Video: Vertu Constellation: luxury smartphone to retail for £4,000 Features on the hand-assembled Vertu Constellation include encrypted speech, personal protection and tracking, and, in case of a kidnap or a threat to life and limb, a secret button which sends a pre-determined codeword to your security advisers at the press of a button. Explaining the design philosophy behind the £4,000 Constellation, Vertu's Head of Design Hutch Hutchison said: "One of the core thoughts about this was tactility, and it features a much thicker, more sumptuous leather than we've ever used before - really beautiful in the hand and comfortable in the pocket." The phone runs an Android operating system which the company hopes will banish whispers that the performance of the brand's phones matched neither their staggering price nor mass market devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 or the Apple iPhone.