My Sony W950 has survived similar drops without problems, and at -20 I'm pretty sure my ears would fall off, rendering that particular feature pretty pointless.

So this phone is good if you're a bit warm - Otherwise buy an iPhone :)

Will it blend?

Now if was waterproof to 50msw I'd be interested..

You can design all the hard-nut cases in the world, but what'll kill it's how brittle lead-free solders are....

Thank you RoHS. Another one'll bite the dust.

Extreme sports... can I forget to take it out of my trunks pocket when I'm SCUBA diving then? How deep can it go?

... stoppit with the rather crap will it blend gags. Boring. Me. To. Death. It's just not funny and a rather crap marketing gimmick.

Anyone remember the Nokia 6250? I was always surprised that didn't take off more - I would assume there's a market. Maybe Sonim has stepped in at the right moment.

Vastly more useful than an iPhone.

Loving it. Looks a wee bit like my old Nokia that was waterproof (phoned myself with the phone in a pint of beer) and shock proof (big rubber case)

How come if you ruggedise something its a license to charge shitloads of cash for it? £250 is ridiculous.

I dont understand - this phone has the features of a phone costing about £20 but has a good casing, probably really worth around £50 unless its made of pure platinum with a sprinkling of diamonds.

Its the same with laptops but they bump on 150% to 200% the cost.

But of course it doesnt have a nice Nokia menu system either, thereby lowering its attractiveness even further.

If ever there was evidence of a rip-off-Britain, its right here.

Numpty fools! Nobody on a building site can afford the time to test these things, and nobody in a DIY store will want one!

They should have gone for builder's merchants and DIY Exhibitions, Dach+Wand in Germany for example.

My ultra cheap Sony Ericsson K310i managed to survive the drowning and repeated pummeling of a full washing machine programme including a 1500 rpm spin cycle. No obvious damage except the silver plastic coating is worn at the corners and on the button edges. I let it dry out a bit before I plugged it back into the mains though.

I'm 1.85 tall, so if I drop it when using it, it's _still_ going to break?

"Anyone remember the Nokia 6250? I was always surprised that didn't take off more - I would assume there's a market. Maybe Sonim has stepped in at the right moment."

Never mind that, the old 6210/6310 phones were damn near indestructible without resort to ludicrously expensive ruggedising. At least, my old 6210 came off better than I did when it took a tumble during a cycling accident - phone had a chunk gouged out of one corner plus a scratch on the screen, I copped a couple of broken ribs due to landing on it.

There's still a bit of demand for these because of their durability - still managed to get 40 quid for mine despite it looking like it had had a fight with the aforementioned blender.

IME, "ruggedised" anything generally means "stick another zero on the price"

Now I know what Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was thinking of when he wrote the lines "plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee".

This is also been sold under JCB branding as the JCB ToughPhone and comes complete with a ringtone of a JCB Digger starting up?!?! It's actually quite cheap for a newly released sim free handset despite above comments saying you can get same features for £20 - yeh maybe if you buy it on pay as you go where the handset price is subsidised - The lowest prices sim free on the market at the moment is £30 and it's a diabolic motorola that can only display 8 characters across the screen at time. You can get it free on on contract at phones4u and mobiles2yourdoor. For sim free you can get it at Speedy Hire and Plumb Centres.

Surely if it can only survive a drop of 1.65m then there's a lot of 6ft and taller people who'd break it if they dropped it whilst using it?

Just think tho.. if you were busy scuba diving, couple hundred metres under water, incoming call - no problem, you've got this phone. Does it give you the ability to speak underwater? Didn't think so.

You're trailblazing down a mountain on your mountain bike (naturally), your phone rings.. and grants you the ability to ride down a mountain one handed? Comes with a parachute for when you fall off the mountain? Turns into a spare wheel and a six pack?

If you were really into extreme anythings, you'd probably not be using your phone in the middle of whatever it was and if you were anywhere REALLY extreme you'd need a satphone.

"'Heavy' handset challenges all comers to prove its mettle’"

Heavy mettle?

http://www.trashbat.co.ck/t12/index.html

It's well bum!

Here in Winnipeg, it doesn't get above -20 all winter. My phone works down to (tested) -45. And it was one of those free phones you get for signing your first born to the cell provider. You know, the one without even a camera on it.

No good for me, as I work in an office, but I know loads of people who will think this phone is a godsend! (mechanics, tradesmen, car washers, builders (throw in a guy in leather and we have the village people))

Also £250 is not unreasonable, you idiots are quite happy to spend up to £1k trying to get your hands on a POS iPhone with its self destructing software updates and DRM encumbered music ..... mmmm.... which one would I rather have? A phone that still works after a 1.65m drop onto concrete, or a phone that doesn't work after a software update ROFL

... my 2 year old will break it within 10 minutes.

... it doesn't appear to play mp3s, 1.65m is bollocks, PoC is rubbish (if I want a walkie talkie, that's what I'll be using) and 250 quid is way OTT.

Besides which I'm a fairly hardcore cross country MTBer and I have never managed to damage a phone yet, despite always taking one with me and falling off quite a lot (also a member of the 'I broke my ribs and it really really hurt' club), so although it would look sexy nestling in my camelbak, I can't really see the point.

If it was cheaper, I'd buy one for the looks (it's also available in a rather more fetching black and grey colour scheme), but at that price you can sod off.

Mind you, if I was the type of 'all the gear but no idea', extreme sports twat that happily drops 300 quid on a pair of Oakleys, I'd probably buy it, so I guess that's where the market will take off.

A nice antidote to the delicate, mimsy little fragile flowers the phone industry is producing nowadays. Touchy-feely and with multi-axis slides to break and crack and jam roadkill into, eee, I dunno.

Mind you, I'm biased. After finding my Nokia 6210 floating cheerfully in a bike-pannier full of paraffin -- still working just fine -- I've come to value rugged kit.

I just wish that "fairly tough" made it to the mass market more often. The XO lappy is fairly tough, so was the 6210. Amazing what you can do with a membrane keyboard, silicone case and some bumpers inside the tin. And they're good cheap bits of kit. The 6210 is called the "builders' phone" round here.

Most of us who want tough gear don't need mil-spec tough. Unless the boss is paying, that is...

who like extreme sports will only doing their extreme sports for a relatively small amount of time. What about all the other time when having a standard mobile will be much more preferable.

I don't think this will catch on.

...if I drop it from a few thousand feet up from my paraglider (probably while avoiding a UAV :)?

AFAIR the standard test for anything touted as rugged or durable on a construction site is to reverse a 16 ton rigid with a full load of aggregate on board over it. I think they're in trouble here......

Oops, my bad, no Bluetooth. Actually, that's a dealbreaker, because no Bluetooth = no headset.

Ryan - the appeal for extreme sports is partly in being able to survive the times when you are base-jumping with a surfboard strapped to your forehead; it's also partly in the lifestyle cachet of having extreme sports gear in the office. Let's go offroad!

So how much internal pressure can it sustain...?

Will a dodgy third-party battery burn its way through quickly or will the extra-strong case give it time to build up some nice back-pressure before blowing?

...Inquiring minds, and all that...

I'd thermite it!

+60 nutthin' I'll get me some good ol fashioned 2600 degrees on it!

That is, if the challenge to break it offers money :)

One one hand, I have to agree with the Canadian. -20C is not very cold at all. I can easily reach that in my freezer, and vast swaths of the USA see colder temps routinely. Even -20F would probably not be good enough, although I wouldn't press a piece of metal or plastic to my face at that temp for very long.

On the other hand, I feel I must take issue with all the people who complained about the lack of features. On that, I say, it's about time. I don't need a phone with a camera, MP3 player, video games, and TV tuner in it. I just want something that can make phone calls and keep track of my contacts. The price is still a bit steep, but if my provider would subsidize it heavily, as with most other phones, I might be willing to give it a whirl.

-Chris

First of all, people regularly use their phones at -20'C or beyond - where I live (in the Nordic countries), -20'C is normal in midwinter time and I've seen it down to -35'C quite happily. A couple of winters back I believe it got down to -50'C in Moscow, although I don't believe that greater than -40'C is usual. That said, my Nokia 5200 worked in -15 to -20 just fine, and I haven't had any problems so far with my N70.

---

@ extreme sports

Anthony, you're a plonker.

"if you were busy scuba diving, couple hundred metres under water, incoming call - no problem, you've got this phone. Does it give you the ability to speak underwater? Didn't think so. You're trailblazing down a mountain on your mountain bike (naturally), your phone rings.. and grants you the ability to ride down a mountain one handed? Comes with a parachute for when you fall off the mountain? Turns into a spare wheel and a six pack?"

You're right, you're not always going to answer if it rings midway through something. But I do whitewater kayking and I have friends who do other extreme sports, and sometimes you just like to have a phone with you (in case of emergency etc). If I capsize in a rapids, sure I keep my phone in a tough watertight bag and on my person, but what if a) I hit a rock phone-first (shock damage), or b) the rock catches on the bag and rips a hole (water damage). This type of rugged phone sounds just perfect for those situations.

If you think "don't take it with you" is the answer when doing a dangerous sport away from civilisation and the nearest hospital, then you're a moron and more than that, showing a callous disregard for the safety of yourself and your companions. In these situations, it's not just a leisure toy; it's a potential rescue tool. More than once a kayaker who has been swept further downstream has phoned upstream to let us know he's okay, so we didn't have to panic. Not to mention the fact that after my sport is over I might want to phone the driver to pick us up from wherever we ended up (eg, unexpected change of plans), or let my wife know I survived. This is just common sense, I'm amazed you didn't spot it.

"The phone has apparently been engendered to meet the needs of extreme sports enthusiasts and people who don’t work in cosy offices."

Which gender did they chose, and where are the orifices?

Sorry someone beat me to it but I'd also like to call Anthony a plonker, quite obviously has some sort of "extreme sports enthusiast phobia"

And FYI if I had inadvertently been scuba diving at 200 metres I'd definitely want the phone to work when I surfaced and needed medical treatment... 200 metres is just a little deep for most divers and is pretty much a killer if you do (seriously) cock up and dive that deep.

I had one of the nokias and was really quite sad to see it returned when I handed (workphone) it back

Jacques Cousteau

Just to say this phone (as the JCB Tough) is already coming down in price in the UK as it can be had for free on a £40 per month, 12 month contract with 500 mins, 500 texts as mobiles2yourdoor are giving you 7 months free line rental via cashback which totals £200 over the minimum term of the contract (12 x £40) according to Mobile Checker.

The deals can be seen here:http://www.mobilechecker.com/compare_mobile_phone_prices.asp?phone=jcbtough

Head on over to PenComputing.com to find all sorts of fun rugged hardware. A few months back they did a review of a waterproof PDA, by donning SCUBA gear and taking it for a dive. The video is hilarious. Rugged phones are nothing new.

Well i think its a fantastic phone, in principle. well overdue! I am a welder and destroy phones regularly.(Expected usable lifespan of a normal phone about six weeks). The metallic dust from grinding is hugely destructive. Will i buy one of these phones?..... No. Not until its features come out of the dark ages. No camera... Wot?