The first smartphone of the new company should go on sale in early 2021
Luxury phones are an attractive niche for those willing to drop high demand in exchange for high margins per unit sold. The most famous player in this niche for a long time was Vertu, which started as a division of Nokia, until with the advent of smartphones, it left the race.
Former Vertu employees want to step into the same river twice
Other companies have tried to make smartphones for the wealthy, but so far none of them has had significant success. Hutch Hutchinson, who was in charge of design at Vertu, decided to try his hand again – he co-founded the new company Xor, where he took over as head of design. In addition to him, the company also includes other former Vertu employees.
Hutchinson said he was approached by a group of former Vertu customers who are still fans of Vertu’s products. Some of them were wealthy enough to finance a new company. This is how Xor was created to create beautiful phones for the wealthy elite.
The first model will be the Xor Titanium, so named because of the titanium case. It does not claim to compete with products from Apple, Google or Samsung. In fact, this is a retro device, the capabilities of which are limited to voice calls over 2G and 3G, as well as SMS messages. The spirit of modernity is perhaps only manifested in the presence of an air quality sensor and support for wireless charging. At the same time, the phone is endowed with the function of active noise cancellation, and one of the advantages of the absence of “smart” functions is an impressive battery life compared to flagship smartphones – up to five days. The proprietary Linux-based phone software is also deliberately limited. Hutchinson argues that even the Nokia Series 40 OS “will seem daunting” by comparison.
One of the keys to pushing Xor phones will be protecting information. If both subscribers have Xor phones, they can exchange calls and text messages encrypted at the hardware level using the AES algorithm with a 256-bit key. The user will be able to understand whether a particular call will be encrypted by the ringing signal. Each phone will also have a secret key that allows users to remotely erase all data in the phone’s memory.
Like Vertu, Xor phones are hand-assembled in England. The Xor Titanium costs about $ 3,900. It was originally planned to start selling this year, but the COVID-19 pandemic intervened. The Xor Titanium is now expected to go on sale in the first quarter of 2021.
