The million-dollar tilde-shaped dumb phone – Odd Phone Mondays

Photo sources: MaxAbout and BrainAsk

Welcome to the first edition of Odd Phone Mondays! In this new weekly series we're going to be taking a look at rare, unusual or just plain fun phones. And we sure have a weird one to show you from the start.

Goldvish Le Million

This phone was released in 2006 by Swiss luxury (of course) manufacturer Goldvish. I have to admit, it's the design that got my attention – the fact that the phone is shaped like something between an ineffective boomerang and a batarang straight out of Batman: The Animated Series.

But putting aside its arguably pretentious design and just barely pocketable shape, what really got this phone publicity in 2006 is the fact that it became a Guinness world record holder for the most expensive phone in the world. Indeed, this phone was being sold for over a million dollars. $1.2 million to be exact.

And it's not like people didn't exist who would buy such a luxury device, however impractical its design might be. According to CNN, it was two unnamed businessmen, one from Russia and one located in Hong Kong who bought two of the three Le Million phones Goldvish ever made.

The third and last Le Million ended up unsold, so we have to wonder where it is right now. Is it kept somewhere as a souvenir or was it recycled for its materials? Because those were solid gold and diamonds after all...

But what can the Le Million do?

Can it do anything special for $1,000,000? Does it pack ahead-of-its-time smart functionality, cutting-edge cameras, or can it at least circle back to you when you throw it? Well...

The eagle-eyed among you have likely already noticed that like many luxury phones of today, the Le Million was basically just an average phone for its time, but with a very expensive case covering it.

According to MaxAbout, the phone came with 2 GB of storage, which at the time was actually quite impressive. But other than that, it was a rather generic 2006 dumb phone behind that luxury exterior. It sported a small 176-by-220 pixel TFT display, a single 2-megapixel camera and a standard T9 button layout.

What the Le Million really did is serve as a flex, showing people that its owner is rich enough to afford pretty much anything, regardless of how ridiculous or impractical things can get. Plus, the fact that only two people in the world would have potentially rocked the same phone as you can be considered very appealing, if you like to stand out.