The world of high fashion and luxury has seen its fair share of opulent smartphones. The Porsche Edition BlackBerry phones were quite the envy assets not long ago, and so were the bespoke pieces from Vertu, TAG Heuer, Prada, and Dior.
Caviar has been carrying the mantle in the modern age, making decadent versions of Apple and Samsung smartphones that use everything from alligator leather and python skin to diamond and meteorite fragments.
The latest from the brand is a triple-folding Huawei Mate XT covered in 24-carat gold. Caviar calls it Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design Gold Dragon, a fittingly lavish name for a device that costs $18,200 for the 1TB edition.
If, however, you are hunting for some bargain on your lavish smartphone indulgence, the 2156GB storage version will only pull $17, 340 from your wallet.
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For that sum, you get a phone covered from head to toe in 24K gold, the purest form of the yellow metal available for making jewelry and other ritzy endeavors.
It’s a shame that there are no crystals on this one, given the brand’s history. “An exquisite texture of imperial swords crafted in Longquan is reproduced on the gold surface,” defends Caviar’s sales pitch.
Seems like history is the prized asset here. The patterns, claims the brand, are inspired by the Longquan swords of the Ming Dynasty while the dragon in the name signifies luck and property.
The Longquan sword is a cultural heritage in China, and its history is associated with master swordsmith, Ou Yezi, who traveled to the Longquan region roughly 2,500 years ago on imperial orders to make great weapons.
As for the phone itself, it’s the world’s first commercially available triple-folding smartphone. The main display is a 6.4-inch unit, but you can unfold it to open a 7.9-inch canvas, and do it again to access a massive 10.2 inches of screen real estate.
For those worried about the internals on a pure gold smartphone, there is little to be disappointed here. You get 16GB of RAM, up to 1TB storage, a triple camera setup headlined by a 50-megapixel sensor alongside a 5.5x periscope zoom snapper, and a 5,600 mAh battery that supports 50W wireless charging.
The phone, in its pristine state without all that gold craftsmanship, isn’t pocket-friendly, either. It starts at roughly $2,740, and despite that, it has been in high demand in the sanction-battered brand’s home market.
According to Reuters, some fans lined up outside the Huawei stores a day in advance to get the Huawei Mate XT when it first went on sale.
Many were left “fuming” as the phone sold out, while some resellers are offering it for over seven times the retail price. Huawei is reportedly planning to launch it in the overseas market in the first quarter of 2025.
In case that doesn’t materialize, you can place your order for the Caviar trim, which also grants you a personal designer to help with custom engravings, bespoke design modifications, and packaging tweaks suited for royalty.