mobile phones

The Recession Means Less Bling Bling On The Ring Ring

Filed under: Gadgets

In the nearly five years that Luxist has been around we've seen a lot of expensive cell phones. But could we be reaching the end of an era? Wired's Gadget Lab chronicles the shrinking market for luxury cell phones. Bang & Olufsen which made the Selene phone got out of the mobile phone market last year. Recently Motorola, which makes the Aura, has scaled back its luxury phones canceling the Ivory E18, which was expected to sell for around $3,000.

Frank Nuovo, former chief of design for Nokia and current head of Vertu, maker of some of the world's most expensive phones, isn't scared. He says that the concept is the same as a fine watch or car and that there will continue to be a market for these types of phones. Vertu offers a wide variety of phones from the subtly luxurious to attention-getting phones like the ones made in partnership with Boucheron which are studded with a variety of gemstones. The company is proceeding apace, the latest handset, the Carbon Fibre Ascent Ti will sell for $9,800 when it comes out in August.

One thing the article doesn't mention is those in the phone bedazzling business, those who take existing phones and cover them in gold or set them with diamonds. There aren't any figures on how these businesses are doing in the recession but given the drop in jewelry sales it may be that these businesses are also experiencing similar lowered sales.

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Tags: mobile phones, MobilePhones, vertu

iPhone Announced

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Gadgets

The Apple iPhone was officially announced today at Macworld. The mobile phone weighs 4.6-ounces, is just 11.6 millimeters thick and has a 3.5-inch (480x320) touchscreen display. It includes a 2 megapixel camera, 4-8 GB of storage (yes, gigabytes!), Bluetooth. It also runs the OS X operating system and will support a variety of programs and browsers, in addition to iTunes, and a partnership with Yahoo! will "allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email." The phone will be available as a Cingular exclusive starting this June, with the 4GB model at $499 and the 8GB model at $599.

For more views of the first one, check out the whole gallery at Engadget.

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Tags: ces, gadgets, iPhone, mobile phones, phone, phones

Samsung Teams With Versace To Make Versus Phones

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Gadgets

The latest fashion phone comes from Samsung which has teamed up with Versus, the younger-skewed Versace line to bring forth a new Versus E500 phone. The SGH-E500 is a clamshell mobile phone with a 1.3 megapixel camera, music player and Bluetooth. The phone goes on sale in Italy in August. The flashy luxe styling is exactly what we'd expect from a Versace branding but it doesn't exactly inspire gadget envy in me.

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Tags: cell phones, mobile phones, versace, versus