Hey, friendly multi-billionaires next door: Looking for a new status object? (Image sources: Kevin Ianeselli via Unsplash, Olga via Adobe Stock, Caviar)
The iPhone 15 has now been introduced and is not only causing excitement among Apple fans.
No less exciting, but extinct 65 million years ago, are the dinosaurs.
How dinosaurs and iPhones are related to each other? To find out, you’ll have to look at this unusual iPhone 13 Pro – which apparently has a tyrannosaurus biting its teeth on it.
What is the Tyrannophone?
The Russian company Caviar offers expensive products for the iPhone, including the Tyrannophone. This is a pun on Tyrannosaurus and telephone.
This Jurassic Park iPhone is nothing unusual for Caviar – a company that specializes in astronomically priced consumer electronics.
A Tyrannosaurus Rex is depicted in profile on the device casing, made of titanium. The cover was coated via PVD (Physical vapor deposition). This means that the T-Rex head is not printed flat on the device casing, but can be felt as a relief-like structure.
But see for yourself:
(Image sources: Kevin Ianeselli via A Unsplash; Caviar)
The eyeball of the Tyrannosaurus is made of real amber, based on the film Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg or the book by Michael Crichton. In the film and book, tree resin that has hardened into amber over millions of years is used to extract dinosaur blood from the mosquitoes trapped in it.
The decorative highlight of the case with museum value are the steak knife-like teeth of the Tyrannosaurus. Because one of the teeth was provided with a fragment of a real T-Rex tooth. According to manufacturer Caviar, the T-Rex tooth is 80 million years old.
Is the age correct? The geological Mesozoic period, during which the dinosaurs lived, began around 235 million years ago and ended around 66 million years ago.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex lived in the Upper Cretaceous period from 85 million years ago until the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In purely mathematical terms, Caviar’s statement of the 80-million-year-old tooth fragment is correct.
The question remains open ethical acceptability a fragment of a dinosaur tooth as a decoration for a smartphone case. Whether the fragments are finds lost forever to science, or whether they are fossils officially sold was not known.
As big as a grain of sand and (almost) impossible to miss: the fragment of a fossil T-Rex tooth. Caviar has spared no expense or effort. (Image source: Caviar)
Compared to a normal iPhone 13 Pro, you lose some functions. The complex PVD case prevents wireless charging. This iPhone not only costs around 6,700 euros more than a standard iPhone – it also has a popular function cut out (on idealo.de The used iPhone 13 Pro is currently available for around 650 euros).
But if you spend over 7,300 euros on an iPhone with amber and T-Re teeth, you probably won’t mind. The Tyrannophone is certainly curious.
The tyrannophone is extinct
Anyone who wants to buy a Tyrannophone for the equivalent of 7,360 euros will most likely be disappointed. The smartphone, which is limited to seven copies, went on sale almost two years ago.
Today the Tyrannophones are already extinct – or rather: sold out.
Technically, you haven’t lost anything: The Tyrannophone is identical to a regular iPhone 13 Pro with a storage capacity of one terabyte. And since the iPhone 15 has just been introduced, the Tyrannosaurus among iPhones is two generations behind the “current state of the Apple product line”.
In the fast-moving technology environment, this luxury product really seems to be from the Stone Age.
By the way: Anyone who is enthusiastic about prehistoric reptiles should also get to know this “Google Maps for Dinosaurs”.
Do you think Tyrannophones is the ultimate (overpriced) accessory for all dinosaur enthusiasts? Or is this an overpriced luxury product decorated with a sliver of earth’s history that actually belongs in a museum? Feel free to write us your opinion in the comments.
