People talking about Vertu (1)

Review by Patricia Tan

March 18, 2002

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Vertu’s Beginnings

In development for five years, Nokia has devoted serious consideration and commitment to this venture. Although it was positioned to augur a paradigm shift in the industry, the entire project now smacks of the late 90s. Those were the years, flush with bravado and optimism, when young upstarts stole the corporate limelight with their apparent Midas touch. They eschewed the trappings of wealth that once defined success; they preferred Beetles to Benzes. At that time, Nokia recognized that phones, like credit cards, were “lekking devices” – the new social badges for class, personality and community. These rich young things, it was probably surmised, would have loved the Vertu.

How times have changed, but the Vertu is still poised to create that segment of the mobile handset market that already exists in concept. The demand for look-at-me phones, certainly, is there. The BBC reports that London jeweler de Grisogono has already produced around 20 custom-made diamond-encrusted phones for its clients, costing between £18,000 and £23,000 (E 26,000-37,000). Ericsson and Motorola have both gilded their phones with gold and stones.

Vertu, however, promises to be much more. Its creative director and designer is Frank Nuovo. Nuovo is credited with steering Nokia’s astronomical rise with his understanding of how phones “connected people” with more than technology. In Nuovo’s words, the Vertu has been created in the tradition of “dedication to precision craft and design.”

A fascinating idea. The cognoscenti would recognize this effort as timely and timeless – marrying the tradition of craft with the technology of the day, much in the vein of fine timepieces. Vertu’s claim to apply the philosophy of craftsmanship – painstaking detail and superb, even obsessive, focus – to a category defined by speed of change is truly exciting.

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