Limited edition Gresso Regal encases Android 4.2 in titanium

Form over function becomes more appealing when there's exclusivity involved – only 999 units of the new Gresso Regal will be produced. The Android-powered smartphone follows Gresso's Luxury minimalism design tradition and is based on a Grade 5 solid titanium plate.

Gresso tries to hide its snark when it points out that key advantages of titanium are extra durability and resistance to bending. It takes 8 labor-intensive hours to mill the case on high-tech equipment.

Gresso Regal

"Directional polishing" is applied to the back panel, which takes 3 hours to create the desired metal texture, which the company claims makes the panel light but durable. The Gresso logo (also made of titanium) itself takes 2 hours to machine and then it goes to manual polishing. It's attached to the phone with special titanium screws.

The Gresso Regal measures 8.8mm thick, which allegedly makes it the "thinnest luxury phone on the market" (it's certainly not the thinnest overall, Oppo R5 is about half as thick).

That's it for the luxury, here are the geek specs: a 5" 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass, 1.5GHz quad-core processor (not clear what kind), Android 4.2, 13MP main camera and a 5MP selfie camera, plus 32GB of storage.

The Gresso Regal is already available for purchase through www.gresso.com and will set you back $3,000. The company provides free worldwide delivery. Each phone will be stamped with a number and the numbers only go up to 999. Not that the luxury smartphone market is huge.