Land Rover Unveils "World's Toughest Phone"

Land Rover says their new S1 mobile is the world's strongest phone. Testing done by Land Rover and the staff at The Sun showed the S1 would still work after being stepped on by an elephant, run over by a Land Rover, dropped from a second-story window, buried in mud, soaked in a pint of beer, and roasted in an oven at 150 degrees centigrade. A forklift truck proved to be its match, and was able to crush the S1 under its three-tonne weight. The phone comes with 1,500 hours of battery life, a 2.0 megapixel camera, an extra loud ringtone and an unconditional three-year guarantee.

Re:Psh

[A. B3ttik]

OWNED.

Re:1500 Hours of Battery Life?!

[imsabbel]

Not hard at all to believe.

When cell phones went smaller, their battery packs also became smaller. In size and in capacity (of course more in size).

A battery the size of the one in my old Nokia 5510, but made from LiPO, would have about 5-10 times the capacity of the tiny batteries in modern phones.
As a modern phone will last a week in standby easily, even with those small 300mAh cells, i think 62 days is entirely reasonable if one can live with the phone being 100g heavier.

Re:Except..

[PanchoVilla]

Its a bummer that Land Rover gets the "yuppie" label. Thats pretty much what I always thought too. Then a friend got one for the right reasons(to drive it off-road), and he invited me to ride along on the half day land rover course down in Carmel. The guy showed us all the features, and how they worked and how to use them. Then we went and spent the rest of the time doing actual driving. Leaning the rover over so far on its side I still don't know how it didn't fall over. Getting the rover on 3 wheels with one 2-3 feet in the air, then going forward until it tipped the weight from the back right to front left. Going up and down hills way steeper than I thought you could. The traction controls systems in the rover is very impressive, it even has an auto decent feature. Yes to descend a steep hill you sit at the top with the brake on, then you just take your foot off everything. You just steer, the car controls the descent and keeps the wheels turning so you can always steer. Your brain really makes that hard. So counter intuitive. The whole thing is done with the stock street tires. The instructor even let us get the car up around 40 and then hit the all stop switch. It really stops the car fast. :) So while it still is mostly driven by yuppies that will probably never go over a rock bigger than gravel, they really are impressive machines that are built to live offroad. So while I bet lots of yuppies buy the phone too, if it is designed like their rovers its probably pretty durable.

Re:the obligatory...

[chiller2]

Almost!

There's a great interview by Dan Lane with a chap from Sonim about the phone / Land Rover deal over at The Really Mobile Project [thereallym...roject.com]. It's a few weeks old if that tells you anything about the /. story! They drove around the Land Rover test track with it attached to one of the wheels, so it got to be spun around, submerged, and I think at one point they drive over it too.

Re:Except..

[hughk]

Some years back I had a Series IIa short wheelbase job. Bought secondhand of course and reconditioned. No traction control, just 2-wheel and 4-wheel selection then low and high ration. The original spec was 45 degs tip in any direction with a ton in the back. I took mine on 30% roads and up and down hills off-road. Don't think I made the 45 degrees slopes though.

The downside was this was a true landrover - the main cushioning was your ass and it drank fuel. Eventually, I had to give it up.