On March 18, at the Baselworld watch show in Switzerland, a vaporous French company called Celsius X-VI-II will unveil the Papillon, a $300,000 mobile phone that is packed with the most advanced micro-mechanics of any gadget ever created. Forget digital. The phone of the future will be mechanical. As flat, touchscreen slabs like the iPhone make our lives more virtual, a half-dozen guys from the luxury watch world are trying to drag mobile phones back onto the physical plane with the first completely micro-mechanical mobile phone, in which every function would operate mechanically through human energy.

Papillon is French for "butterfly," an insect that apparently inspired the design of the phone and, when you come to think of it, is sort of a strange little creature in its own right. As you can see, a butterfly floats fleetingly through the teaser clip for the phone.

All of this is quite bizarre and potentially very dumb, like something out of a Dan Brown novel, and it certainly feels like it could all blow away in a cloud of vapor. The x-ray shown above is the only image of the phone available. But in a genre of gadget that is almost categorically uninteresting to us, this ultra high-end device has piqued our curiosity.