After his work in recent years designing the Jawbone Bluetooth Headset and the OLPC’s XO “$100 laptop,” celebrity designer Yves Béhar has branched out. First, there was the Form 2 sex toy and now he’s created a profoundly expensive mobile phone for Copenhagen-based Æsir, a new mobile tech company founded by Thomas Møller Jensen, Mathias Rajani, and Jens-Martin Skibsted. One assumes that the lessons Béhar learned from the Form 2’s good vibrations have been applied to this device’s silent mode as well. The +yvesbéhar phone is €7,250.00 in stainless steel or €42,000.00 in gold, seen here. From an interview with Béhar on the Æsir site:
With the Æsir phone, I wanted to show an alternative to the sea of smartphones and their deluge of features. In an age when the industry seems to think that phones aren’t for speaking anymore, I wanted to focus on the idea of voice, clarity and simplicity.
The central tenet behind the +YvesBéhar is to literally craft the visual details, craft the functional tactility, and craft the user interface. This level of resolution for every touch point was achieved using a European-centric approach to manufacturing, assembly and design, partnering with the best makers in Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. The +YvesBéhar champions the idea of craftsmanship in an age that’s obsessed with more and making last year’s products obsolete. Instead we propose better and long-lasting as our starting criteria.
