Ascendant Luxury: Vertu launches the Ascent

MANILA, Philippines - Vertu, of luxury hand-assembled mobile phone fame, has announced the launch of the new Ascent.

Frank Nuovo, Vertu’s principal designer, said, “The new Ascent design is an extreme expression within the heart of the Vertu Collection. The highly structural, linear and faceted nature of the design is hard edged and without compromise of character.”

Taking its expertise in materials and pushing it to the limit, Vertu has deployed aerospace-grade aluminum in the engineering of its full handset casings.

Combined with the continued use of titanium, this presents two variants of Ascent, each with a very different character, both offering exceptional performance to the customer.

A material more closely associated with Formula 1 and aerospace applications, aluminum boasts strength as well as light weight.

The casings of aluminum Ascent handsets are heat-treated in a process known as precipitation hardening, producing microscopic changes in the aluminum which doubles the strength of the alloy.

The parts are then anodized — a process which transforms the surface, creating a layer five times harder than the raw material.

An established material within the Vertu portfolio, titanium, meanwhile, has again been chosen for its exceptional strength-to-weight ratio.

A nine-stage forging process is used to create the Ascent casing, with the majority of these stages involving heating the metal to 860 degrees before applying 630 tons of pressure to mold the material.

The handsets are then trimmed using either high-performance vulcanized rubber or leather.

Also enhanced on the inside, the engine in the Ascent offers quad-band 3G and GSM network coverage.

The phone comes with Assisted GPS technology and preloaded worldwide maps covering more than 190 countries as well as up to 32GB internal memory.

Authenticity is everything with Vertu and its unrelenting attention to detail is seen in the interpretation of the iconic chronograph clock face.

Inspired by motor racing and military aviation, the Ascent’s clock face bears a sporty chronograph design.

Like such watches, the Ascent has a dedicated side key to activate the stopwatch. While the stopwatch is running, allowing the user to record and save split and lap times, the clock continues to function normally.

Intelligent and precise time-keeping technology also ensures that the clock is adjusted to the local time of the phone’s location, wherever in the world the phone is connected to a network. When abroad, the clock always displays an origin location time, keeping you in touch and connected to home. 

The Ascent features a high-quality 5-MP camera with sapphire crystal lens and auto-focus. When browsing the Internet, the Ascent’s tilt sensor adjusts the display from portrait to landscape when the handset is turned 90 degrees. The Ascent is also equipped with a high-intensity LED flashlight with illumination of 22 lux.

As with previous Vertu models, an all-new soundtrack was commissioned specifically for the Ascent and was created by Unkle, a British musical outfit fronted by James Lavelle and Pablo Clements. Unkle is unique in their versatility and every piece of work is given its distinctive sound by meticulous layering of music.

For Ascent, Unkle created an exclusive seven-minute track, “A Darker Shade of Blue.” The track features Philip Sheppard (composer and cellist) and Melinda Gareh (vocalist).

The music creates a dramatic, contemporary soundtrack but still maintains the quality, originality and attention to detail synonymous with Vertu. All Ascent ringing and alert tones have been extracted from the exclusive track.

The services offered by the Ascent are those that have secured Vertu’s class-leading dedication to lifestyle assistance and enrichment, including Vertu Select, a global service delivering the best in luxury online information, news, reviews, recommendations and exclusive downloads direct to the phone.

This content is automatically tailored to the user’s location, ensuring the customer always have the latest global and local information, wherever they are in the world.

City Brief has been specially commissioned by Vertu for its customers and provides a digest of essential travel information automatically adapted to the user location.

It ensures that you have the details you need at your fingertips, as soon as you arrive at your destination and includes restaurant recommendations, current events and tips on local protocol worldwide.

Vertu Concierge offers a more personal service, assisting, advising and booking travel, entertainment, shopping, accommodation, restaurants and events. Vertu Concierge is available round the clock around the world, and is accessed via a dedicated key on the right hand side of the Ascent.  

Vertu Fortress, meanwhile, provides an invaluable service, automatically backing up all calendar and contact information stored on the Ascent to ultra-secure servers, all at the touch of a button.

The Ascent Aluminum is priced from P309,000 while the Titanium starts at P511,000. Both are available from all Vertu boutiques and retailers in over 60 countries worldwide.