June 18, 2013

A solid gold, diamond studded iPhone 5 for the one who has everything and wants the world to know it

by Shayne Rana

The reasons behind why anyone would want to have a gold plated or diamond studded iPhone or any mobile phone for that matter, is completely lost on me. Sure I get the prestige part, the glamour, the – flaunt your wealth angle even, but does that really add class to your life? I guess it’s a matter of opinion, personally, I think not. It’s gauche. Goldgenie has nevertheless just announced their two new uber outrageous, swanky, only-for-the-ultra-rich iPhone 5s. The Solid Gold Superstar version of the iPhone has 200 grams of solid 18 carat gold while the Solid Gold Ice edition is loaded with 364 diamonds amounting to about 5.5 carats with the same amount of gold.


Just like you’d expect with any standard, lowly iPhone 5 editions, these will also ship with Apple’s new Earpods, the USB charging and PC interface cable, charger with appropriate documentation and an authentication certificate. There’s no mention of the charger or other accessories being covered in gold. All of this is neatly tucked away into a luxury cherry oak box. Now here’s the weird part – Goldgenie is even allowing their customers to upgrade their handsets when a newer model comes in. They haven’t quite mentioned just how that would be handled but presumably there would some sort of fee to move the gold and or Diamonds to the next model. The question is – what if the new iPhone is smaller, what happens to the extra gold or diamonds? Or if it’s larger, you’d need to add more diamonds and gold.

Both of these over-the-top iPhone 5s are SIM Free, factory unlocked and therefore open to all networks. The Solid Gold Superstar is priced at a whopping $75,388 (£48,000) while the Ice edition is priced at $106,753 (£68,000). There’s also some talk about a Sapphire edition that might be in the works. If you though the iPhone 5 itself was pricey enough for some, then these editions are on a whole different plane of existence.

[Via – Gsmarena]