Aston Martin-Mobiado Handphone

So what do you do after you've got yourself an Aston Martin Rapide, a car which you start with something called an "Emotion Control Unit," a fancy name for a car key. Aston Martin describes the "Emotion Control Unit" as a highly tactile polished sapphire unit, incorporating a stainless steel inner case.



Surely an owner of such a special car (read :snobbish) would want to wear a matching set of fashionable accessories. Prior to this, Aston Martin already offers the AMVOX2 DBS Transponder watch made by Jaeger-LeCoultre exclusively for Aston Martin owners.


Now, Aston Martin intends to offer its customers a bespoke mobile phone too.

Mobiado is a Canadian based maker of designer mobile phones. This week, Mobiado will be in Switzerland, participating in the BaselWorld watch and jewelry show. Mobiado's main exhibit; the CPT002 concept phone, developed in partnership with Aston Martin. The phone's trump card is its fully transparent sapphire crystal capacitive touchscreen display suspended between two platinum bars. We will let the pictures below do the talking.



On standby mode, the screen is transparent, aside from the Aston Martin and Mobiado logo, and discrete indicators for battery life and signal strength. All the phone's electronics are housed within the two platinum bars at its sides. The phone is designed to interface with Aston Martin's infotainment system. You could for example, use the vehicle's GPS to show your current location on FourSquare, while the car's display can also show the location of your friends / venues of interest, based in input from the phone. Like the many smartphones, the CPT002 comes with an accelerometer. But other than just for playing games, the CPT002 uses the accelerometer that in the event of an accident, the accelerometer of the phone placed in the driver pocket will transmit information about the driver's movement to allow for more effective deployment of safety features such as airbag deployment force and timing and seatbelt pre-tensioners. We on the other hand think that's bollocks and there is nothing that a mobile can do to add more value to the vehicle's passive safety structure. How does the phone even know if its kept in the glove pocket or a bag or the owner's pants anyway? But of course, as salesmen of such products are likely to tell us, what do we peasant folk iPhone users know right?

Presently, the phone is still not available for sale and exists purely as a concept. But there's no reason not to believe that Mobiado is already receiving many queries on this. Potential customers are not going to care if it is less practical than a regular smartphone. Rich people will want the phone not because of its function anyway, customers at these income levels don't buy things for function, but for bragging rights. It's how the super-luxury market works.


Besides the CPT002, Mobiado will also be launching an entire line of Aston Martin inspired mobile phones by May 2011.