Luxury smartphone maker Vertu has announced one of its most affordable phones yet – but don’t get too excited.
Vertu is an English luxury smartphone maker that was originally established by Nokia in 1998. It uses premium materials to make its phones, then charges the kind of prices you’d expect to pay for a top class watch or a brand new hatch-back.
Back in September, for example, it announced the Vertu Signature Touch with prices starting from £6,500, and going right up to £13,700.
Now the company has announced the Vertu Aster Chevron collection, which can be yours for less than half the price of the Signature Touch.
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Of course, £3,000 still makes it way more expensive than a Samsung Galaxy S7 or an iPhone 6S. Roughly six times the price, in fact.
As ever with Vertu phones, it’s not even like you’re getting a top-of-the-line smartphone here. In fact, with a 4.7-inch 1080p display, a Snapdragon 801 CPU, and 2 GB of RAM it feels more like a 2014 vintage smartphone.
Meanwhile the Android Lollipop OS the Aster Chevron series ships with is of a similar vintage.
The spec sheet is rounded out by a 13-megapixel Hasselblad camera, 64 GB of internal memory, and a 2275 mAh battery.
Obviously it’s not the Aster Chevron’s internal components that make it so expensive. No, that would be the use of such materials as ‘Satin Finished Titanium Sides and Pillow’, ‘highly resilient Italian fabric’, and a ‘Black PVD Polished Sound Bar.’
You also get a 24-hour worldwide concierge service and access to exclusive clubs and cultural events. Even the ringtones were recorded especially for Vertu by the London Symphony Orchestra. We kid you not.
The Vertu Aster Chevron can be ordered in pink, blue, or black from the Vertu website right now.
If your needs are a little more grounded, check out our smartphone buyers guide:
Would you pay £3,000 for a smartphone? Let us know in the comments below.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
