Motorola AURA now shipping

The pricey, luxury-oriented Motorola AURA handset, first introduced at the end of October, is now available for purchase at Motorola USA's webstore. The handset is priced at a lofty $2,000, thanks in part to its 62-carat, Grade 1 sapphire crystal lens that covers what is touted as the world's first circular display, which offers 16 million colors and a 300ppi resolution. Said display remains in place while the handset's front plate swivels open, with the mechanism responsible made by the Swiss and composed of three tungsten carbon carbide-coated main gears and 130 precision ball bearings.

The handset itself is made up of more than 700 individual components, including its stainless steel housing that contains technology that includes a 2-megapixel camera, a quad-band GSM radio, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR support, and 2GB of built-in memory accessed via a micro USB jack. There are no memory card slots for adding memory, however. The AURA will play back music files and has e-mail support over the EDGE data network, though browsing the Internet is not possible.

The handset is exclusively available through Motorola as an unlocked device, with buyers able to put it on AT&T, T-Mobile and Rogers networks.

By Electronista Staff