Sonim XP1 Blog

"A Rugged Phone with Features!"

Over at Mobile Phone News, reporter TechnicalMarkus has this to say about the forthcoming Sonim-branded Land Rover premium rugged phone:

"A lot of people swear by the (Sonim-made) JCB Tough Phone (unless they drop it on their toe, then they swear at it), but its makers, Sonim, haven’t been sitting on their hands since it came out. They’ve already followed it up with the Sonim XP3, an even tougher phone, that’s fully waterproof.

It doesn’t even stop there, though, because we’ve now got pics of their next, and as reported way back when, on this very blog, it’s a Land Rover badged-phone.

Disappointingly, though, it’s not British Racing Green…

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that it looks pretty much the same as the XP3. In fact, from the front, it looks so much like the XP3, that one would immediately say, “Ooh, look an XP3.”

The fun stuff is happening round the back (and I realise how dodgy that sentence sounds, even as I’m typing it), because unlike its predecessors, the Land Rover S1 has actually got a camera. And they’ve gone from no camera, straight up to 2 megapixel camera in the space of one phone. Granted, it’s not even going to come close to competing with something like the Sony Ericsson Idou, but it’s a start, and for a phone you can repeatedly hit with a brick hammer, anything’s a bonus!

It’s also got Bluetooth, and the Opera Mini browser pre-installed, so unbelievably, it’s a super-ruggedized hardcase phone, that actually does stuff! No word on release date or price, yet, but rest assured, our tireless team of research monkeys (well, me) are on the case…"

Down on the Farm

Farmers Weekly subjected four rugged phones to “all sorts of unpleasantness” to determine which one stood up best to “serious abuse from farmers, builders and other serial phone-killers.”

The Sonim XP3 Enduro was named best overall “if you want the ultimate in toughness and waterproofness,” and the second runner-up was the Sonim-made JCB Toughphone “If you want a simple, compact, tough phone that doesn't require a degree in software engineering, the JCB is ideal…”

Farmers Weekly noted that "Life can be nasty, short and brutish for such a phone on a farm. It bounces around in tractors, gets a regular diet of dust and every so often receives a good soaking. If it falls out of your top pocket (let alone off the top of the combine) there's usually unforgiving concrete waiting below to shatter its lovingly-crafted components.

The answer to all this cruelty, of course, is a rugged phone. But makers have been curiously slow to come forward with waterproof and shockproof versions."

Sonim’s phones were selected as the top rugged choice for those who need a truly tough mobile phone after a collection of rugged phones were subjected by Farmers Weekly to:

The Freezer Test: how would the phones cope with a spray of water then an hour in the freezer?)

The Ring Volume/Earpiece Test: How easy was it to hear the ringer (and the other caller's voice) in a New Holland T7050 running at 1500 engine rpm?

The Fat Finger Test: How would a typical farmer's fingers get on with the phone's keypad?

The Screen Durability Test: How would the screen cope with a 20-second blast of fat sparks from an angle grinder 18in away?

The Torch Test: How powerful were the dinky torches that are fitted as standard to three of the four phones?

The Water Test: How would the phones cope with a good hosing down?

The Drop Test: How would the phones cope with a 6ft drop on to hard-packed mud?

The Strength Test: How would the phones cope being driven over by a 250kg Polaris ATV?

The Land Rover Test: How would the phones cope being driven over by a 1.7t Land Rover?

The Concrete Drop Test: How would the phones cope with being dropped 12ft on to concrete?

Read the full review here.

It's Official -- XP1/JCB Toughphone is the World's Toughest Phone

As reported by London's Metro Newspaper, the Sonim's XP1/JCB Toughphone now holds the Guinness World Record as the world's toughest phone.

The story in Metro noted:

The phone was dropped from the bucket of a JCB Digger from various heights until hitting its maximum of 3.25 metres.

Judges would only accept superficial damage to the handset and stipulated that it had to be completely operational and have no cracks on the screen.

Entrepreneur Peter Jones has previously helped test the phone's resistance to other potential sources of damage, including being run over by vehicles, put in a cement mixer and drenched by an industrial hose.

Bob Plaschke, Chief Executive of Toughphone maker Sonim Technologies, said: "From the very start we set out to make rugged phones for people who work and play in rugged environments.

"We're thrilled that Guinness World Records has recognised the JCB Toughphone as officially the toughest phone in the world."

The handset comes with a guarantee against dust, dirt and shock and as well as being fully water-resistant.

Test And Destroy!

U.K. newspaper The Guardian published an article today on Test and Destroy, a new torture test devised to gauge the level of abuse our rugged XP1 phone is capable of withstanding.

Snipped from the article:

Manufacturing firm JCB is aiming to prove the toughness of its mobile phone with an online campaign that allows skeptics to pummel it with a machine-operated hammer at the click of a mouse.

The campaign, developed by agency CreativeFeed, aims to prove the aptly named JCB Toughphone is practically indestructible.

CreativeFeed has set up a website - testanddestroy.com - that features the phone hooked up to a device designed to smash it to pieces.

Doubters can watch the device, a machine-operated hammer called The Destroyer, pound the phone every eight seconds.

Visitors are encouraged to make bets on how long the phone, which will be battered 10,000 times a day, will take to break. To prove the test is live visitors can also call the phone and see it ringing.

JCB licenses the rights to name the phone, which is known as the Sonim XP1, in the UK market.

Once the phone is broken, visitors can watch other objects being demolished by The Destroyer, which took four weeks to make, and suggest other objects that could be put to the test.

So head on over to Test and Destroy, make a guess about how the XP1 will respond to the incessent hammering, suggest other things we can break, and call in to activate some additional options.

Toughest Phone In The News

Snipped from a review in The Warsaw Business Journal:

Take Sonim Technologies' Xtreme Performance I (XP1), for example. If this apparently sturdy little gadget were a person, it would probably be a cross between John Wayne and Johnny Knoxville - an emotionally distant, chaps-wearing adrenaline junkie. Of course it's not - it's just a phone - but it still seems like the kind of phone that would wear chaps.

Sonim hosts a number of inspirational videos on its XP1 website, www.toughestphone.com, which demonstrate ways to test the phone's alleged mightiness. In these videos the XP1 survives being run over with cars, showering and sauna'ing with a dodgy-looking guy, as well as being put in a freezer and submerged in milk and beer (not at the same time, though). It can also be used as an impromptu soccer ball or junior-league hockey puck, struck with a baseball bat or a golf club, used to hammer a nail though a board or put through a cement mixer - it endures all of these things with the good cheer of a well-medicated New York socialite.

The XP1 is not totally indestructible, however. As some gumptious Scandinavians went to great lengths to prove, shooting the XP1 with an airgun, a Rugar 10/22 semi-automatic rifle, a 9mm Glock 17 and, finally, a Remington 700 rifle, is guaranteed to end in telecom tragedy.

In more techy terms, the XP1 is an IP-54 certified GSM phone with Bluetooth. Its battery allows for five-hours of talking time in temperatures ranging from -20C to +60C. Feel free to test that for yourself, by the way, and if you survive please send some pictures our way.

And from IntoMobile:

Just a quick post on a handset that isn't especially new (i.e. it's been visible on the interweb for a little while), but has suddenly popped on to the radar of a number of UK phone-vending websites!

This beast amongst phones is the JCB Toughphone, which is actually the Sonim XP1 ruggedised phone under another guise. The 'kewl' part is that JCB is part of many peoples' memories from when they were smaller - if you lived near any building sites like I did, you will be VERY familiar with the logo, and banana-yellow colouring!

On a marginally more serious note, the specs of the handset are impressive ... operating from -20°C to 60°C, and obviously being able to withstand serious 'drop/throw/kick/stamp/bang' abuse

T3 on the JCB TOUGHPHONE

Leading UK gadget magazine T3 gave the JCB TOUGHPHONE a great writeup in their March 2008 issue.

Snipped from the T3 writeup:

Say JCB and the first thing that springs to mind is massive diggers and real men doing real work ...But for those of us who prefer playing with top notch gadgetry, JCB has got a cheeky surprise: their very own mobile.

It's shock resistant, dust resistant, water resistant and drop resistant. You can use it in temperatures ranging from a bone-chilling -20C to a wilting heat of 60C. Surely more doughty than some of the military grade kit we've seen recently.

It even comes with a three year guarantee, so confident are they that it won't get crocked. Say that about your current 5-meg camera toting phone.

But our favourite? The ringtone that sounds like a JCB starting up. Nice touch guys, nice touch.

A Smashing Good Time

Ewan MacLeod is a terrific technology writer, he manages to morph useful information with humor. I love the story he wrote about trying to break the JCB TOUGHPHONE, which is manufactured by Sonim.

Here's an excerpt from Ewan's piece, but do check out the entire article at SMS Text News.

When I met Bob Plaschke, top chap at Sonim Technologies, a few weeks ago, he arrived with two JCB Toughphones.  One was for me to play about with — a review unit — the other was for me to smash.

Egged on by Bob, I threw the handset about 5 ft in the air and made a stupidly girly face whilst I waited for it to hit the cobbled stones.

Nothing.

The handset bounced once or twice and came to a rest. 

“Right,” exclaimed Bob, “Switch it on, let’s try it out…”

A few seconds later, the JCB had switched on and was operational. 

“That’s fantastic,” I said, astounded at the solid nature of the handset as I made to walk back into the hotel.

“Ok, but really throw it this time,” ordered Bob, handing me back the device.

I did a blank look at him.  We’d proved the point.  The device worked. 

But Bob — correctly — wasn’t having any of that.

“REALLY throw it. I mean REALLY — as hard as you can, I want you to break this one...” he instructed.

I’m firmly from the school of thought that every time you kill a handset like I’d been trying to do here, a small cute fairy dies somewhere — so this is difficult work for me.

JCB TOUGHPHONE and Samsung Solid Slug It Out

Buildingit -- a website for the construction industry -- has a head-to-head review of the JCB TOUGHPHONE and the Samsung Solid. Some excerpts follow, read the full review here.

Designed for hard use, and for hard living, they can take on all comers, take on the world, even. But how do they fair against each other?

Let's find out as the JCB TOUGH PHONE goes to war with the Samsung Solid. On paper, the two phones seem to stack up fairly similarly. In fact, on specs alone, the Samsung Solid seems to win hands down. It has an IP rating of IP54, meaning it is VERY resistant to splashes and dust.

The JCB TOUGH PHONE, by comparison, has a rating of IP53, so it's as resistant to dust, but not quite as resistant to splashes. It also beats the JCB in terms of media features, as it actually HAS a camera. Granted, it's only 0.3 megapixels, but it also has a flash that doubles as a torch, which is another tick in the Solid's box.

"However... and it's a BIG however... the JCB TOUGH PHONE lives up to its name really, REALLY well. It's much, much more rigid and indestructible than any other phone on the market, due to the fact that I'm reasonably certain it has a steel frame, pointed out a spokesman for The Mobile Shop. Which is going to make it stronger than any amount of rubber casing. And that's the key difference between them. The JCB TOUGH PHONE is built to be strong, to be a tool, not to be flashy or stylish.

The Samsung Solid, on the other hand, is built more to combine toughness with some modicum of features. And therein lies the difference, and why these phones aren't really competitiors, when you get right down to it.

Look at it this way: if you're a builder, and you want a phone that can take anything you throw at it and shrug it off without a scratch, and if you want a phone that has a frankly fabulous ringtone of a digger starting up, you want the JCB Toughphone.

JCB TOUGHPHONE Torture Test

In this video mobile technology entrepreneur and 'Dragons Den' star Peter Jones witnesses a torture-test of the JCB TOUGHPHONE, custom-designed and produced with the help of Sonim Technologies. Jones watches happily as the phone is shoved off the top of a digger, run over by a 1.5 ton Groundhog, tossed into a working cement mixer and then drenched with water. Does the phone survive this messy mayhem? Have we finally found a way to kill the world's toughest phone? Watch and see.

Meet the JCB TOUGHPHONE

Construction equipment manufacturer, JCB, has recently released the JCB TOUGHPHONE, designed and produced with the help of Sonim Technologies. The JCB TOUGHPHONE is a special custom edition of the Sonim XP1 – The World’s Toughest Phone. It boasts the virtually indestructible engineering that the XP1 is famous for as well as Bluetooth connectivity, Push to Talk, tri-band and built-in dual speakers to ensure clear communication in noisy environments.

“The JCB TOUGHPHONE forms a key part of our strategy in providing accessories for the outdoor worker that they can rely on," saidJCB Consumer Products Director Matthew Conrad. " It has been a 2-year search to find the right product and Sonim came up with the goods. As well as its rugged construction, the JCB TOUGHPHONE is instantly recognised as a JCB product by its colour – which also increases visibility. The start-up screen features JCB graphics and, for a bit of fun, there is an exclusive JCB ringtone, the sound of one of our diggers starting up!"

Mobile Business Magazine gave the JCB TOUGHPHONE a terrific review.

I loves me gadgets, me. That’s true. I love shiny, technical things, and it’s a well-known running gag round here that I’m not happy with something unless it’s got more buttons than NASA.

So, I won’t like the TOUGHPHONE, right?

Wrong! I love it! Yes, I like gadgets, yes, I like high-tech toys that look like they should be in Tron, but you can’t help but love a phone that is so perfectly designed for the market it’s aiming at. No, it doesn’t have a camera… no, it doesn’t have 3G… no, it doesn’t have even a smidgeon of multimedia playback… and do you know what? I don’t care!

The JCB TOUGHPHONE will be available from Phones 4u, Speedy Hire and Plumb Centres. It will also be available for online purchase.