I live in a 9-by-8-foot, windowless room in lower Manhattan, mattress haplessly laid on a bare floor. My diet is dominated by one-dollar slices and five-dollar footlongs. I'm a person of limited means, to say the least. And yet here I sit, holding the $10,800 Vertu Signature Touch, an Android smartphone that is, ounce for ounce, more costly than gold. It's the absolute height of mobile decadence, complete with a personal concierge at your beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Popping bottles in exclusive clubs, driving Bentleys down the French Riviera, and private mini submarine tours around the Maldives—all these things and more are just a button press away for Vertu owners. To hold it is at once exhilarating and terrifying. But this phone isn't meant for schlubs like me; this is strictly catering to high-net-worth clientele. For a few fleeting days, though, I got a small glimpse into how the proverbial other half lives. And let me tell you, fellow plebes, they live quite well.
That's not to say I think the Signature Touch is actually worth its weight in gold—far from it. But unlike previous luxury phones from Vertu, the Signature Touch is actually equipped to compete with more common flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8). That means a speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip, beautiful 1080p display, and modern Android 4.4 software. It's an excellent phone with impressive perks for the one-percenters who can afford it. The rest of us can keep dreaming.
Design and Features
Handcrafted from exotic materials like hardened titanium, sapphire, calf leather, and polished ceramics, the Signature Touch exudes luxury—at least I think it does. These are all materials I rarely, if ever, encounter, which I guess is the point. In any case, the Signature Touch is supremely well-built and certainly a unique device to behold. The V-shaped accents, leather-clad chin, and ceramic pillow earpiece round out Vertu's signature design cues. Our test unit came with a burgundy calf-leather back, which feels quite supple and has that distinct leather aroma. Vertu offers different finishes, including blue lizard skin, and prices can exceed $20,000 depending on the options you choose. It's an impressive handset, but not appreciably better-looking than the HTC One (M8), at least for my tastes. At 5.71 by 2.72 by 0.42 inches (HWD) and 6.77 ounces, the Signature Touch is on the large and heavy side, but not unwieldy by any means.
On the right edge are the Power and Ruby button, the latter of which summons Vertu's suite of services, which I'll get to a little later. The micro USB port sits above the Ruby button, and I'm not really a fan of its side-mounted position. Even more puzzling, though, is the side-mounted headphone jack on the left edge, above the Volume buttons. It makes it pretty awkward to slip the Signature touch into your pocket with headphones attached, unless your headphones have a slim right-angle adapter. A collapsible D-ring around back opens the door for the SIM card slot. Inside you'll find an etching by the craftsman who singlehandedly assembled your Signature Touch. Kudos to C. Davis (hands pictured below, I think), our Vertu artisan. Your stitch work is impeccable.
The 4.7-inch, 1080p display looks exceedingly crisp (473ppi), and it's covered in sapphire instead of your typical Gorilla Glass. Sapphire is one of the hardest materials around, and resists scratches far better than glass, but I noticed it's also an absolute fingerprint and grease magnet. As should be expected with a device this expensive, the display quality is excellent, with a wide viewing angle and solid contrast. There's a pair of Bang & Olufsen-tuned, front-facing speakers below the display that are quite loud. They rival the BoomSound speakers found on the HTC One (M8) and sound pretty great for sharing YouTube videos with friends or playing background music.
Vertu equipped the Signature Touch with wide cellular network compatibility, which seems appropriate given the presumably globe-trotting clientele. There's support for GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz), WCDMA (Bands I, II, IV, V, VIII), and LTE (Bands 1-5, 7, 8, 17, 20, 25). Our loaner unit came with a T-Mobile SIM installed, which worked without issue in my tests. Call quality was excellent, but nothing beyond the normal realm of more modestly priced smartphones like the GS5. Voices come through clearly in the earpiece, though I would have liked a bit more volume for noisier environments. Transmissions through the mic are full and easy to understand, while noise cancellation worked well in my tests.
Also onboard are dual-band 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS radios, all of which worked without issue. The Signature Touch is Qi-compatible for wirelessly charging the 2,275mAh battery. We're still performing formal battery tests, but anecdotally, the Signature Touch was able to last me through a day's worth of typical use.
No comments:
Post a Comment