mordant wit

This spring, an industrial designer named Jaren Goh unveiled a concept design for a truly bleeding-edge, luxury smartphone. Because this device would so expensive, no one really expected him to find any customers. Surprisingly, though, a European company has put in an order for five of them.

These will go on sale early next year for $300,000 U.S.

The Black Diamond, as it is called, will include features found in no off-the-shelf model, like a mirror-finished polycarbonate casing studded with diamonds. It will also sport a 4-megapixel camera and an ultra-sleek design.

Still, on the inside it will be a fairly standard Pocket PC phone. It will run Windows Mobile 5.0 on a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor. This smartphone will include 128 MB of memory and an SD slot.

The Black Diamond will be a quad-band GSM/GPRS phone with built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g).

The original concept called for an OLED screen, but the device that will actually ship will use a 2-inch LCD.

Jaren Goh's Black Diamond will be a limited edition smartphone offered by Voice Internet Phone Network (VIPN), a company that offers VoIP (Voice Over IP) service.

That why it will support this company's service for making phone calls over the Internet.

More information on the Black Diamond is available on the VIPN web site.