You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Admittedly, many of us here at Engadget have never really had the opportunity to touch a Vertu phone (KIRFs don’t count, of course), as the pressure of stepping into a posh Vertu store without the cash can be rather unnerving. That said, over the weekend Vertu launched its Android-powered TI in Hong Kong, and the British company was gracious enough to let us get up close and personal with all four flavors of its latest luxury device. Verdict? Well, please kindly ask your butler to read on after the break.
Gallery: Vertu TI hands-on in Hong Kong
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Just how tough is Gorilla Glass and its sequel? Sure as heck ain’t strong enough to withstand a drop from a reasonable height, for sure! Well, this particular video that you see above will hopefully be able to answer some questions that you have concerning durability and quality of most modern day handsets. Remember the Vertu Ti that we talked about not too long ago? Well, the Vertu Ti certainly did not wow when it came to the hardware specifications, but one thing did stand out – a display made of synthetic sapphire.
It is said that single crystals of aluminum oxide such as this will feature a Mohs scale hardness of 9, which means you will need something as hard as sapphires or diamonds to scratch them. The video above shows that a rock is useless in scratching the sapphire screen, while the Corning Gorilla Glass 2 failed miserably when faced with the same rock. Thing is, good things do not come cheap, and cheap things, most of the time, are not good. At least the sapphire display can help justify a bit of the $10,000 that you would have to fork out for the Vertu Ti.
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What do you think of the recently released Vertu Ti (as seen above)? Surely, that is a smartphone that divides opinions down the middle, especially when you consider the kind of price tag that it comes with. Well, here is a little bit of insider information on what could have been – with Vertu sharing that they originally wanted to churn out a luxury version of a smartphone that ran on Windows Phone 8, but it seemed as though their will to build one of these were not enough to overcome the complexity of working on a Windows Phone 8 device. Hence, that was when Android came into the picture.
Well, it does boggle the mind really, how can a phone manufacturing company with a fair number of years in terms of experience tucked away actually say that they are unable to overcome the complexities of a Windows Phone 8 device? Perhaps Vertu’s troubles laid with software integration, as the Windows Phone platform does not really enable one to customize its interfaces.
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Just a few weeks ago, we heard Vertu was planning on delivering an Android-powered smartphone that was going to be ridiculously expensive. It was originally expected to retail for a little over $4000, but we guess that wasn’t a high enough number for Vertu as they’re announcing their new handset, the Ti, will retail starting at $10,000.
We know you can probably think of a lot of ways to burn $10,000, but let’s run through the specs of the Vertu Ti. First off, the Ti will run on Android 4.0, which by that spec alone should drop the price substantially as it’s an old version of the Android OS. The Ti will come with a 3.7-inch WVGA screen and dual core Snapdragon S4 processor.
Alright – the Vertu Ti’s innards aren’t that impressive, but the Ti is handmade and is encased in titanium and has a sapphire crystal display. Also, you’ll have a 24-hour concierge service available to you, which we know you’ll probably end up using it to hand deliver your pizzas to you at all hours of the day.
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Vertu, the formerly-owned-by-Nokia maker of eye-wateringly expensive, leather-clad, gem-encrusted, handmade-in-the-U.K. ‘luxury’ smartphones, has launched an Android-powered device: the Vertu Ti.
After leaving the Nokia fold, back in October, it was rumoured that Vertu planned to do what many a Nokia fan still wishes that company would do: ditch Symbian and adopt Android. Today Vertu unveiled its first Android-powered phone, along with a new slogan: “Handmade in England. Powered by Android”.
The Vertu Ti runs Android 4.0, skinned with a dedicated Vertu UI. The handset costs from a whopping €7,900 — approaching $11,000 — for which you also get a 3.7 inch “virtually scratchproof sapphire crystal screen”; a grade 5 titanium strong-but-lightweight casing; a dual-core 1.7 GHz processor and 1GB of RAM; an 8 megapixel rear camera with 1080p video capture plus a 1.3 megapixel front-facing lens; 64GB of internal memory; and ‘Bang & Olufsen tuned’ sound. What you don’t get: 4G.
Speaking to the BBC, Vertu CEO Perry Oosting explained why the company decided to adopt Android, rather than follow Nokia’s lead and opt for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. “You need to be part of an ecosystem,” he said. ”Your device will have to integrate with other devices. I think the Windows phone will have success but it is still a relatively small market share. At the moment it doesn’t have the global reach of Android — which is about 60 per cent of the market.”
Oosting didn’t mention Android’s openness to being customised but Microsoft’s refusal to allow mobile makers to skin Windows Phone with their own UIs may well rule out any luxury brand tie-ins, since Windows Phone currently offers limited scope for branding — beyond being able to display a branded homescreen Live Tile.
Despite (finally) reaching the conclusion that ecosystems are king, Vertu still obviously sells to a very exclusive club of buyers — with huge amounts of cash to spend on a phone. There are just 326,000 Vertu smartphone owners globally after 10 years in the industry, according to the BBC. China is said to be Vertu’s biggest market.
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