It does come with a case, but no cell plan

Designer Stuart Hughes has created the world's most expensive phone -- the iPhone 4 Diamond Rose Edition -- for gold-mining baron Tony Sage, with a price tag just over $8 million dollars. The limited "run" will produce just two such iPhones, which feature antenna bezels replaced with rose gold encrusted with 500 diamonds, and the home button replaced with a 7.4-carat pink diamond set in platinum.

The diamonds caked over the rose gold antenna bezel are 100-carat each, and an option exists to replace the pink diamond home button with an 8-carat single-cut diamond. The Apple logo on the back has been similar encrusted with 53 diamonds.

The commission is unusually high-priced even for Liverpool-based designer Hughes, who has previously given a very similar treatment (with lesser diamonds) to a fourth-generation iPod Touch (with an added 24-carat gold back plate and bezel for $330,000) and created a solid platinum (or 24-carat gold) backplate for the 64GB 3G iPad which sold for $166,000. He has given similar makeovers to other high-end technology such as Bang & Olufsens speakers, and other similar designers often use Apple products as the base for their avaricious creations.

The special 32GB iPhone comes with a storage chest made of Imperial Pink granite, weighing almost 16 pounds (7kg) and lined with Nubuck leather. There is no information on whether the diamonds protect the phone from the "deathgrip" antenna problem known to affect some iPhone 4s. [via Luxury Launches]

by MacNN Staff