Video: hands-on with Caviar’s $4,200 gold-plated, solar-powered iPhone X

Luxury iPhone company Caviar has created some ultra-expensive, gold-plated replacement casings for Apple’s iPhone models. Today, we’re taking a closer look at their solar-charging iPhone X that will—dare I put it this way—definitely make you the envy of all your friends.

At $4,200 for the baseline 64-gigabyte iPhone X “Tesla” model, this is some expensive bling. Keep in mind that price can go all the way up to nearly $4,600 for the flagship model with 256 gigabytes of storage. Moreover, they’re also offering a 24k gold iPhone XS/Max, starting at $5,200 for the baseline model and up to almost $6,000 for the 512GB version.

But as our video guy Harris Craycraft himself notes in his hands-on video walkthrough, this isn’t your ordinary modification where a luxury car manufacturer like Porsche applies some gold or premium plating on a smartphone and calls it a day.

What Caviar has done with their “Tesla” iPhone modifications is combine a luxurious replacement casing with solar charging so you can juice up your phone from light alone! Elon Musk’s Tesla Company has been actively researching smart batteries for vehicles and his work has clearly inspired Caviar.

And now, check it out in the hands-on video embedded below.

The solar battery is rated at 2,300mAh, for those asking, and can be recharged via USB or from light. Integrated at the back of the phone, it recharges your iPhone’s internal battery automatically. On the downside, solar charging is very slow: it takes about 30 hours to recharge Caviar’s battery from dead to 100 percent using just the power of the sun.

The solar battery also prevents wireless charging from working.

The shock-resistant casing is made our of 24k gold, of course. The laconic structure of the enclosure and the carbon fiber black accents definitely give this phone an edge over your friends’ smartphones. Still, the solar battery along with all that bling makes this phone heavy and thick.

I guess that’s the price you pay for genuine luxury.

All the other iPhone X features, including Face ID, work as normal.

The phone ships in Caviar’s premium case that includes headphones, a Lightning cable and a USB charger, just like any other iPhone, plus a booklet showcasing their lineup.

Needless to say, this is nowhere near the design or functionality that caters to an average iPhone fan. Instead, it’s for the eccentrics, rich rappers and the similar types of bling-loving people that really want more than they need.

As Harris succinctly concludes at the end of his hands-on video walkthrough, even if you aren’t in the market for something like this, it’s still simply cool to just look at because “we all have this interesting desire to see stuff we can’t afford.”

To learn more about Caviar’s other offerings, check out their website.

What do you think about this thing?

Let us know by leaving a comment below.