Why would you pay $25k for a phone that isn’t even a smartphone? Well, why wouldn’t you, if it was covered in gold leaf, had 18-carat gold buttons, and most importantly, had an Orthodox cross engraved on it?
Moscow-based mobile phone company Gresso created 988 (the year Christianity was adopted in Russia) of the phones, ranging from $6,300 to $25,000, depending on how blinged-out the model is. There is a version with diamond incrusted buttons, for example.
When it comes to functionality, however, forget about social media. The Orthodox phone will take you back to the blissful days of text-messaging and actually calling someone.
“We wanted to minimize users’ internet addiction and concentrate on the mobile itself and the real world, not a virtual one,” Gresso press officer Anatoly Sautin said, explaining the gadget’s poor range of functions to RUPTLY.
The phone is equipped with built-in memory of 32GB, a three mega-pixel camera (by comparison, Apple’s iPhone 7 has a 12MP camera) and supports the use of two SIM cards. The manufacturer offers a warranty period of one year, which seems just about fair for an item worth $25,000.
“We want to give the first phone in this series to Patriarch Kirill,” Sautin said. “Next week we plan to bless several phones in Moscow,” he added.
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Russian Orthodox Church spokesperson Vladimir Legoida warned that owning an expensive gadget won’t make a believer any better.
“Engraving crosses on golden phones won’t make a user any closer to God,” Legoida told Life.ru