We go hands on with the super exclusive Turing Phone Glaedr
The path of the Turing Phone to market has been anything but conventional. Announced last year as an Android device with bleeding-edge encryption, the device received thousands of orders but missed its Christmas 2015 release window, abandoning Android in favour of Jolla's fledgling Sailfish 2.0 OS in the process.
The final product still isn't out, but Turing Robotic Industries has delivered on its promise to supply buyers with "evaluation units" free of charge – and we went hands-on with one not so long ago.
Those who ordered the super-exclusive Dark Wyvern Glaedr variant of the phone are now receiving their evaluation units, and it has to rank as one of the most ostentatious smartphones ever produced.
While the basic design is the same and internally it shares the same core specs, the Turing Phone Glaedr is more of a peacock than the comparatively understated black-and-gold Dark Wyvern model. It mixes red, blue and gold to dazzling effect, and has gold fleur de lis icons embedded on the back panel. In short, it's perhaps the most "bling" phone we've ever laid our hands on.
Named after a golden dragon in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle of fantasy novels, the Glaedr is designed to catch eyes – it even comes in a golden leather-effect box. Like the Dark Wyvern, the final model of this phone will boast an upgraded Snapdragon 821 chipset as well as waterproof coating (missing from these prototypes) and end-to-end encryption.
The Glaedr also ships alongside the next iteration of Jolla's Sailfish OS, which installed over the air when we first booted up our test unit. This update enables the phone's side-mounted fingerprint scanner, which was previously turned off on the Dark Wyvern. Speaking of which, owners of the black-and-gold Dark Wyvern are able to download the OTA update as well.
Despite its glitzy appearance the Turing Phone Glaedr is still very much a work in progress. This isn't the final hardware version, and the software is likely to change considerably before the "retail" edition of the phone arrives. There are still issues getting Google applications to function on the phone – something that was promised when Turing switched to Sailfish – and bugs are being reported even in this new build.
However, this was all part of Turing's strategy for 2016; get early phones into the hands of loyal buyers so they can get a feel for what the final device will be like, as well as provide invaluable feedback and bug reports to make sure the end result is as polished as possible.
There's clearly some way to go before Turing Robotic Industries' dream of a super-secure smartphone revolution comes to pass but for the time being, the Glaedr has to rank as one of the most visually striking handsets we've ever seen.
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