Lamborghini blends Italian design with ultra-luxury in 88 Tauri

Dubai: The amazing look and the Italian design will force anybody to take a second look if any Lamborghini car passes by. It is the same in the case of the Tonino Lamborghini Mobile’s new smartphone — 88 Tauri.

The handset isn’t only designed to impress, but it has very compelling specs to steal the limelight.

The five-inch Full HD device is powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor with 3GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage capacity. It can be expandable up to 128GB via microSD card.

The beautifully handcrafted device runs on Android KitKat version and not Lollipop. It weighs 250 grams.

The screen is scratchproof and shatterproof, and both the sides of the phone are in gold and the back is made of genuine calfskin leather over three treatments of automotive grade stainless steel. Each phone has a unique number embedded on the back.

With uncompromising quality, down to the stitching and the box itself, the box is built like the hood of the Lamborghini car. Even the headphone inside the box is of premium quality with logos of the raging bull.

The device is not for everyone and for those who are tech savvy. The raging bull logo is embedded on both the front and back side of the handset.

The phone comes in three versions (black, gold and steel silver) and leather comes in five colours (black, blue, red, orange and brown). Only 1,947 pieces of each colour is available.

The phone is larger and bulkier than the usual five-inch devices but the leather gives it a soft and textured feel.

On the right side of the device is the volume key and below that a small gold flap needs to be opened to insert the dual micro 4G LTE SIM slots. On the left side, the microUSB 3.0 charging port and the microSD card slot sit inside the gold flap. The power button is on the left side. Headphone jack sits on the top while the dual speakers are the back and the noise-cancelling microphone is placed at the bottom of the device.

You will find it very difficult to hold the phone when the flap is opened for charging or it can’t be kept in the shirt pocket. The golden metallic part is a little prone to smudges.

The audio quality is boosted by DTS-HD. The quality of the sound produced is rich and settings can be adjusted depending on what you are watching like movies or music.

Ringtones

Likewise, there are 13 exclusive ringtones created by famed disc jockey and producer DJ Ravin. The ringtones are beautiful to listen to.

If you remove the gold and the calfskin leather aside, it is a normal mid-range smartphone. But those who buy these devices do not look at the specs and all they give importance is to the luxurious design and the look. It is a status symbol.

The other luxury brand — Vertu — offers concierge services but 88 Tauri does not.

Performance-wise, it had no issues at all and the 441 pixels per inch density screen offers vivid colours and in-depth details.

The 20MPauto-focus camera with dual LED-flash on the rear gives decent snaps in day light conditions. The app is quite simple with no extraordinary features like in other smartphones. The usual scene modes like night, sunset, portrait, landscape beach, snow and sports are available. 10 colour effects are also included in the device.

In very low light conditions, the camera suffers even with flash light and the quality of the snaps is not that great despite producing accurate colours. The sensor does take a few seconds to focus properly.

Light conditions

The 8MP front-facing camera is for selfies and it also produces decent picture quality in better light conditions. The HDR feature is available for both the front and the rear cameras.

Both the front and rear cameras sometimes struggle under fluorescent lighting.

Watching videos on the device is excellent and can record in Full HD quality.

Regarding connectivity, it has 4G LTE, WiFi and Bluetooth.

The 3,400mAh non-removable battery is decent enough to last for two days but for very heavy users with dual SIMs, it lasts for 18 hours of use. It is excellent since the screen is not power hungry as in smartphones with 2K displays. It is priced at $6,000 (Dh22,000) while the gold edition is priced at $6,500 and it comes with two-year warranty.