Now, for the unaware, Vertu was a company under Nokia that made luxury versions of the Nokia handsets back in the days. It got liquidated due to financial issues back in 2017 leaving 200 of its employees unpaid and unemployed. Now, the chief designer of the company, Hutch Hutchison founded Xor (pronounced as “Eggsor”) to combine the essence of dumbphones with the elegance of luxury.
An Elegant “Dumbphone” With High-End Security
So, their first handset, the “Xor Titanium” is pretty self-explanatory as it comes with a strong chassis made of titanium. However, if you are expecting features like 5G or support for high-speed gaming, then I am sorry to say that you won’t get any of that in this device. The company spent its resources only on the material of the device and of specifications. The only modern sensor it packs inside is the air quality sensor to measure the pollution of the air in an environment. And with support for 2G/ 3G, voice calls, and SMS, the Xor Titanium surely isn’t competing with the latest flagships in the market. Rather, it is designed to be a secondary communication-device for ultra-rich people.
However, one of the major USP of the device is its security level. The company promoting the handset as a secure device for high priority business executives who want trusted communication. For starters, if two users with Xor Titanium communicate with each other, they will get end-to-end (AES256) encryption at the hardware level. Moreover, the phone will play different ringtones to categorize normal and encrypted calls and texts. And one of the over-the-top features of the device is that each of the models will come with a secret key to remotely delete all the data stored in the handset. Now, the company had plans to launch the device sometime this year. However, the ongoing Coronavirus-led pandemic has delayed the production process. Hence, they will release the device in 2021 with an expensive price tag of £3,000, which translates to $3,942 (~Rs 2,93,398).
