If you thought a $1199 price tag was expensive, this $8630 special-edition gold-plated iPhone 15 Pro clearly isn’t for you!
The folks at Caviar, known for giving smartphones a highly blinged makeover, are back with their luxury-driven take on the latest Apple offering. With as many as 63 designs to choose from, Caviar decided to look at the iPhone 15 Pro’s titanium chassis and say “We can do better”. The various models showcase a variety of materials and finishes, including the use of gold, crystals, and even marbled carbon fiber. They start at a respectable $6,700, going up to an eye-watering half a million for a version made of white gold and actual diamond gemstones.
Designer: Caviar
Dubbed ‘Notorious’, this is one of Caviar’s more ornate pieces, paying homage to the Colt 1911 handgun. The phone comes with a top-to-bottom makeover, including a new aviation-grade titanium backplate to replace Apple’s own glass backplate. The titanium plate is PVD-coated with black and finished with 24k gold details. The frame around the side is electroplated with 24k gold too, as are the rings around the camera lenses. Finally, the phone is outfitted with a solid gold bas-relief gun, with a wooden insert on the handle. This bad-boy won’t shoot bullets, but it’ll shoot the best damn pictures on the planet.
The ‘Notorious’ iPhone 15 Pros are legitimate pieces of art. Every corner of the phone has some amount of detailing or graphic, replacing the otherwise bland iPhone canvas with something more than just an Apple logo. The pieces aren’t just put together on top of the iPhone either. Caviar makes custom backplates for each phone, factoring in tolerances, the MagSafe ring and charging coil, etc. while the frame around the side is also made to integrate into the phone, giving you a device that feels as sleek as possible. That 3D relief gun excluded, obviously.
Caviar’s pieces aren’t for tech aficionados, clearly. The phone’s made for true collectors, quite like people who indulge in Rolexes, Patek Philippes, Bugattis, and Rolls-Royces. These aren’t the kinds of phones you’d want to slap a case on (you couldn’t even if you tried), and they’re made to be surrounded by an elite team of bodyguards, not simply slipped into your pant pockets.
With a starting price of $8630 for the iPhone 15 Pro (128 Gb), the ‘Notorious’ phone isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, it’s limited to just 99 units, and also comes with a sim-tray unlike the ones available in the US. Each phone is made to order and takes roughly 1-5 days to complete, following which the phone comes shipped to you in, lets say, more than just an Apple iPhone box. Each of the 99 Notorious iPhone 15 Pros come in a decked-out briefcase with golden details, a certificate of authenticity, and the phone itself. No, I wouldn’t know if there’s a gold-plated USB-C cable included…
