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Caviar’s combined iPhone XS / Apple Watch fever dream could be yours for $21,050

Caviar’s combined iPhone XS / Apple Watch fever dream could be yours for $21,050

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Image: Caviar

Russian accessory maker Caviar is known for strapping impractical gold-plated objects onto the backs of iPhones, like a gold-trimmed solar charging panel. But the company may have outdone itself this year with its latest variant of Apple’s phone: the iPhone XS Max “Swiss Dreams Watchphone” attaches a gold-plated Apple Watch onto the back of the phone for the low, low price of $21,050.

I have some serious concerns about how this could even functionally work

Questionable aesthetics aside, I have some serious concerns about how this could even functionally work. Let’s start with the obvious: how do you charge the Apple Watch? No, seriously: looking at the pictures on Caviar’s website, I can’t see any way that you’d be able to jam the charging puck underneath the Watch, which seems to be held flush against the back of the phone by the integrated straps. And unless there’s some way to shimmy something underneath the Watch to engage the strap release buttons, I can’t see how you’d remove it.

Image: Caviar

Even if the pictures here are misleading and the “strap” design on the back does actually lift off, are you really still expected to have a gold-plated Apple Watch constantly attached to the back of your gold-plated iPhone?

Putting aside the logistics, I’m baffled as to why anyone would want this. An Apple Watch primarily does two things at this point: displays notifications from an iPhone and offers better fitness data due to the sensors on the back. Needless to say, both of those functions are pretty useless when it’s on the back of your phone. Additionally, Apple sets the Apple Watch to automatically lock if it’s not attached to someone’s wrist for security purposes, so you’d have to manually unlock it with a passcode every time you’d want to use it (at least, until the battery runs out).

Image: Caviar

For this kind of money, it feels like there should be more gold

The cherry on top is that it costs a whopping $21,050, or $19,250 more than a regular iPhone XS and a stainless steel Apple Watch Series 4. And it’s not like your $19,250 is even getting you a blinged-out solid gold iPhone; it’s not even that gold-plated. Caviar seemingly just added a gold backplate to a bog-standard iPhone XS. It does appear that most of that price is coming from the Apple Watch attachment (which still seems high, considering Caviar sells a gold-plated Apple Watch individually for $3,000). It also offers similar Watch-inspired iPhone editions for a comparatively reasonable $4,000 to $5,000.

In either case, for this kind of money, it feels like there should be more gold on the phone.