It used to be that tough phones were ugly pieces of kit that you only bought if your job or lifestyle demanded a phone that could handle a bit of a pasting from the elements.
Now, though, with the Motorola Defy in the shops and the Samsung Galaxy Xcover finally announced at IFA 2011, the category has been given a rather nice makeover.
The Samsung Galaxy Xcover is definitely rugged in looks but it manages to hide the fact that it’s water-, dust- and shock-proof quite nicely.
The chassis is larger than most handsets of its type – at 122 x 66 x 12 mm – but it’s not the chunky beast you would normally associate with a rugged handset. And at 135g, it certainly isn’t going to give you arm ache.
There are some tell-tale signs of protection; the on/off button on the device is harder to press in and more flush with the chassis and the microUSB port at the bottom is protected with a thick piece of plastic that is water resistant when properly clipped into place. The same goes for the 3.5mm jack at the top.
The home, menu and back buttons are also protected so clicking is not as smooth as normal.
Samsung wouldn’t reveal the plastic used in the making of the S5690 Galaxy Xcover but it is scratch resistant. It’s IP67 compliant too, so the body is airtight, ready to be submerged in water up to one metre for around 30 minutes.
Given the active nature of the people who will be using the Xcover, the screen has been tempered, which nicely reinforces the display. Samsung wouldn’t say it was Gorilla Glass (merely ‘toughened’) so we assume it isn’t.
TechRadar had no water at hand – or beer, unfortunately – but we did try out the phone’s shock handling, giving the handset a hard smack on the corner of the display table and the phone came out of the encounter working perfectly and with not even a spec of dust on it.
Which it could totally handle though. Obviously.
TechRadar wasn’t so lucky as we got told off by a Samsung staffer for trying out such a thing.
The Samsung S5690 Galaxy Xcover comes with Android 2.3 and this was speedy enough when we tried out the various menus. Samsung has also packed in it’s quirky Social Hub, as well as the usual Google services, such as Latitude, Maps and YouTube.
There’s also Wi-Fi, GPS and a digital compass on board for the more adventurous.
There is an 800MHz processor on board, which isn’t the nippiest around, but for day to day activities the phone shouldn’t let you down and we certainly didn’t see any lag in the swiping of screens and playing with apps.
The screen is capacitive touch, too, and we were surprised by how sensitive this was, given the 3.65-inch display has been reinforced.
We were disappointed, though, with the Xcover’s media options. The camera, for a start, is a meagre 3.2MP which isn’t what the general public expects from a phone camera any more. It is backed by an LED flash, which does give it some Brownie points – it also acts as a torch for when you are stuck in the dark, possibly swimming in your metre’s worth of water.
Video recording is better; the playback is standard WVGA but you can only record in VGA, which is by no means awful but you won’t be making many movies on the Xcover.
If it is an action phone you are looking for, though, the Xcover has been built to last but has a chassis that won’t embarrass you when you wipe the mud and dust off and use it for everyday use.
The Samsung Galaxy Xcover UK release date is later this year, with pricing to be announced.
