Vertu Constellation: The $6000 Phone

- [Michael] With prices reaching past $800,
the newest phones from Apple and Samsung,
are among the priciest you can buy today,
at least in the mainstream.
But, as Crocodile Dundee might say,
that's not expensive,
this is expensive.
I spent a day with the Vertu Constellation,
a $6000 leather and metal smartphone,
with a button made of ruby,
a screen made of sapphire,
and pretty good taste in steakhouses.
This is the Mr. Mobile Hands On.
(techno music)
I'm not even gonna try to justify
the Constellation's price.
To me, only elitism can explain a price tag
700% higher than what most folks pay for a phone in the US
and the kind of people tempted by stuff like this,
aren't my target audience.
Even so, I'm a phone nerd,
so I've always been curious
what a luxury performance smartphone feels like.
The answer, heavy.
The Vertu doesn't disclose which selected metals
it's using for the casing,
but there's a lot of metal.
Finished off on the back by super supple calf leather
and fronted by 140 karat of sapphire crystal,
to protect the display.
Saying all that out loud
makes it seem like a little much and it is.
I mean, there's literally a button carved out of ruby.
But I came to like this phone,
despite its bling factor.
Not worrying about weight or thickness,
gave Vertu license to include
some very nice conventional perks.
Like dual mode wireless charging,
a respectably sized battery,
and a set of speakers louder than anything I've heard
since the Nextel days.
Also aboard, some less welcomed compromises.
Like outdated software and last years processor.
Par for the course with the Vertu,
which has always been less concerned
with apparatus than amenities.
At the top of the list of those
and my personal favorite, sits the concierge.
Click that ruby and you summon
your own personal Mr. Belvedere.
This concierge is a real live human being
who can make dinner reservations
or find a fancy gift for a loved one
or business associate
or snag some helicopter tickets
to the caviar opera ski resort
or whatever you do when you got a lot of money.
My colleague, Derek Kessler,
used it to book dinner for the Android Central team
at nice but not outrageous, New York City steakhouse,
which made for a delightful birthday dinner for me.
Yes, we could have found this restaurant ourselves
using Google maps and booked it using OpenTable,
but it sure was nice to have
someone else do all that for us.
Because that's the kind of thing you expect
when your name starts with Ambassador or Baron
or Count or Duke or anything of the other salutations
that Vertu offers up.
Lest you forget, this is a phone for King's and Queen's
and Lord's and Master's and Excellency's and Sikh's.
Such people tend to value their privacy,
so Vertu also bundles security options,
like encrypted calls and messages,
phone tracking and remote wipe
and anti-virus installed right out of the box.
Of course, this is all stuff you can install
on any android phone yourself,
but this is all part of the Vertu brand promise.
This is what makes it a premium luxury smartphone.
In some ways, the Vertu Constellation is refreshing.
It's nice to see smartphone hardware crafted
with such obvious care
and despite the older underpinning to the software,
it's sprightly and pretty good looking.
But from a more practical perspective,
the Constellation is just a gussied up version of a phone
that would have sold for $600 last year.
So, I don't consider it a particularly wise investment
and that's seems to be true of the company as a whole.
Vertu itself, has been sold three times
over the past four years.
While it's very hard to make money
as an android manufacturer,
I do hope the company's new owner,
at least considers,
bringing some of its offerings down range.
It wouldn't have to cheap things up very much.
Manufacturers like HTC and Samsung have demonstrated
that it's quite possible to make a beautiful phone
for under $1000.
I mean, think about it.
What if there was an established brand offering
a carefully crafted smartphone
with a built in concierge
an baked in security features for under $1000?
You don't need own a yacht to find that idea appealing.
And even at a sixth of the price
of the current Constellation,
I think Vertu could find a way to make money on that,
without sacrificing the prestige
that's kept it in business,
in some form or another,
for almost 20 years.
Thanks to Android Central for making this review possible.
For much more detail on this phone,
see Android Central's full review,
linked in the description.
And for more of the phones, watches, electric cars,
you've come to expect from Mr. Mobile,
please, subscribe on YouTube.
Til next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.
(techno music)

Vertu Constellation: The $6000 Phone

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