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…"
