TAG Heuer LINK

Available July 2011
22nd July 2011

The problem with ultra-high-end luxury phones is that they're not usually very good. Once you strip away the layers of dead animal skin, precious metals and bits of jewellery then you are often left with a handset that would be worth about €50 or so when it comes to technical features. It's always a bit embarrassing when you have to supplement your luxury phone with a plain old smartphone for mundane stuff like surfing the web or reading email.

This is where the TAG Heuer LINK comes in. Starting at €4700 and featuring precision Swiss engineering, the LINK is certainly expensive and exclusive. Fortunately, the LINK is also a capable Android smartphone that can do pretty much anything that any other smartphone can do.

Before we look under the hood, it will probably be worth exploring just why the TAG Heuer LINK costs so much. Part of the answer is in the engineering - like a TAG Heuer watch, the LINK is in a shockproof and airtight case which should survive.. well, whatever it is that rich people do when they get bumped around and wet. One interesting feature is the autolock system on the side of the phone that covers the LINK's ports. All this engineering expertise means that the LINK is quite heavy, coming in at 200 grams which possibly makes it the heaviest phone on the market.

There are a variety of materials available for your own custom look, including steel, rose gold, titanium, rubber, calfskin, alligator and lizard hide and diamonds, so the starting price of €4700 is really only going to get you the basics here. The display is toughened Gorilla Glass, making it harder to damage or scratch than a standard display. Stylistically, the LINK looks like nothing else. Nobody is going to mistake this for a standard black slabby smartphone, and a good thing too at this price.

The outside of the LINK is very much a TAG Heuer creation, but in fact the handset is built by French company ModeLabs who specialise in this type of luxury device. ModeLabs worked with TAG Heuer on the MERIDIIST as well as several other luxury labels. Underneath all the metal and leather, the LINK is a pretty typical Android device that holds no surprises.

On the front of the LINK is a 3.5" 800 x 480 pixel TFT display, on the back is a pretty standard 5 megapixel camera. Inside is a 1GHz processor, 256MB of internal Flash memory plus an 8GB memory card. As with every other Android phone, the TAG Heuer LINK supports GPS, WiFi, 3.5G and Bluetooth and comes with a decent range of pre-installed applications plus thousands of others to download. At present, the LINK only comes with Android 2.2 rather than the latest Android 2.3, but TAG Heuer do hint that the OS is "upgradeable". TAG Heuer have added some custom widgets and themes to add to the vanilla Android experience.

We've seen more powerful Android devices than this, but the LINK is certainly good enough to run almost everything that you could throw at it. But remember: the electronics in this phone will date pretty quickly, unlike a watch. In two years time the TAG Heuer LINK will be pretty much obsolete.. but perhaps the people who will buy it won't mind spending another €5000 or so to replace it..

TAG Heuer say that the LINK should be available this month, exclusively in TAG Heuer retailers.