Army Plots Its Smartphone Strategy

gManZboy writes "What kind of smartphone should a soldier have? Ahead of the impending expiration of two communications contracts, the Army's 5th Signal Command is prepping for the possibility of buying thousands of mobile devices. An RFI asks for BlackBerrys, 'emerging smartphones included but not limited to 4G devices such as Androids [and] iPhones,' tablet computers, and wireless broadband access devices. Also in the Army mobile vision: an apps marketplace."

Comments

A mil spec N950

[Teun]

A final chance for the best phone ever, the mil spec N950ms.

And I always thought MS stood for unreliable...

Re:A mil spec N950

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely. Nokia definitely cares about construction and build quality. They subject their phones to rigorous abuse. There's a youtube video somewhere of their quality testing. squished on a press repeatedly, dropped repeatedly.

I searched for the official Nokia Labs one from a year ago but couldn't find it.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HicdXV_47V8

  Giz (sorry!) also has a story about it. http://gizmodo.com/5094602/a-look-at-the-nokia-damage-test-labs

An n950 is already the pocket equivalent of a Panasonic ToughBook. They may not be running quadcores and have the most beautiful screens ( or whatever the spec nerd are going crazy for this week) but a Nokia is guaranteed to be built like a tank.

Contrast that to a flimsy samsung/motorola android or an iphone that is absolutely destroyed when it gets dropped onto some rocks. It should be no question if you're looking only at durability in a mass produced consumer smartphone.

None of that matters though. The decision on what the military uses will always be decided on what state the money will go to, or what lobby payed the most for someone's campaign. So, it will probably be something from AT&T. probably an iphone with a frickin' bumper.

None

[Billly Gates]

They can be tracked complete with GPS and can be used to record sensitive information.

I have been reading Al Jazeera with the news of Libya last summer and cell phones were a problem. Basically loyalist spies would txt the GPS specs to Loyalists in Walid and Sirte, and whenever they went in the enemy was already there ambusing the rebels.

Even not I wonder how easy it is to hack them. China has a keen interest and have the best hacking elite group in the world that have inflitrated Los Almos and even satelites.

With Army equipment you know who made it and the ins and outs compared to a cell phone with knows what abilities it has obscured away.

Android is out of the running, at least for now.

[wkcole]

Due to a design flaw, the Android root CA trust database cannot be changed without reflashing the phone in currently available versions of Android. Given the way the military handles their PKI, this makes existing Android devices infeasible. Android 4 is supposed to address this.

Re:iPhones win by default

[Macrat]

Also Apple is very unlikely to agree to make custom military units with whatever requirements the military has. It's just not their thing.

Apple already makes custom builds of laptops without cameras per 3 letter agency security requirements.

Touchscreen?

[damn_registrars]

It might just be me, but a touchscreen-only phone seems like it might be less than ideal for a soldier. I would think that actual buttons would be a better idea for people who might be wearing various types of hand gear in varied conditions.