WE’VE seen a few ostentatious smartphones firsthand — iPhones encased in gaudy gold casings and Vertu handsets made of titanium immediately come to mind. None of them, however, have been scorned by the internet quite like this Forbidden City-themed item from China, which appropriately costs a king’s ransom. To a fault, obviously.

Take a gander at (or bow in the presence of?) the 8848 Titanium Palace Edition phone, currently the target of jeers and sneers from Sina Weibo users. Sina Weibo, in case you haven’t encountered it previously, is the biggest Chinese social network with over 260 million daily active users as of March 2016.

We could be wrong, but maybe the vitriol has a lot to do with the phone’s expected price tag of 19,999 yuan (roughly $2,900 or P145,000). The Beijing Youth Daily said it was designed with the support of the Palace Museum in Beijing, reportedly inspired by the artifacts contained inside the most-visited museum in the world. It’s due to hit stores in January, and only 999 units have been produced.

The 8848 Titanium Palace Edition, which is not actually made of titanium, has a price tag of 19,999 yuan (roughly $2,900 or P145,000).

Beijing’s Global Times newspaper reported that one particularly miffed Weibo user thought the 8848 Titanium Palace Edition is “a stain on the sacredness of the Imperial City.” Perhaps it also drew unexpected collective backlash for not being made of titanium (unlike some Vertu models), despite what the label suggests. Instead, it settles for a sapphire cover glass on the front and lamb skin and an 18-carat gold dragon decor on the back.

Specs-wise, the device houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 system-on-a-chip paired with a 4GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage. The back camera is 21 megapixels, while the front-facer impresses with a 30-megapixel camera, although it is not known at this point if the sensor has been interpolated through software to reach unprecedented heights. If that is the case, expect more boos directed at this phone when it surfaces.

Curiously enough, the Palace Museum has seemingly rescinded its backing of the Palace Edition as a result of the negative publicity. It issued this succinct reminder on its Weibo account: “We don’t sell mobile phones.”

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