A few weeks ago, Stuart Hughes’ T-Rex bone, diamond and gold encrusted iPad 2 was all over science and tech news sections and blogs, blowing people away with the US$ 8 million price tag and shimmering diamond Apple logo. Excessive, needless costly devices like this are nothing new. If you are in the market for a very expensive mobile device, be it an iPad or a cell phone, but dinosaur bones are not really your thing, fear not as there are a number of other high-priced gadgets to choose from.
Also from Stuart Hughes is the iPhone 4 Diamond Rose edition with the same US$ 8 million dollar price tag as his iPad 2. ZDNet.com reports that the 32GB iPhone 4 features 500 diamonds with a 7.4-carat pink diamond mounted on the home button. Only two have been made so far, so chances are you will be the only one with this phone at the party, should you manage to score one.
A few million short, but still burning for diamonds on your iPhone? For about US$ 24,000 you could pick up Alexander Amosu’s iPhone Diamond Spider edition. Each one is customized to your order and features a one-year international concierge service to “access the inaccessible.” According to their website, you can pick the colour of the phone back, which is surrounded by 846 diamonds totalling 5.36 carats.
If this is still way out your price range, fashion house, Prada, teamed up with LG a few years back to create a phone that can be yours for the reasonable price of $170. Unfortunately, this phone is a somewhat dated, lacking 3G service and makes due with a two-megapixel camera, but at least you’ll be fashionable.
Around the same time Dolce and Gabbana put out their edition of the now very dated Motorola Razr V3i, which came in a gold and black finish and was limited to 1,000 devices. One seller on Amazon.com is willing to part with their D&G Razr for the reasonable sum of US $95.40.
Personally, I think that rocking a gold V3i Razr would be a somewhat ironic and cool way to fight the iPhone machine — saving some money while you’re at it. However, the bottom line is, gold covered, diamond encrusted or fossilized, a phone is still only a phone. It makes calls, texts your friends and surfs the web, but it can’t shoot lasers or drive you home when you’re too drunk to see straight. Mr. Hughes can call me when he designs a phone that can make a decent latte.
