LeDix Furtif: Your Next $300,000 Watch Phone
Baku, March 17 (AZERTAC). Forget the 1 percent. The enigmatically named Celsius X VI II makes cell-phones for the 0.01 percent.
"Our customers are people who have everything," Celsius co-founder Edouard Meylan said. "They think, `just another watch, just another car?` But if they find something different, it brings them emotions."
The multi-millionaire`s emotional object for 2012 might be the $300,000 Celsius LeDIX Furtif, the second in the exclusive company`s line of quasi-mechanical watch phones. Meylan`s crew have the minds of steampunk mad scientists. The eventual goal is to, one by one, replace the electronic parts of a mobile-phone with mechanical ones.
"We are working on a mechanical display where the pixels would be mechanical. Shadows would indicate binary open or closed states, and that would be sufficient to indicate letters or numbers. It`s like e-ink but mechanical, because we love mechanics," he said.
The first Celsius product to truly mechanize an electronic function will come in 2013, when the company aims to develop a phone that recharges itself based on physical actions like flipping it open, flipping it closed, or pressing buttons. That phone will be based on a highly customized version of Android; the company picked that OS not for smartphone features, but because it`s really easy to hack.
"We`re trying to optimize gathering energy generated by the user, converting it into energy to generate the battery. There are a lot of generators in there; there are strings, there are gears, a motor that turns at about 8000 rpm … it`s a crazy product," Meylan said. "You`ll have an emergency mode where you can open it a few times, close it a few times, and generate enough energy to make a one-minute call."
A Furtif Desire
It`s still early days for Celsius, though. The LeDIX Furtif is primarily a simple flip phone mated to an extremely fancy pocketwatch on the outside. It`s very similar to the original LeDIX, announced two years ago, but with a carbon fiber rather than a metal body, and a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back.
"We`re using carbon fiber to create the entire structure, which has never been done before in the phone industry. It`s quite a challenge," Meylan said.
The Furtif also has "the world`s most off-centered flying tourbillon," a complex mechanism used to make sure a watch stays accurate when held in various positions. Flipping the phone open or closed winds the watch, although it doesn`t yet recharge the phone.
Celsius has sold 22 of the first 32 LeDIX phones. The new LeDIX Furtif will sell at about $300,000 like its predecessor, coming out in three runs of eight starting in May.
After the Furtif, Celsius is going to make 84 units of another model, the Optic; that`s practically mass production for these guys. The Optic will bury a date display deep within the workings of the watch/phone and project it onto the side of the phone using a thick optic fiber.
Other high-end watch companies also make super-expensive phones. Like Celsius, they`re showing them off at the BaselWorld watch-industry trade show starting this Thursday. Mobiado, Ulysse Nardin, Goldvish, and Vertu all load their phones up with luxury materials; Ulysse Nardin`s 2009 Chairman phone let you recharge the battery by manually winding the crown of the watch.
But that said, Celsius has a unique vision. Can it get away with building a phone that replaces liquid crystals with clicking panels, and that shows your unread messages using a tiny bead rolling on a track? Will the first unit be bought by the resident of New York City`s steampunk apartment? We`re hoping Celsius will send us a telegram when it`s ready.
Other news in this section
