We all experienced a little bit of sticker shock when Apple announced that the lowest-tier iPhone X would clock in at a thousand dollars (give or take a penny or two). Four figures is a pretty nasty sum for a mobile phone, especially considering how often we mess ours up in the course of the battle against evil. But they're the market leaders, so they set the rules.
The thing is, in context a thousand bucks isn't even that bad. People have been making cell phones way more expensive than that, and they don't even have edge-to-edge screens or FaceID. Join us as we dive deep into the world of high-end cell phones for the rich and crazy.
Cost: $14,000.00Security is a big deal in this post-Fappening universe, and if you're worried that hackers will get into your cloud storage and have a lot of money to throw around, the self-styled "world's most secure cell phone" might be for you. Made by Sirin Labs, the Solarin comes with endorsements from Hollywood stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. Running a custom Android OS, the big draw here is a hardware feature – a switch at the back of the device toggles it into a mode where it can only make outgoing voice calls and securely encrypted messaging. All that security doesn't come cheap – this baby weighs in at nearly half a pound.
Cost: $9,500.00While most phone makers are moving towards bigger touch screens, the luxe merchants at Gresso are holding tight to buttons – they're just making them out of gold. The Meridian Black is milled from a single piece of titanium, with a gold keypad where each button is hand-polished by a single craftsman. Produced in a limited edition of 999, it's a retro-looking mobile device with the unusual ability to support two SIM cards, letting you switch identities easily if that's the kind of thing you like to do. The rest of the machine isn't that technically impressive, with 32GB of internal memory and a 3MPX camera, but it sure does look cool.
Cost: $7965.00The more fancy-sounding words in a phone's name, the more you can charge for it. That's just how it works! The "Onyx Alligator" in this pricey mobile's name refers to the black alligator leather that enrobes the device, which doesn't add any performance improvements but feels pretty cool. The device itself is relatively solid, with 64GB onboard storage and a Snapdragon quad-core processor. It runs the latest version of Android Cyanogen, a popular mod that delivers a number of performance improvements over base Android. In addition, the 5MP front camera lets you snap Instagram selfies with gorgeous clarity. If you've got a phone like this, it's fair to say you probably do that a lot.
Cost: $300,000.00What could make the idea of buying a $300 large cell phone even more ridiculous? What about if it was a Windows phone? That's one of the many completely inexplicable decisions that went into 2006's VIPN Black Diamond telephone. The creation of Singaporean artist Jaren Goh, the device has a pair of diamonds inlaid into the surface – one on the joystick and the other one on the flip side. It boasted a beefy (for the time) 2GB SD card, a 2.1-inch touchscreen along with traditional keypad and a weird chevron-esque form factor. Only five were made, with a clientele of wealthy oil millionaires the target market.
Cost: $57,000.00Many of these pricey smartphones get their cost from the combination of high-end materials and the signature of a designer who has a high opinion of himself. A perfect illustration of this is the Savelli Champagne Diamond, which debuted in 2013. The creation of Swiss designer Alessandro Savelli, the guiding principle behind the Champagne Diamond was to create a cell phone that would work as a luxe accessory. With a shell formed of 18 carat rose gold, inlaid with 395 white and cognac diamonds, it's quite the conversation piece. Its Android OS runs a custom Savelli-commissioned app, "My Jardin Secret," which is some kind of super-rich person's version of Yelp.
Cost: $10,800.00"Constructed by hand" is a big selling point for many of these high-end phones. That kind of overlooks the fact that most iPhones are made by hand, too – by underpaid Chinese labor. Vertu's Signature Touch phone is made by English craftsmen and it shows. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor powers an Android OS machine with a 21-megapixel camera that lets you perform ultra-high definition 4k video capture. High-end front-facing speakers provide crystalline audio playback of custom ringtones composed for Vertu and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. If you want one, buy now, as Vertu recently closed down operations.
Cost: $102,557.00Why wouldn't one of the world's most storied fashion houses get into electronics? Everything's part of style, after all. The Dior Reveries phone has a form factor that was outdated three iPhones ago and a paltry 5-megapixel digital camera, but it makes up for it with 1,539 diamonds and 46 pieces of mother of pearl. It comes loaded with a custom Dior app that lets you explore a multimedia journey through the company's history. Only 99 of these units were made, and competition for them was fierce.
Cost: $9798.00Mobiado is a boutique smartphone manufacturer who loves to use exotic materials in their cases, but the Grand Pioneer, which they released in 2009, went above and beyond. The battery cover on this device is made from fragments of the Gibeon meteorite, a space rock that was discovered in 1836. The rest of the phone is crafted from the same aluminum they use in spacecraft, with buttons made from sapphire crystal and stainless steel. Inside it runs the Nokia Symbian OS. Just 350 units were produced, because it's not like they can make more meteorites.
Cost: $1,300,000.00How important is security to you? Is it worth a million dollars? In 2006, Russian firm JSC Ancort teamed up with Austrian jeweler Peter Aloisson to release a seven-figure smartphone designed to keep your data safe while also dazzling passers-by. The Diamond Crypto is cast from solid platinum with inlaid rose gold and macassar ebony, featuring hand-engraved keys and a directional button with 28 round cut diamonds. Inside was a lot less impressive – a Windows CE OS with a paltry 266 MHz Motorola MX21 processor and a 240×320 screen. The custom encryption lets owners of the phones send messages to each other securely, if you've got friends as rich as you are.
Cost: $2,450.00We'll say this about the Lamborghini Alpha One: it costs less than a car by the same manufacturer. Released in August, the Alpha One comes encased in luxe Italian black leather and boasts a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage running Android Nougat. High-quality front and rear cameras and Dolby Atmos speakers fill out the specs. That's a decent loadout, to be sure, but minus the leather nothing that we haven't seen elsewhere for a fraction of the price.
Cost: $1,179,950.00Okay, now this thing is just ridiculous. We had another Goldvish phone earlier on this list that came in at a hair under eight grand, but the company wasn't satisfied with that plebian price point and decided to create a phone so expensive that only the richest morons in the world could buy one. Enter the Le Million, which sold to a Russian oligarch in 2006 for a million euros, or about a million bucks and change. With a body made from 18 carat white gold inlaid with 120 carats of diamonds, this thing couldn't be comfortable to use, and it wasn't even state of the art when it was released.
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Source: 11 Phones More Expensive Than the iPhone X
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