And you thought iPhone prices were dropping?
Photos recently surfaced of a $15 million version of the iPhone 5, with a 24-carat gold chassis and hundreds of gems including a rare black diamond.
British chic-tech craftsman Stuart Hughes said he designed it for a Hong Kong millionaire he identified only as “Joe.”
Among the features of what was billed as “iPhone 5 Black Diamond”:
* It is encrusted with 600 flawless white diamonds;
* The standard glass touchscreen has been replaced by one made of super-strong sapphire glass;
* The gold weighs a hefty 135 grams, which is nearly 5 ounces. That’s about the weight of a major-league baseball;
* The Apple logo on the opposite side of the handset is inlaid with another 53 diamonds.
Hughes sells solid-gold iPhone 5s, without the jewels, for about $40,000. Even with the white diamonds, it would cost just about $200,000.
So what makes this the world’s most expensive smartphone?
It’s the 26-carat deep-cut black diamond that replaced the home button.
And it works.
“Joe” uses it as his regular phone, according to Hughes.
“Joe,” who was described as a businessman, already owned the black diamond and just needed a proper way to display it.
Hughes said the hard part was the gold chassis. It took nine weeks to handcraft that part.
His latest gadget broke Hughes’ previous record for most expensive smartphone — a $9 million iPhone 4S, with about 500 flawless diamonds weighing more than 100 carats.
Hughes is known for his extravagant flights of tech fancy, such as the solid gold iPad 2 he designed two years ago.
It featured inlaid shards of the thighbone from a prehistoric Tyrannosaurus rex.
A merely solid-gold iPad, with 64GB, sold for less than $200,000.