$2,000 Mobile that looks like a Ugly Makeup Case: Motorola Aura
From the archive: published Jan 12, 2009, 17 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Motorola has fallen on tough times. The once mighty mobile arm of the electronics company, the same division that delivered the world’s first flip mobile phone has become a bit player in the world mobile scene.
The Motorola Aura demonstrates why.
The Aura is pitched as being “high fashion” with a high price tag: $2,000. For it you get a circular screen, a clamshell design that rotates 180 degrees, and a pile of unimpressive specs.
For your $2,000 you get GSM + Edge access, so no 3G, 2GB of internal memory, and a 2mb camera. Oh, but the lens is created from Grade 1 62-carat sapphire crystal, and has a custom-engineered rotating mechanism with 130 precision ball bearings that drive the assisted-opening blade, or as Motorola describes it “like opening the door on a high-end luxury car.”
Here’s a demo video from MobileBurn taken at CES. Given most celebs and smart people are using iPhone’s or Blackberry’s, somehow we just can’t see this phone taking off.