For many of us, our smartphone has become the object we handle most in life. That makes it an ideal target for a luxury treatment. In some cases, that turns out to be a bad idea.

I’m about to shoot fish in a barrel, but hey, I’m not the one who made what you’re about to see. Take a look at these historical examples of “luxury smartphones”, either phones made “luxury” at the factory or bought on the open market and then blinged out:

Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here…¹

…but honestly, where do I even start with these? I try to be fair in everything I write. I try to allow for the fact that design preferences are subjective. I try to remember that, to adapt a phrase, “one person’s litter is another person’s luxury”. But this stuff? I just can’t. It’s terrible in so many ways. In a way, it’s all worse than terrible: it’s stupid. Who buys this kind of thing? What are they thinking? Three of them I wouldn’t even be seen in public with and there presumably exist people who paid up to a million dollars for them.

Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.²

As I said, shooting fish in a barrel. The far more interesting question is to look not at “luxury smartphones” (which I’ll always put in quotes because I don’t think they should be a real thing) but at luxury smartphone accessories. Plenty of maisons will happily kit out your smartphone with accessories. Some of them will even accessorize both your smartphone and your smartphone’s accessories.

The problem is that many categories of luxury smartphone accessories fail even the most simple thought experiment:

Fitted smartphone cases (leather and/or fabric). Many examples exist. Here’s one from Prada:

The problem here is that smartphone cases are tightly fitted to their targets, and smartphones change, geometrically, just enough across generations to prevent the case from adapting. So you’ll upgrade your smartphone and have a paperweight of a luxury case.

Fitted smartphone cases (metal). The best example is RIMOWA’s line of aluminum smartphone cases:

Is that a handsome smartphone case? Subjectively, yes. Does it carry forward RIMOWA’s design language? Absolutely. But because it’s made of aluminum, you can’t wirelessly charge it and you can’t use any MagSafe accessories with it.

Fitted wireless earbuds cases. A good example is Hermès’ line of cases for AirPods cases (say that three times fast):

We’ve looped back to the smartphone issue here. Wireless earbud case geometries often change across generations, so you’re looking at a $1,625 leather accessory that could become instantly obsolete the moment you upgrade.

Consider a luxury smartphone accessory only when it can survive the upgrade cycle and doesn’t make the phone worse at being a phone.

The more precisely a luxury accessory is fitted to a smartphone, the more suspicious you should be. Precision sounds like virtue, but in this category it often means planned obsolescence wearing Saffiano, aluminum, or calfskin. A good luxury smartphone accessory should outlast the phone, not die with it. Be careful with anything that depends on this year’s model’s precise measurements.

In my next Field Note, I’ll cover examples of smartphone accessories that actually do work. Stay tuned.

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