Vertu, the high-class British mobile phone company that until recently was owned by Nokia, is rumoured to be working on an Android phone. Pictures of the purported handset have leaked online, along with some specifications and a proposed name for the device, the Vertu Ti.

The company's other handsets - which cost anywhere from £4,000 to £10,000 a pop - have been feature phones, save for the touchscreen Vertu Constellation which runs on Symbian, so this is a marked step for the brand, if genuine.

Leaked by the increasingly more and more interesting Japanese site Blog of Mobile - which has been right on a number of cases recently - the Vertu Ti is claimed to have a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260A processor running the show, 800 x 480 touchscreen, run Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and house a 1,250mAh battery.

Those may seem low specs for a modern Android device, but Vertu phones have never really been about the technology inside, rather the opulent shell of the exterior.

No details have been revealed yet about the casing of the purported Ti, but the Constellation range is generally made from stainless steel and leather, with a sapphire glass screen and a polished ceramic "pillow" for the logo. These are phones bought as a status symbol, rather than for owning the latest tech.

Vertu itself has responded to the leak, suggesting that the phone does exist but can't comment any further save that an announcement is due on 12 February in London. In the response sent to Android Authority, however, it refutes the rumoured price of 3,000 euros  

"Some of the information that you have recently reported on regarding Vertu is inaccurate, including proposed pricing and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks," it says.