Tag Heuer Enter the Luxury Smartphone Market With Racer Prestige Gold

Last month we told you about the Vertu Ti, a $10,000 smartphone popular with luxury watch collectors. Today, we’re bringing the two worlds together with a look at watchmaker TAG Heuer’s new Racer Prestige Gold, an Android phone that is a powerful luxury communication tool.

Like their timepieces, TAG Heuer’s Racer is made in Switzerland, with the same attention to detail and materials used to create the manufacture’s watches. The Racer is the first touchscreen smart phone to be entirely constructed from the leading-edge composite carbon fiber, titanium and rubber materials originally developed for motor racing and aviation. For example, the carbon fiber used in GT racing cars is hypoallergenic, three times lighter and five times harder than stainless steel, protecting the phone from wear-and-tear. Next, the Aeronautic-grade titanium (the same used in TAG Heuer watches) developed for luxury jets is corrosion resistant, paragmagnetic and biocompatible. Finally, the same rubber used in Formula 1 tires is nano coated for extra “soft-touch” comfort and wear resistance.

The cutting edge LCD screen is 480 x 800 pixels, allowing this phone to handle 16-million colors with its TFT – 3.5’’ Gorilla glass® display. Even with the capacitive touch panel with multi-touch capability, this 1 GHZ phone with a Racer Li-lon 1400mAh battery is long-duration. A large keyboard, high-definition 5-mega-pixel auto-focus camera on the back and 640×480 pixel VGA video front camera round out the hardware. The Racer’s software gives its owner 11 hours of music play time, and, through its avant-garde Android operating system, download access to over 400,000 applications. It also comes fully loaded with a host of TAG Heuer add-ons: animations, wallpapers, icons, ring tones, customized screen designs, and outstanding widgets to personalize the home screen.

Prices begin at around US$7,500. Photo courtesy TAG Heuer.