Product test
Caterpillar CAT S60 - The virtually indestructible flagship mobile phone
by Dominik Bärlocher
Land Rover Explore: Outdoor Hardcore
28.2.2018
Translation: machine translated
Video: Stephanie Tresch
The Land Rover Explore doesn't want to be small and cute. It is big, heavy and bulky. But the rugged phone can withstand arctic temperatures and hard knocks. It also shows that modular smartphones may have a future after all.
You've probably never heard of the English smartphone manufacturer Bullitt. But you have heard of its products. Bullitt specialises in the manufacture of rugged phones, i.e. smartphones that can take a beating.
However, Bullitt rarely or never sells the finished phones under its own name, but licences naming rights such as those of Caterpillar and now also Land Rover. The Land Rover Explore is not only extremely tough, but also represents a new attempt at a modular smartphone.
This is video producer Stephanie Tresch and I answering a question from user Gamerrici over in the feed.
And keep an eye out for modular mobiles.
We did and can tell you that the Land Rover Explore might not be exactly what you were looking for, but it certainly looks promising as it is well thought out.
A phone for tough people
Anyone who talks to me about smartphones for more than ten minutes will have heard of my love for either the Cat S60 or rugged phones in general. I can't explain exactly where this love comes from, but I can't help but like the chunky and ultra-durable phones.
The Land Rover Explore is no exception.
Large, sturdy and chunky in the hand. How could it be otherwise? At the extremely well air-conditioned stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Bullitt shows what the phones are capable of. They have been tested in the Arctic and the desert. Okay, heat is nothing really great and smartphones can easily cope with high temperatures. But the Explore's insulation ensures that the battery does not freeze and the device gives up the ghost even at extremely low temperatures. It is drop-proof at 1.80 metres.
This all sounds more or less like the Cat S60, which is already a few years old as far as I can remember. But Bullitt didn't rest on its laurels and gave the Cat a new look, christened the whole thing Land Rover and then launched it on the market.
A look at the back reveals a lot: there are metal connectors to which modules can be docked. Only one attachment is available at launch, the so-called Adventure Pack. It expands the already large 4000 mAh battery by a further 3600 mAh and adds a 25 mm x 25 mm GPS antenna to the phone.
The GPS is relevant because, according to the manufacturer, the GPS antenna can struggle to accurately triangulate the position in rough terrain and with poor network coverage. However, as the antenna in the Adventure Pack is the same antenna that you find in dedicated GPS devices such as the in-car models from manufacturers like Garmin, this should not be a problem in the Arctic or in the British Brecon Beacons.
And inside?
The Land Rover Explore is not just nice to look at from the outside, as Bullitt has its own app store, just like the Cat S60, which accesses the Google Play Store, but sorts the apps by topic such as "Climbing" or "Hiking" and lists the best and most useful apps on the topic in the tabs.
You can use the apps and their data to put together a dashboard that conveniently displays all the information on one screen. Also very practical, even if the presets such as "Skiing" are not enough. Bullitt has also teamed up with the social mapping platform ViewRanger, which allows users to add GPS brands to their own maps and show other users the best places for sightseeing and the like.
All this is powered by a MediaTek Deca Core processor, a processor with ten cores, which makes quite an impression. No matter what you do to the phone on the software side, it responds smoothly and quickly, even with complex tasks such as displaying socially generated maps and points of interest in the ViewFinder app, which has been integrated directly into the camera and thus creates a kind of intelligent camera feed.
In short, the Land Rover Explore shows that faster, thinner, lighter is not always the path to success and that even big hunks of phones can be innovative and interesting.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
Smartphone
Follow topics and stay updated on your areas of interest
5 comments
later