Nokia’s “Royal” The Most Ridiculous Arte Yet

Nokia have long maintained the incredibly expensive Arte line, just in case Brewster’s Millions actually happens and the reincarnated ghost of Richard Pryor wants an ugly phone.  The latest is the “Arte Royal”, announced today, which looks at merely diamond-studded phones like it found them searching through its binbags for cigarrette ends.  They’ve realised that there just isn’t any more surface area to glue expensive elements onto, so they’ve started hiding them inside instead: the Royal is held together by eight handmade platinum screws.

They’ve hired an expert jeweller to make Meccano pieces, which they then use to hide the most precious of metals deep inside a phone where no-one can actually see it.  This tells you everything you need to know about the high price, low class, zero sense world of blingphones.  It’s also gilded with gold and studded with over one thousand individual diamonds, but since they’ve already succeeded in making diamonds boring that doesn’t count for anything but the “Looks most like Bond villain Zao” competition.

Fifty of these fripperies will be released in Paris this Saturday, and Nokia still haven’t told anyone the price - presumably to avoid anyone actually looking at the number.  Because if you even have to have your butler ask how much it costs, this phone isn’t for you.