Nokia’s luxury division Vertu has something new rolled up under its sleeves. The Ascent X is a quad band GSM device (although only 850 and 1900 bands were tested for the FCC) and WCDMA bands II and V. Not much details are available as of now but unlike other Vertu phones this one comes with a 24 hour concierge service as well. The Ascent X will be available in metal and leather finish.
You might think you’re hot stuff for carrying around a new Vertu Constellation Ayxta, but this is America, bub — and your blinged-up Nokia has to kick it at the FCC just like everyone else. Of course, without that fancy always-on-call Concierge service and Vertu Select, all you’re really looking at here is a pretty anonymous featurephone wrapped up in high-end garb, but you’re not spending your $10,500 on features here — you’re spending it because you’re too lazy and rich to buy something good.
Vertu’s not known for making cut rate electronics, so this is probably the closest it’ll ever come. The company’s just unveiled its latest flip phone, the Constellation Ayxta. The Ayxta is aimed at citizens of the world who are looking for a “high quality product to assist in maintaining their standard of living wherever they may be,” — i.e., lazy people who’d rather throw money at something than figure out what to do on their own on a Friday night in Vienna. We can sympathize — sort of. To that end, the handset will be kitted with all manner of awesomeness, including Vertu’s own Concierge service which puts you on the line with a customer service representative directly — no hold required. Users will also get access to Vertu Select — which, as we said before, will help you out and tell you where all the cool people are in whatever one horse town you happen to be in at the moment. It’s got 3G and a micros SD slot for up to 8GB of storage, plus a 3.0 megapixel cam with integrated flash (which is always nice), but other than that it’s pretty unimpressive. The Constellation Ayxta is available in Europe now, and for a very affordable €4,900 to €6,500 — somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000 – $10,500.
Vertu has a new line-up of luxury devices. It’s called Ascent Ti Carbon Fibre collection, and is set to start selling in August. As usual, it’s not the specs you buy with Vertu — after all it’s a mid-range phone with 3.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, music player and 4GB of internal memory — but some luxury look and feel, this time featuring “the intricate Carbon Fibre components.”
Apparently, all phones from the collection have been handcrafted in England, and repeatedly tested to “ensure the optimum amount of fibres and resin and processed together to achieve a flawless uniform look on both the flat and curved parts.”
Four models are included in collection: Ascent Ti Carbon Fibre Limited Edition, Carbon Fibre Grip, Carbon Fibre & Copper Grip, and Carbon Fibre & Aluminium Grip. Price is available upon request, and since there’s no chance we’re going to buy one, we haven’t asked.
Company Vertu, a Nokia unit, which specializes in the production of premium-class phones, introduced a new collection of Constellation Vivre. The cost of phones in this series range from $ 10 000 to $ 40 000.
Mobile phones have evolved immensely since 1983, both in design and function.
From the Motorola DynaTAC, that power symbol that Michael Douglas wielded so forcefully in the movie “Wall Street”, to the iPhone 3G, which can take a picture, play a video, or run one of the thousands applications available from the Apple Store.
There are thousands of models of Mobile phones that have hit the streets between 1983 and now.
We’ve picked a few of the more popular and unusual ones to take you through the history of this device that most of us consider a part of our everyday lives.
We have tried, wherever possible, to include the most popular phones and the phones that were “firsts” for a particular feature, but may have missed out on your favorite phones due to the sheer number of models that are out there.
We invite you to post your faves in the comments section if they are not listed here.
Mobile phones are just now beginning to be as vital to North Americans as they have been to Asians. You can always see what is coming to store shelves in the next six months to a year by looking at the models that are currently available in Japan.
North America also had a spotty 3G network that has only really been revamped recently in order to deal with increasing demands for faster loading speeds from mobile customers, whereas Asia and most of Europe have had proper 3G networks in place for some time.
This has led to a revolution in 3G phones from 2007 until now, with more due to come out in 2009.
The list does not include any phones that were not portable handhelds. Car phones and some handhelds that were the size of a small briefcase were in use in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but since this is more about design than function we chose not to include them here.
Vertu is out with yet another special edition of its Constellation series. It’s called Pure and unlike other devices from the series, these are made out of steel, leather and ceramics. The price, however, remains steep and the Nokia’s luxury arm will be selling these for 6,800 EUR or about $8,574. Three color options are available, including white, black and silver — each of which will be available in a limited series of 2,500 units.
And we thought recession is on? Guess finding 7,500 people shouldn’t be that hard, even in these times…
