Vertu’s Ayxta Fold 5G is the first “luxury” foldable phone

TL;DR: Vertu’s target audience has never been the average user, and this time is no different. The company’s Ayxta Fold 5G is a poorly disguised Royole FlexPai 2 with a leather back, and the privilege to own it costs no less than $7,100.

Every time you think Vertu has finally thrown in the towel, the company manages to come up with yet another superlative announcement. This time, however, it does so when the slow economic recovery and a global shortage of semiconductors are reshaping consumer behavior.

Vertu’s new luxury phone is of the foldable variety, with the company’s typical design modifications and OS alterations, all at a price that will make most consumers run away. Essentially, it’s a Royole FlexPai 2, the successor to the first foldable phone to have entered the market and also an improvement over the original in terms of how the software integrates with the hardware. But in Vertu’s world, it’s the Ayxta Fold 5G, a luxury phone with surprisingly little in the way of expensive craftsmanship or exotic materials.

The display is a modest 7.8-inch, 1920 x1440 OLED panel, which is slightly lower than what you’ll find in Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 or Huawei’s Mate X2. The internals are decidedly mid-range, with a Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform paired with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. The camera module includes a 64-megapixel main shooter, a 32-megapixel selfie cam, a 16-megapixel ultra wide, and an 8-megapixel sensor with 3x optical zoom.

Powering all these components is a 4,450 mAh battery, just like the original Royole FlexPai 2. At this point, you’re probably wondering what exactly Vertu did to make this phone more than a simple rebrand. The answer is pretty simple — it added calfskin leather on the back cover, and installed its own Android skin.

If you’d ever be interested in this phone, the price is an eye-watering $7,100, which is actually discounted from the normal price of $15,500. But if you’re like this crypto enthusiast that can afford integrating a mining rig in the trunk of your sports car, this phone might actually be the best fashion statement you can buy. That is, if you can import it from China, as there’s no word on international availability at the time of writing.