market (iPhone), and the OS is ICS. There isn’t a major difference between ICS and Jelly Bean. It’s a minor upgrade and the Vertu will get it, we were told.
So like I said, for 11 grand, you can get a phone that is already obsolete. And the iPhone screen is larger. Not to mention that when 4.2 devices get upgraded, this Vertu will STILL be on ICS, or at best, playing catch up to Jelly Bean.
You said it yourself, more expensive items have better build quality from better materials. This is the case with the Vertu TI. You’re concentrating on specs to say it’s a “bad phone,” and my point is the specs are completely irrelevant to this class of product. Plus, everything that Jeff said.
That’s exactly why I’m criticizing it. For it’s price, it SHOULD have better materials. But it doesn’t. To sound like a broken record, it has hardware that isn’t top tier and an OS that is not current. In the same way that putting a carbon fiber spoiler on a civic doesn’t make it a better car, slapping titanium and alligator skin on a phone doesn’t make it a good phone. It’s as gaudy as Lil Wayne’s grill.
But I see the Digital Trends defense force is out now, stuffing your collective fingers in your ears and singing “Nuh uh, nuh uh” to me. Whatever.
The corvette is cheaper and faster than most of it’s more expensive italian competition, yet no one cares because the people who buy them can afford them. Obviously you can’t afford it.
Titanium Frame… Sapphire screen… Personal concierge… These are nothing to scoff at. As for complaining about the dual core and ICS, you are just making yourself sound like an idiot. These spec are more than good enough for the phones target audience. I will never be able to afford this phone, but then again, I am not the target audience.
I don’t hate on those who purchase absurdly expensive luxury items, but personally I think the phone is rather an eyesore. Usually über priced items like cars, do something other cars don’t do. Not sure that’s a very good comparison. Cars usually aren’t outdated in a year either.
I get it – luxury items are supposed to be outrageously priced. But let’s use the same example you provided to prove that point:
Lotus = $95k
Mazda = $25k
Vertu TI = $11,000
Galaxy S3 = $550
Just as the Lotus is a luxurious supercar, the Vertu is a luxurious superphone. But the Lotus only costs 3.8x as much as the Mazda while the Vertu is a whopping 20x more expensive as a top tier smartphone. None of the other examples of luxury items have this glaring of a discrepancy either. That is why people don’t see the value in the Vertu’s pricing.
That’s not entirely fair. You could find many luxury vehicles that cost much more than the Lotus and good cheaper cars too, much like you can find many high-end smartphones that get up to $750-$800 without breaking a sweat.
And, funny enough, those high-end smartphones are objectively more advanced and more powerful than this fashion faux-pas monstrosity. At least you can get some dead animal skin on it!
Yes – a $2.5 million Bugatti costs 100x more than a Mazda. But at that point, are we still comparing apples to apples? The performance of the Bugatti far surpasses anything the Mazda could do. The Vertu simply does not as compared to other top tier phones. I like the idea of the personal concierge, but that should be a luxury add-on service, separate from the phone’s cost. From what these articles describe, I just don’t see $11k worth of materials going into this phone.
Now here’s a luxury phone that is made of materials that actually justify it’s price tag. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-10-15/tech/30042633_1_iphone-platinum-diamonds
I nominate myself as the rude one!
Is the person who wrote this, frickin retarded? The answer is more obvious than your pandering propaganda.
Most of the products mentioned in the article remain relevant for many years and have a high secondary market value where as this product will be out dated in 6 months to a year and obsolete with in two to three years, after which it becomes an insanely expensive paper weight with very little real value beyond the materials it’s made of.
“There’s nothing wrong with a luxury smartphone”
This is true.
But there is something wrong with the Vertu.
Zane Price – it’s not an edict, just one writers opinion piece. He’s just having fun with it.
Chef: this turd will be wrapped in gold ! Waalah!
Phones are outdated in 6 months. Even if you were a billionaire, what’s the point?
I think it is rather sad that Digital Trends is demanding that we get over it and accept it. That is an individuals choice and should not be an edict from a corporation.
Let’s sum it up;
1. electronic hardware in Virtu Ti – already obsolete, and in line with current mid-range phones
2. 20x more expensive than most powerful phone available
3. expensive and rare materials are wasted on awful industrial design and the only concept is to make phone look luxurious, and at that it fails, because it is pure kitsch and actually a statement of no sensibility for design and the zeitgeist
4. it will be completely unusable in 2-3 years due to hardware inferiority so “built to last” and limitations that come out of it make no sense
5. as far as I get it, the concierge services are actually paid extra, and are rather expensive, so it would probably make more sense to use normal phone to call a separate service that does this
6. even if you get over moral aspects, and the facts that instead of buying this phone, you could buy a really good smartphone, and for the rest of the money you could invest in education, or helping other people, or anything that makes any sense…there is still the issue of having dead animal skin on your phone, just so that some idiot might envy you…
If you ask me, this does deserve to be hated. Big time. As it is a moument of human stupidity, cruelty towards the space and time we live in.
Like some comments pointed out, it has a lot to do with the fact that this phone will feel old pretty soon.
If you get an expensive watch, it might last you a lifetime.
If you get an expensive car, you could easily use it for a decade, or more before it’s seen a old.
But a phone like this depends on a battery that you cant replace at your nearest luxury watch shop, or the store that sells cheap watches around the corner.
And that is not all.
A watch or a car has a pretty specifik purpose. Unless we run out of oil, your petrol car can still be fueled by what drives it.
But in the world of smartphones apps and services are the base. Some apps will not show up unless you have the latest OS version. And just a couple of years after release, most android top spec’ed devices can no longer run the latest OS. That drives the value of a device down.
With a luxury car, it’s still quite valuable still after a decade or more, some has even had a rise in the price, but sure most go down. After just a couple of years a phone like this will be worthless.
How about those luxuary purses, surely fashion changes. Well, one would think so, but often several of year old luxury purses “still work” should you bring them to a fancy party, or on a yatch trip, or so. The lower you get on the scale of brands, the more fhashion sensitve the products are.
But personally I think this is one of the best looking smartphones. Beaten by the Ulysse Nardin Chairman, but if any, not many others.
I could not afford buying in to this lifestyle, cause after just a few upgrades I would be bankrupt.
So this is a phone exclusively for the really wealthy people who can afford to spend this kind of money, at least every couple of years. Those people spend a lot on a night out, eating at michelin star restaurants, drinking fine wine, and having their private chauffer drive them around.
Then this is actually not that expensive, if you are on the cheap side, you could just cut down on a few of those nights out, and buy this instead.
But what sets them apart from other luxury products, is the fact, that except for the real wealthy you cant defend for yourself or any one else, purchasing a smartphone like this. The car will hold some of its value, and is probably a good performer. The watch will last you a lifetime and really never go out of style. The purse could last you a lifetime if you take real care of it, and never go out of style. That armani suit will probably go a bit out of fashion, but it will still be an arman suit.
The styling of this phone might hold its grounds, but the brains inside will make sure it will at least in performance be outdated. And probably Vertu will launch new designs every now and then, making sure that people can tell that your device is out of date.
And most people that dont appreciate luxury items will probably never even appreciate the styling in the first place and never learn the brand, so you could never show off to those either.
But I’m glad I at leat get to see these luxury smartphones. And I can hope to see some semi-premium brands beside Apple show their face on the market, and if so, one of them might actually be bold enough to put something out there that is stylish in another sense than beeing as minimalistic as it gets.