Motorola AURA Now Available

For those with a few grand kicking around, Motorola’s latest foray into luxury handsets, the Motorola AURA, is now available for $1,999.99. What makes this thing so freakin’ expensive?

• World’s first 16 million color, circular display with 300 dpi resolution
• Scratch-resistant 62 carat lens
• Stainless steel housing with chemically etched textures and patterns
• Swiss-made main bearing, which serves as the foundation allowing the blade to rotate with seamless precision
• Custom-engineered rotating mechanism which has 130 precision ball bearings that drive the assisted-opening blade
• Gears composed of Rockwell 50-55 hardened steel, protected with the same coating used in high-performance racing engines
• In total, 700+ individual components comprised of features including up-scaled, nickel-chrome-plated exposed screws
• Mirror polish finish with PVD coating, the same used when making luxury watches
• Aluminum keypad

For some, the design might be a little too tongue-in-cheek, but personally, I think the layout is very distinctive, and the circular screen is a very nice twist on traditional cell phones. Technically it’s nothing fancy – unlocked, quad-band EDGE, 2 megapixel camera and 2 GB of internal memory, but for the fashion-conscious, this seems like a viable alternative to Vertu.