Refine search for Mobile Phones

  Leave a comment      Email TrustedReviews Newsletters

Sometimes only the toughest phone will do. Even if you generally like to use a stylish and desirable mobile, there may be times when you don't trust your pride and joy to the prevailing conditions. If you are out on a cycling trip or on a long hike with unforgiving terrain, then that pretty, several hundred pounds worth of mobile just might succumb to something awful like rain, mud, or being dropped and trampled on.

Then there are the businesses for which neat little mobiles just won't do. The builders, the plumbers, and the others who spend time in places where their mobiles can get dropped from a great height, driven over, trampled on and generally handled without much care. Riyad recently took a look at a mobile designed for such conditions, the Sonim XP1.

I've got another here, hailing from the most unlikely place - Samsung, purveyors of stylish and smart mobile phones. The SGH-M110 is also referred to as the Samsung Solid. It is the first handset from Samsung to be classed as what the company calls ‘ultra durable'.

To earn that description the Samsung Solid meets a standard rugged device classification known as IP54. This means it is protected against dust and water. It is neither dust proof nor waterproof but has a degree of protection against both.

Hence, the Samsung Solid has been put inside a rubber casing which offers minimal opportunities for dust and water to get into the phone's inner workings. The buttons on the left, consisting of only two volume controls, are rubbery and have a minimal gap between themselves and the surrounding casing.

Meanwhile the front buttons are mounted in a rubberised fascia so that most of the keys are not individual but instead function by you pushing down on a pressure pad. The exceptions are two small silver keys sitting in the shortcuts area above the number pad. One of these activates and deactivates the speakerphone. The other is a Cancel key that if held down turns the camera's LED flash on and off so you can use it as a torch.

Add your comment