Sonim XP3 “The World’s Toughest Phone” Coming to the US
Their European phones have been dropped from a 13-story building and shot with guns, four times, but Sonim’s ultra-rugged GSM cell phones keep on ringing. Now, the California-based company finally plans to bring their phones home to the US with the upcoming XP3, which will be available next March from several rural US carriers. Designed for blue-collar workers and wilderness aficionados, the Sonim XP3 is as close to indestructible as a phone gets. It’s waterproof. Officially, it runs at temperatures from -4 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and it withstands a 6-foot drop onto concrete without shrugging. Sonim’s CEO, Bob Plaschke, said it can actually run at temperatures down to -40 degrees and survive a 9-foot drop (not to mention that one, 13-story fall.) It’s impervious to almost anything, including “micro-particles.” It has 2.5 days of talk time and an astounding 2 months of standby on its huge 2200 mAh battery. The US version will be a quad-band EDGE, GSM phone with GPS, Bluetooth, and a flashlight mode. It has a glare-resistant 128×160, 65k-color screen. It isn’t a smart phone, but it runs Opera Mini for Web browsing out in the wilderness. It will have a 3-megapixel camera with geotagging for still photos, but no video capability. It doesn’t play music, but the speakerphone goes really loud without distortion. It’s protected by a 3-year, no-questions-asked guarantee. You break it, you get a new one.
Filed Under: Breaking News • Handsets
About the Author: Faysal Chowdhury, a Civil Engineer at day and an intelligent tech blogger at night. Stationed in Dhaka, Bangladesh he is has been with HotCellularPhone.com since the beginning, dated back to 2008. After receiving his Bachelor’s Degree in 2006, he started working as a Civil Engineer for Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) but his tech savvy mind always kept up with the mobile world and keeping everyone updated as well.
I’m a construction worker and I’ve been wishing for years someone would make a phone like this!! I can’t believe I’ve never heard of the XP1, but now that the XP3 is coming out I’d rather wait for that. I know it’s not going to be cheap but really, it can’t be more expensive than changing my phone every few months. I swear, those fancy phones are built to self-destruct in 6 months! Plus it’s *such* a hassle to transfer my data all the time. I can’t wait to run over my phone (like they do in the videos at http://www.toughestphone.com)
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