Vertu’s Aster is a luxury Android smartphone that offers solid top-shelf specs and a high-end build quality. But you’ll have to contend with an equally lofty price tag to get your hands on this “Quintessentially English” smartphone.
Ironically, super high-end luxury smartphones traditionally suffer from low-end internals. Vertu’s Signature Touch handset, announced earlier this year, bucked the trend by introducing some capable specs to go along with the hand-crafted, premium build. The Aster continues that trajectory.
According to Vertu, the new handset is more of a unisex product than its last effort, which from what we can gather, means its available in some more vibrant colors, like bright red and pink. Each handset is handmade and finished by a single craftsman, using luxury materials including grade 5 titanium and leather sourced from the same tanneries that supply leading fashion houses. Purchasers also get access to the company’s swanky 24-hour concierge service.
Things might not be quite as Buckingham Palace behind the scenes, but at least its internals are about what you'd expect from a 2014 flagship smartphone. The handset is powered by the same quad core Snapdragon 801 chip you’ll find in the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8), and there’s 4G LTE connectivity on board.
The 4.7-in display is protected by sapphire crystal, and has 1080p resolution (a sharp 473 pixels per inch). The Aster runs Android 4.4 KitKat, with a Vertu custom UI layered on top.
Sounds like a pretty nice handset, right? Well, it can be yours for a mere US$6,769. On the bright side, it’s significantly cheaper than the company’s equally prestigious Signature Touch smartphone.The Aster will go on sale in the UK today, rolling out globally in the coming months.
Source: Vertu
