Jurassic Part: Vertu announces lizard-skin phones Vertu, makers of super-expensive phones for the insanely rich, has announced two new lizard-skin phones, coming in at a cool £7,600. “Night Forest is a rich dark green and the Dark Scarlet is a beautifully woody chestnut red, both inspired by the canopy of an English woodland," said the UK manufacturer and retailer of luxury …
What's the point of that?
There is an old joke about a Russian coming back from a trip to London and saying to his friend: "hey, look - I've got this tie on Oxford Street for 50 quid, not bad, ah?" And the friend replying: "Vasiliy, you're such a schmuck - you could have bought exactly the same tie, just round the corner, for 150!"
It occurred to me recently that if I accidentally became incredibly wealthy and wanted to spend like I knew what I was doing ( ie: buy the best stuff possible because I can afford it ), then some things would be easy, eg: cars, houses, etc, but there would be a lot of things where reasonably affordable is literally the best you can buy - Samsung or whoever would still supply the TV presumably, etc. I wouldn't be better off going to the TV shop in Kensington, because they'd still be selling LG/Samsung/Sony, etc.
This phone seems to be a case in point - you'd be better just buying an Iphone 6S or whatever, like all the plebs do.
This post has been deleted by its author
Monitor lizards have the intelligence of a reasonably smart dog (if not higher). They can be tamed, trained, can obey commands and you can even walk them on a leash.
This includes this particular species. Dunno, I personally think that having the skin of creature with some level of intelligence (albeit primitive) wrapped around my phone is disgusting.
I too have an aversion to killing intelligent animals for my own comfort and style, but the people who are likely to spend several thousand pounds on a gaudy cheap smart phone are the same type who tend to think of poor people as not quite human, and so animals are probably not even thought of.
"I too have an aversion to killing intelligent animals for my own comfort and style"
So you wear plastic shoes or wicker sandals?
However, there's a couple of other options. One, they could use roadkill. This would add variety since you could have lizard, snake, rat, squirrel, cat, dog, and you'd never know what was in the shop until you got there etc.
Or, why not use human skin? There's a lot of us around. Loads of us die naturally each year (heavily grained, vintage leathers for the most part), but equally there's a fair few executions each year in places like Saudi, China and Indonesia. And in that case each phone could be embossed with the donor's name. Matching phone, wallet and shoes packages at higher cost. Or leather "trousers" and "jackets".......
"So instead of a cheap tiny little tinny speaker, it has... an expensive tiny little tinny speaker."
True.
"Instead of cheap optics in front of a tiny noisy image sensor, it has expensive optics in front of a tiny noisy image sensor."
How do you know the image sensor is noisy?
Plus, it's wrapped in a dead animal.
Yes, it's a plus. Just like many people like to place their posteriors on leathery goods everywhere.
Sigh... If I was going to hand over silly money for a phone, I'd prefer carbon fibre and rhodium, with a diamond lit up by multiple leds when I receive an email or sms....
Vertu apparently has made carbon fibre phones and apparently also sells rhodium encrusted bling-blah, so they probably would be glad to customize such a phone for you. Remember that this phone sells for mere £7600 whereas some models have been priced much, much higher.
The clientele (according to Wiki) is predominantly in Russia, Asia and Middle East where nouveau-riche success is measured with how much expensive and tasteless trash you own/wear/drive.
This post has been deleted by its author
"It must be physically small to fit inside a phone form factor, so it's always going to be noisier than any half decent standalone camera."
It's likely to be noisier but if the noise is still low - doesn't matter. Obviously the camera is not used for pro photography.
"If that floats your boat, I don't have an issue with it, but it's not my preference."
I'm just saying that many people find e.g. leather seats in cars more luxurious than regular textiles.
"I would want decent hardware too, not the guts of a Nokia 3210 inside it."
It is decent. Spec-wise this phone is a "Galaxy S5+" if you will.
This post has been deleted by its author
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
