Land Rover reveals new S1 rugged mobile phone

The iPhone or the latest Blackberry or Nokia offerings are often taken as the gold standard of mobile phones for most folks. But sometimes you need a phone that just works, even if you dip it in mud, drive over it with your truck, dunk it in water and drop it onto the pavement. That's where Land Rover steps in.

Or at least that's the pitch for the new Land Rover S1 mobile phone. The device is designed to be ultra-rugged for real field use, but how do you measure just how rugged rugged is? “When we started making these handsets, there was no standard for how to test and benchmark rugged phones, so we created our own," said Bob Plaschke, CEO of Sonim Technologies, the company that manufactures the S1 for Land Rover.

"The Land Rover S1 is tested according to our own ‘Rugged Performance Standard’, a specific 12-point test to ensure our phones remain of the highest quality and don’t let you down when you need it most.” Judging by the photos, the torture test is some pretty tough stuff - note the phone strapped to the wheel of the Defender in the photo above.

It's not all about toughness, however, packing a respectable feature set into its rough-and-tumble casing. A 2MP camera, GPS, flashlight, FM radio, 2GB memory slot, mobile Java and Bluetooth complete with a built-in Opera Mini browser for surfing the web.

The phone will be available this month, but only in Go Mobile stores in the UK, priced at £299.99 ($488).

Land Rover S1 Specification
* Fully submersible to a depth of one meter (3.3ft)
* Survives being dropped onto hard surfaces from up to two meters (6.6ft)
* Extra-Loud speakers for use in extremely noisy environments
* Extra-long battery life with over 1500 hours of standby time and 18 hours of talk time
* Durable keyboard mechanics and extra-wide buttons for ease of use
* Keypad buttons tested to over 500,000 pushes
* Completely dust and micro-particle resistant – IP-67 Rated
* Resistant to road shocks and vibrations to over 2000 random vibrations in the 500Hz range
* Operational under temperatures from -20° to 55° C (-4° to 141° F)
* Resistant to extreme pressure up to 400kg (880lb)
* Resistant to punctures at 75kg/cm2 (1,065psi) of pressure.
* Three year unconditional guarantee