Mortgage your home for a phone

As if Steve Jobs hadn’t created something for hipsters and technology buffs to lust over with last year’s iPhone, Austrian designer Peter Aloisson has gone and one-upped him.

With his new diamond-encrusted iPhone Princess Plus, Aloisson has lifted the bar for costly cell phones even higher.

Retailing for $176,400, one of the phones has been promised to a Russian businessman who ordered the gizmo back in October. Those not looking to mortgage their home for the device can purchase a more “modest” version of the Princess for the price of $66,150.

Complete with 318 diamonds, (that’s 17.75 carats, for you jewelers out there) and an 18k white gold rim, the phone is the world’s most expensive iPhone -- obliterating last year’s record, $41,225, set by British designers, Amosu.

Aloisson, infamous for creating diamond-encrusted Nokias and Motorolas in the late ‘90s, is no stranger to the extravagant. In 2005, Aloisson unveiled a platinum-covered phone with eight rare blue diamonds. That phone -- available for $1,300,000 still holds the record for the world’s most expensive.

Not exactly something you’d want to drop on the sidewalk.

Posted by Chris Brook, Boston.com