A few days ago I got rid of my CAT B15 smartphone. I bought it for it’s ruggedness had it for a month but then I saw how battery pops out of the phone in this video and read Trustedreviews where they say: “Battery sometimes pops out when it’s dropped” . It seems that CAT B15 isn’t so rugged at all |(
However I’m still intrigued by rugged smartphones and i was wandering how good are Chinese namely the Hummer H5 and Land Rover A8.
Seems like only the Russians are doing review of these phones and I can hardly understand them. So I was wandering what’s your take on these phones? How exaggerated is battery capacity and how efficient are these phones? Anything else I should know?
Little side note - Samsung XCover B2710 has the same issue - the battery door will pop off and battery and microSD cards will fly outta phone if dropped on firm surface!
The problem is it takes far too little force to open up battery compartment screw, it was never problem with my B2100!
Well, I just tried to drop my phone from about 1-1.5m height onto the floor with no soft coating - battery popped out, oring from battery cover flew off and one corner on the battery broke off, the one that holds hte battery inside the phone…
It has to do with retaning screw+those two small ears that hold lower part of cover inside the phone are slightly angled and thus simply slide out of the phone in case of impact!
OK, on topic - about those Chinese phone - I would never buy noname phone from China ever!
They are never going to be reliable and in EU we have at least 2 year warranty so why bother ;)!
Also, touchsreen phones NEVER will superseed or at leat meet ruggedness of classic candy-bar phones like B2100 and Sonim series!
But if you MUST own touchscreen phone then simply buy one that you like and prior to buying it make sure there are drop-water-dust proof shells available for said phone!
It could be cheaper to buy this way given that you will get FULLY featured smartphone instead of botched semi-ruggedised part-smartphone for the same money ;)!
Oops, my phone just froze and restarted :D! That much for perceived ruggedness of B2710! Been thinking about applying double sided tape to its internals to keep the cover from popping off!
Only thing its good for is waterproofness which I must say Ive never tested beyond washing it in the sink!
I have the B2710 for three years now. I haven’t noticed angled pins on battery door till now. The phone has served me very well and I can confirm it’s waterproof (tried it the day I purchased it). So far it survived every fall with nothing but scratches. My brother has B2100 and while B2710 might be less rugged I like it more for its better screen and its GPS. B2710 has better call quality, louder ring tone and much better battery door than CAT B15. So imagine CAT B15
I’ll ask on other forums about rugged Chinese phones. Some regular ones have made a name for them selves (Oppo, Xiaomi).
