Samsung is extremely well known for its collection of smartphones and in recent times, the company has also made the move into tablet territory that might just see them cannibalize some of the sales of its rivals, the Apple iPad and the Microsoft Surface. However, the smartphone business continues to be one of the company's top drawer products, and it is not surprising to see the South Korean conglomerate come up with something out of the ordinary: the Samsung Galaxy XCover FieldPro rugged smartphone.
Now, rugged smartphones are not something new, and neither is Samsung a stranger to the scene. They have come up with the Galaxy S Active range before, although that "experiment" did not last for too many generations before they decided to fall back upon regular smartphone releases. First of all, it must be said that there is an extremely limited market when it comes to rugged smartphones and secondly, the hardware specifications for such devices tend to reside on the mid-range spectrum and lacks the necessary bells and whistles that flagship handsets boast of.
The Samsung Galaxy XCover FieldPro is the latest field-ready device from Samsung to be introduced. This particular handset has been purpose-built and comes equipped with Push-to-Talk capability, letting you use it as a walkie talkie of sorts with another Galaxy XCover FieldPro owner. Being rugged is one thing, security is another aspect that Samsung has taken seriously be empowering this device to keep information storage compliant and secure.
While the regular consumer might want to pick this up out of curiosity, it is far more likely for the enterprise and business people to make use of it as their daily driver. Federal agencies will no doubt have this handset on their radar, as well as local precincts, transportation professionals, field service technicians, and others.
Those who spend their working days in physically demanding environments will also demand a device that is more than capable of handling the unforeseen knocks and drops, all the while offering a level of customization that is truly unparalleled. In terms of certifications, the Galaxy XCover FieldPro features MIL-STD-810G1 and IP682 certifications, enabling it to survive just about anything including drops, shocks and vibrations to extreme temperatures. Want to continue your conversation in the rain? Go ahead, it will continue to function perfectly fine. It can even survive up to 30 minutes in five-foot-deep water without any hitch, although that is a less impressive feat now considering existing flagship models tend to be able to do that as well.
Good thing it comes with a replaceable 4500mAh battery, something that is extremely rare these days. Each purchase of the XCover FieldPro will ship with an extra battery, and it is field replaceable (batteries can be swapped halfway). Other hardware specifications of the Galaxy XCover FieldPro include a 5.1-inch QHD display, running on a Samsung Exynos 9810 processor. It has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory, although you can further augment that by another 512GB via a microSD memory card slot. There are dual cameras behind while it charges up via USB Type-C. It runs on Android 8.0 Oreo, although it will be supported all the way to Android Q.
There is no word on pricing just yet, but it does seem to be worth checking out if you want to streamline your company's mobile communications across the board to something that is tougher than a regular device.
