Vertu phones dripping in jewels mark a big birthday
Vertu's Dangerous is a pink-gold phone with paved cabochon, white and yellow diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. Is it calling you, Paris Hilton?
(Credit: House of Boucheron)To celebrate its 150th anniversary, House of Boucheron, the posh French creator of jewelry, watches, and fragrances, is sharing the swankness with a set of Vertu bejeweled cell phones bearing names such as Magic, Audacious, Curious, and Voluptuous.
The Dangerous model (aptly named, as you wouldn't want to whip this one out on the Metro), for example, is a pink-gold phone with paved cabochon, white and yellow diamonds, rubies, and sapphires.
Maybe the fact that the cell phone charms are detachable and can also be worn as pendants or dangled as glittery hypnosis tools will help justify the cost. (Prices for the phones aren't listed on the Boucheron site--a fair clue that they could approach past Vertu models, ranging from $5,000 to $310,000.)
In other Vertu news, luxury-spotting blog Sybarite reports that the high-end British-based subsidiary of Nokia has finally unveiled its updated Signature phone six years after the release of the original.
The next-generation Signature will be a 3G phone available in white gold, yellow gold, and stainless steel. It will feature a SIM drawer that will let users remove the SIM card without the need for removing the battery cover, and it will have an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display and a keypad containing 4.75 carats of solid ruby bearings.
And no Crazy Frog ringtone here. All ringtones are composed exclusively for Vertu by Academy Award-winning composer Dario Marianelli, with music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
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Leslie Katz, senior editor of CNET's Crave, covers gadgets, games, and most other digital distractions. As a co-host of the CNET News Daily Podcast, she sometimes tries to channel Terry Gross. E-mail Leslie. 
