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Land Rover Unveils "World's Toughest Phone"
Land Rover says their new S1 mobile is the world's strongest phone. Testing done by Land Rover and the staff at The Sun showed the S1 would still work after being stepped on by an elephant, run over by a Land Rover, dropped from a second-story window, buried in mud, soaked in a pint of beer, and roasted in an oven at 150 degrees centigrade. A forklift truck proved to be its match, and was able to crush the S1 under its three-tonne weight. The phone comes with 1,500 hours of battery life, a 2.0 megapixel camera, an extra loud ringtone and an unconditional three-year guarantee.
...but does it blend?
Although it's unbelievably ugly, I need this phone! I broke 2 to 3 phones a year for the last 5 years... It'd be nice if it came to Canada. My last misadventure with my last Sony Ericsson: the screen died after a bicycle ride.
I read "World's Thoughest iPhone". Think I have to stay off the Apple news for a while...
Naomi Campbell is first on the waiting list to get one.
Nothing can stop her now.
...Just take better care of your shit.
A forklift truck proved to be its match, and was able to crush the S1 under its three-tonne weight
Well then it's no good to me.
Has it been given to a 3 yr old for an hour? Or my brother?
Either one could be given a bowling ball in an empty room...and 5 minutes later come out with a bucket full of pieces.
WTF? Over?
62.5 days of battery life?! Is this for real!?
What kind of battery are they using?
Was it given to an eight year old boy? Those tender little blossoms can destroy anything.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
62.5 days of battery life?! Is this for real!?
Yes, when attached to your Land Rover.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, but do you leave the basement?
Though you may not realize it, some people lead more active, more hazardous lives than you.
Factory workers, construction workers, hands-on engineers, mechanics, even laboratory workers may work in places that place their phones in danger. If it falls out of their pocket and down three stories or into a vat of lye or under the treads of a cement truck or out of the window of a speeding car, they know its safe.
Personally, I'm a code monkey and so long as my phone can survive my footprint (I once stepped on mine after leaving my pants on the floor of the bathroom), I'm okay with it. Other people, maybe want something more durable.
Just because _you_ don't want it doesn't mean no one wants it.
Oooh, just one minute sooner and you would've gotten in before the guy above you who made the same joke.
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...this is the AK-47 of phones or...?
One of my endeavors finds me at the top of wind turbines occasionally. I'd love to get one of these and see if it survives the fall to the ground. If so, I'd buy two.
Didn't they already make the "World's Toughest Phone" a long time ago?
I swear I've seen one.
My page.
Could James Bond or Jack Bauer use it to stop a bullet? If they want it to be rugged and work in the toughest conditions, that's the true test.
A forklift truck proved to be its match, and was able to crush the S1 under its three-tonne weight.
He tried to kill me with a forklift... Ole!
Is this anything like those "unbreakable" combs or MagLites which are guaranteed to never break? Cuz I've broken both. With proper normal usage.
I had a metal rotary phone.
I think it was steel. I pretty sure it could withstand everything in these tests as well.
Where it failed was in that it ddn't fit into most pockets, it wasn't wireless, and the greatest tragedy of all, it didn't ahve a camera.
Side note: I can no longer right click on a mispelled word to choose from a list. This happens about 50% of the time. I don't know if it's caused by firefox 3.5 or slashdot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Top Gear features this a few weeks ago, funny stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVgRVyt6N1U
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I still want my DeWALT laptop, dammit.
> stepped on by an elephant, run over by a Land Rover, dropped from a second-story window, buried in mud, soaked in a pint of beer, and roasted in an oven at 150 degrees c
Hey, coincidentally, that exactly describes what happened to me last night. And I'm still working.
Most of those tests aren't as impressive as they sound.
The Beer/Mud tests are, effectively, the same thing. The phone's waterproofing gaskets will either hold the moisture out or they won't, much like a water proof watch. This gets even easier to accomplish if they installed an iPhone style "permanent" battery, eliminated the headset jack in favor of Bluetooth, and installed an inductive charging system like a cordless toothbrush.
The test where it's being run over by a Land Rover is easier than it sounds because the flexibility of the tires serves to spread out the weight of the vehicle. As long as they don't over-inflate the tires or use ultra-high efficiency/low rolling resistance tires then the actual PSI on the phone should be relatively low. Coincidental, they featured a stunt just like this last night on that Billy Mays show "Pitchmen". In the show they were trying to sell a gel pad designed to absorb force so they ran over one of the salesmen's hands with an SUV. As for the elephant, I don't know enough about the forces at the bottom of an elephant's foot but it might be the same issue. Another thing to consider is how soft the surface was under the tire or the elephants foot. If either was done on earth instead of pavement/concrete then that will play a factor too.
Inversely, the above explanation serves to explain why the phone, finally, broke under the forklift. The tires on most forklifts I've ever seen tend to be made of a very hard rubber-like material (possibly just pure natural rubber). I'm sure that this manages to eliminate the need to replace tires over the life of the forklift and forklifts don't need the shock absorbing effects of a pneumatic tire since they move so slow and are only designed to be used over very flat surfaces. The hard tires transmit a much higher percentage of the forklift's weight to a much smaller patch of ground and the 3 ton forklift is, probably, as heavy or heavier than the Land Rover.
As for being dropped from a second story window, I would want to know what kind of surface it was dropped on. It would be much more impressive if it were dropped onto concrete. It would be less impressive if it were dropped onto thick grass and much less impressive if it were dropped onto a mattress (I doubt that one but, as it wasn't mentioned, I wouldn't put it past some marketing agencies).
As for the oven test, I would want to know how long it was left in. 150C is a pretty high temperature but people have been walking over 1000+ degree Fahrenheit coals for a long time and I've seen Shaolin monks lick red hot pokers. The trick is how long your body part is in contact with the hot stuff. In both cases, you move your foot/tough away from the contact immediately and don't give enough time for most of the heat to transfer. In the case of licking the red hot poker, they also have a thick layer of spit on their tough that absorbs much of the heat and evaporates away protecting the tongue.
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This is indeed a branding exercise, but ruggedized phones are damn useful. I have a ruggedized Samsung after my RAZR died from water inhalation, and it's brilliantly dependable. It's no iPhone in terms of features, but I can drop it on concrete, use it in the shower, charge once every 2 weeks, etc. A phone is a tool to me, not a fashion accessory.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
If they send the bill in triplicate, I think we know what to get our favorite Vogans for christmas this year.
My Gzone comes pretty close, for a bit less, and available in the US.
Nothing shocking here. Casio has there G'zone which is pretty damn hard to break. I got mine for Mountain Climbing,and also because I seem to drop phones into any water source (don't know if I'm cursed or not.)
One thing not advertised, these phones are rather large for a cellphone these days, so you can also use it as a blunt weapon.
The "Land Rover" branding does suggest a product aimed more at the yuppie who thinks that driving a jeep and wearing hiking boots are a viable substitute for actually going outside; but it is absolutely false that (some) tradesmen don't have access to expensive tools. They very well might not own them; but if it is cheaper to do the job with high end hardware than it is with low end hardware, people will do it with high end hardware.
http://www.thephonetrader.co.uk/Others-Purchase-Cell-Phone_Land-Rover-S1_46.aspx
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
As an IT Manager for a construction company, one thing I've been looking for is a phone that field people cannot break within a week. The defacto standard (or former standard) would be Nextel, but the new Motorola units they've been pushing are anything short of unbreakable. Gone are the days of the bulletproof brickphone that you can run over with a grader and it still live to make another call. Motorola's replacements for the bricks are rather flimsy flip phones and rather weak candybar phones.
Well, on to Verizon we go (for the better coverage and cheaper costs) and we get into their "hardened" phones...the Casio/Verizon GZ1 Boulder, which is a complete and utter joke of misnomer. These units are the worst designed hardened units I've ever seen. The battery retention mechanism (a metal looking but actually plastic screw) will break off/apart after 1 drop and breaks the phone unless you have some duct tape handy to hold your battery in place. Of the 4 dozen we've taken delivery of, we had to replace two as DOA out of the box (bad sign #1) and 4 more within a week (bad sign #2) Now they have a problem with losing the call logs which Verizon is already aware of and the unit needs a firmware update.
If this Land Rover unit is actually as good as it says it is, US cell phone companies should take note. THIS is what we want (in construction) - not these half assed phones that Verizon and Nextel put out. I want something I can hand to my people and say "See you in a year or two" ... not next week after it gets dropped twice.
I dropped my iPhone 3g on the pavement about a month ago. Screen shattered. I love the features the iPhone has so I'm not going to switch, but I sure wish it was more rugged.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Extra loud ringtone?
Buy shares in forklift manufacturers.
Call me cynical, but when they claim two MONTHS of standby time and 18 hours of talk time, all on a 1850 mAh battery -- it makes me a bit leery. After all, no matter how efficient its electronics are, it still has to burn power transmitting packets. For example the Nokia 6205 on its 1020mAh BL-5C battery only gets up to 4 hours talk, up to 11 day standby. Spec for Nokia: http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products/phones/nokia-6205/specifications Spec for the phone, I think: http://www.sonimtech.com/pdf/xp3quest_ds.pdf
It's the Sun. If phones had breasts the picture would have been fine, but the photographer didn't know what to do when they said "hey, photograph this".
meh ... call me when it survives a 5 year old.
As in, if you smash the device into an iPhone, you can kill the iPhone and the device in question will keep working. Given what the G1 and Palm Pre have turned out to be, this is the only true valid definition of the term "iPhone killer" in the market today;)
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
The phone is fragile. Less fragile, but it has considerably more chinks than my SIM card. If the phone numbers are the important thing, keep them on the SIM. They cost what - $0.02? $0.05?
I can't understand why, aside from status, anyone would need this particular phone. Granted, it's a ruggedized phone with GPS, but the screen is something from 2002, barely pocketizable, and has glitzy buttons. What kind of GPS could it be packing, if it's (A:) a proprietary phone, (B:) has 600 pixels to work with? If location was so important to me, and I were driving my Land Rover, or my Hyundai (and pretending it's more than it is), why wouldn't I put my eggs in more baskets, and bring along my Suunto watch, TomTom, or traditional GPS unit?
If the ability to make a phone call after leaving your phone in a pint (or similarly brown, wet, and bubbly environment) is the question, how is this better than my SIM alone, with a spare clunker phone/charger in the glovebox?
I bet an average SIM could tolerate 3 tonnes of compression without a sneeze.
You're saying the "elephant proof" isn't a good metric because if you have an elephant it's probably not going to step on your phone again?
I think the point is to demonstrate that since an elephant can step on it and it works, YOU don't need to be worried about stepping on it accidentally and breaking it.
Its a bummer that Land Rover gets the "yuppie" label. Thats pretty much what I always thought too. Then a friend got one for the right reasons(to drive it off-road), and he invited me to ride along on the half day land rover course down in Carmel. The guy showed us all the features, and how they worked and how to use them. Then we went and spent the rest of the time doing actual driving. Leaning the rover over so far on its side I still don't know how it didn't fall over. Getting the rover on 3 wheels with one 2-3 feet in the air, then going forward until it tipped the weight from the back right to front left. Going up and down hills way steeper than I thought you could. The traction controls systems in the rover is very impressive, it even has an auto decent feature. Yes to descend a steep hill you sit at the top with the brake on, then you just take your foot off everything. You just steer, the car controls the descent and keeps the wheels turning so you can always steer. Your brain really makes that hard. So counter intuitive. The whole thing is done with the stock street tires. The instructor even let us get the car up around 40 and then hit the all stop switch. It really stops the car fast. :)
So while it still is mostly driven by yuppies that will probably never go over a rock bigger than gravel, they really are impressive machines that are built to live offroad. So while I bet lots of yuppies buy the phone too, if it is designed like their rovers its probably pretty durable.
I had a Nokia (candy bar style from early 2000's aka the immortals) that fell from a 4th floor. Sure the battery, body, and covers went in different directions, but put together again and it worked.
Seriously, if they wanted to make a real tough phone, they should've sided with Nokia.
I work for an automotive supplier, and we have some of the most interesting phone death (Salt blast, chrome tank, paint oven, acid bath, ect.. and folk lift as well). Unless this thing can survive two weeks at anyone of my facility.
This is Timex's shtick. Hey I'd probably buy a Timex phone if they actually made one.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Some years back I had a Series IIa short wheelbase job. Bought secondhand of course and reconditioned. No traction control, just 2-wheel and 4-wheel selection then low and high ration. The original spec was 45 degs tip in any direction with a ton in the back. I took mine on 30% roads and up and down hills off-road. Don't think I made the 45 degrees slopes though.
The downside was this was a true landrover - the main cushioning was your ass and it drank fuel. Eventually, I had to give it up.
See my journal, I write things there
is a phone that just works under normal usage pattern for most people. I'm talking about a simple candy bar phone like the ones Nokia used to make in 2001. Nowdays you cannot find a phone that does not have internet capable browser, email, etc. What happened to building a phone that does its primary function well. My ideal phone would have: 1. Excellent voice reception 2. 1 week + battery life 3. Bluetooth capability (hands free driving laws in my state) 4. sturdy design - survive a 3 ft fall to concrete - I don't expect to be chucking it out of a 2nd floor window! I can loose all the other bells-and-whitles. Of course, one simply can't buy a phone like this anymore in the US (especially if one wants it to work with AT&T).
"There's no right, there's no wrong. There's only popular opinion." --Jeffrey Goines
..that's the only thing I have found that works for me on the farm. Top pocket, with a secured button. Anything in my pants pocket or on a holster, etc is due for a drop or a smashing. A shirt pocket with no button, same thing, lean over, out it goes, and around where I work, that could be right into a pile of cow exhaust or in the swamp/mud, etc.. The other thing cellphones don't seem to have is a lanyard loop. The sleeves sometimes have then, but the phone itself needs one, so you can put your own "safe" on them when doing work off the ground or whatever, just like with your other tools. If you drop it accidentally, it's only going a coupla feet then and easy enough to retrieve it.
Anyway, this is why I only use cheap prepaid phones now. If they get creamed, no biggee really. I would *like* a full featured smartphone, but can't take a chance on them, just too wuss and too expensive at the same time.
I honestly don't think there's a single cellphone designer out there who has ever worked a normal hard blue collar job before, else a good simple basic phone might exist for this market. It has to have buttons that can work with gloves on if necessary, at least for the main function of making and answering calls, have a readable screen in bright daylight, not have a weak case, be able to take getting washed off with the garden hose, etc. Maybe these landrover phones are OK, no idea really, but I've never seen a phone here that was any good in the rugged department. It can be larger and heavier, who cares, you know we carry weight all the time, those designers seem to think a lb would induce a hernia or something. Cellphones nowadays seem designed for very young people, children really, with teeny delicate fingers, and always using the phones inside someplace under climate control and artificial light.
I wonder if there would be a market for taking people's cellphones (the few nice ones that guys like us want, but are impractical to carry) and just physically fitting them into better cases, and doing the other things necessary to make them tougher and more functional? I mean physically remove all the electronics and stick that in a totally different case that was blue collar emphasis designed? Cellphone case mods.
Let me ask you, was this vehicle bought for going off road recreationally or for work purposes? If the answer is recreationally, then your friend bought it for a yuppie purpose. I worked all over Africa for several years. A Land Rover is almost never the answer, because it breaks down too much. Yeah, if it's a Defender, you can probably fix whatever is wrong with a torch, wrench and a screwdriver, but RELIABLE is something no LR can claim. You know what's better than being able to do that? How about not breaking down in the first place. There's a reason Toyota 70 series LCs pretty much own the where-the-road-ends market. They may not have the nifty suspension of the LRs and don't handle the axle twisters as well, but at least it'll keep going. Really, even in the bush, LRs are yuppie vehicles.
Ask an American laborer whether they would buy four $50 phones or one $200 phone.
And while you're at it, ask him how much it is worth to him if his phone dies early in the day, and he's not be able to receive calls from potential clients until he gets finished the current job and gets to a phone store to buy another $50 phone.
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Land Rover are a bit like Apple: expensive, desirable products (if you like that sort of thing) but laughably poor build quality.
If the phone's like their cars, it will make strange knocking noises when you move around quickly, and eventually develop an oil leak.
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
Finally the phone equivalent of the Panasonic toughbook.
No ascii art.