Baku, September 28, AZERTAC

England based Vertu was the brainchild of one of the most powerful mobile phone manufacturers; if you guessed Nokia, you’re right.

Sometime down the line the Finnish company decided to sell off 90% of its stakes to a company by the name of EQT VI; who works around the concept of making devices as fashion accessories. Think, Richard Mille, Patek Philippe, Franck Muller and the likes, in the watch making industry; similarly the Vertu Signature Touch aims to occupy the same segment, just for smartphones instead.

The prices of their newest devices can fetch from between £6,500 all the way to £13,700, a hefty price for a smart phone. Now with premium prices, you’d expect a premium product, so what goes into making a smart phone that costs roughly the price of a compact car.

First off, we’ll take a look at its exterior (yes, we’re treating this like a car impression); the device is fashioned out of expensive materials (go figure), you’ll get polished Grade 5 titanium - the kind you see in the high-end automotive and aerospace industry. Then we have a 130 carat sapphire crystal display ensuring you’ll have the “best” viewing experience. Lastly, the material that surrounds most of the smart phone is leather, and not just any type of leather; we’re talking calfskin, lizard and alligator hides from the best tanneries in Europe.

But wait, what about its specs? In this department, the Signature Touch is no slouch either, accompanying its expensive exterior is a 64-bit Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, mated with 4GB of RAM. It’s screen is a 5.2-inch Full HD display, protected by the aforementioned sapphire crystal, while the internal memory is supported by 64GB of storage and features a MicroSD slot (support up to 2TB) that comes with a 64GB card inside.

The device’s rear camera stands at a pretty 21-megapixels with phase detect autofocus and a twin Dual-tone LED flash providing better colour accuracy when lit. Moving over to the front, you’ll get a satisfactory 2.1-megapixel wide aperture sensor for those (expensive) selfies.

Vertu’s Signature Touch promises to pack a punch when audio is concerned, thanks to its duo of stereo speakers enhanced by Dolby Digital Plus surround sound decoding. For connectivity its equipped with the full WiFi spectrum (a/b/g/n/ac), as well as Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and 4G LTE to boot.

Under its titanium housing, you’ll be pleased to find a 3,160 mAh battery that’s readily compatible with Qualcomm QuickCharge 2.0 and also Qi wireless charging. Capping off the smartphone’s specs is the software it runs - Android 5.1 Lollipop with some added Vertu extras bundled with the device.