Sonim XP7 Specs

Sonim XP7 Specs-The Good The actual Sonim XP7 will take almost everything you can hand out. It has stellar electric battery life, a versatile show and useful on the web connectivity features for staff who brave the weather. The Bad The actual phone's premium value and bulky chassis will make it a tough sell for anyone with more simple needs. The Bottom line The Sonim XP7 stands up to the things without sacrificing functionality, but you'll have to decide if its durability will probably be worth its premium value.

Sonim XP7 Release Date

Rugged devices enjoy a curious specific niche market, generally falling into one of two categories. You have your consumer-klutz level approach, which takes some sort of "normal" phone as well as tacks on a bit of added durability for you to weather splashes as well as falls -- take into account the Samsung Galaxy S5 Effective. And then you can find behemoths like the actual Sonim XP7, something purpose built intended for survival.

The Sonim XP7 is expensive, currently accessible in Canada for 750 Canadian us dollars unlocked (about $665), and starting from about 100 Canadian dollars having a two-year contract -- we need to be hearing more news with regards to a US release later this season. But that advanced price gets you a device built to operate in the worst type of conditions. My job like a reviews editor almost never puts me in harm's way, but I complete like to get rid of the office every so often. I brought the actual XP7 along on my last adventure, consisting of several nights of cantankerous weather, an unreasonable amount of mud and an ill-advised bit of rock scaling. Neither I nor the unit came back unscathed, but I would return impressed.

The actual Sonim XP7 is let's call that utilitarian. You'll find no concessions to create here, no delicate curves or grippy, textured bits to keep. Picking it up is like wrapping my hand around something, a mallet's handle or much more appropriately here some sort of rubber brick that's 0. 8 in . thick. It is 290 grams, or merely over half some sort of pound. That just isn't light by any stretch, but still amazingly totable for something that looks like it may comfortably plow via a windshield.

The 4-inch display includes a lowly 800x480-pixel image resolution; it's serviceable, or even especially impressive. Colors look beaten up when the phone is held from an angle, but everything around the screen is otherwise clearly visible. The display is fairly bright and moreover, easy to notice outside, even in sunlight. I imagine that Sonim's potential audience spends more occasion outdoors glancing from emails and texts than revealing the photos they take using the 8-megapixel camera that sits around the rear, so the actual trade-off works here.

The unit feels indestructible, which instills a sort of bravado in myself I wouldn't typically find when wielding expensive gadgets. Its spec bed sheet rattles off all method of details on their resilience: IP68 certification to safeguard against microparticles and up to 2 feets of water (6. 5 feet) for a half-hour, and IP69 qualification, for "resistance for you to high-temperature pressure clean. "

I decided not to try pressure-washing that. But the surprise that hit the actual lake bed my personal friends and I did set up camping in gave me an abundance of opportunities to use other claims. The show will register advices from gloves -- actually soaked, muddy ones while using phone's LED flashlight to hunt for guylines that had been yanked free of the stakes. It's hard to become precise with baseball gloves on, though, so don't be ready to hammer out emails. Gusts of wind flow repeatedly blew the unit from its perch on a camping chair straight into patches of will get. I wiped it off and yes it seemed to wave, obviously having a much better time than We was. And soon after three nights invested taking photos, as well as yes, browsing the Web and posting rank updates from the center of the Mojave desert, the 4, 800mAh battery still had an abundance of life left to provide.

Certainly, it isn't truly indestructible. That bravado got the most beneficial of me, so that as the sun rose on my last day I made a decision to scale some rocks and perhaps get a far better "hero" shot intended for my review. The actual mud wasn't seeing that dry as I'd personally hoped and We took a fall, landing rather unceremoniously amongst some rocks. The phone was unfazed: We tested its attributes, ran my finger across the screen, looking for a lot of sign of greater damage. I want to imagine it just sort of grinned, and asked "what's next? " Sonim provides a comprehensive three-year extended warranty, covering even accidental damage.

Not for your faint of cardiovascular

This is not a phone Let me use every day. It really commences to weigh done to you, and doesn't fit comfortably within my pants pockets. The unit also uses some sort of proprietary magnetic asking for cable, which can be a bit annoying. It removes just one potential point regarding failure for dirt and water to acquire in, and it is possible to plug it directly into a standard HARDWARE socket, but that however means toting along one more cable when you wish to top the device off.

I also spend nearly all of my days powering a desk, so a lot of the concessions made for you to durability are wasted on me. All of those other phone's functions are designed into evenly spread, raised buttons which can be easy to strike with gloves -- the actual push-to-talk and camera shutter button around the left side of the phone, volume control and also a red emergency support button around the right. The headphone jack sits up best, hidden behind some sort of flap. The bulging antenna with top right corner also houses the truly loud speaker, and it is capped off having a bright notification light that's easily visible in the depths of my personal camera bag, where I generally kept the unit. The phone also offers NFC connectivity.

Computer software and features

The actual Sonim XP7 works Android 4. 4 KitKat, and is essentially free of external apps or attributes. A shortcut for your LED flashlight sits upon the lock tv screen, which proves handy if your tent generally is blowing away and you don't want for you to futz around for the light source.

There's an app for your FM radio, some sort of file manager, apps to control software updates whilst your phone carrier's consideration, as well as software to build the push-to-talk performance. The Sonim Protect system will not be available until 2015, nevertheless it will offer an avid emergency line intended for monitoring and encouraging stranded workers.

Overall performance

This quad-band phone runs on LTE systems, and is accessible from Bell as well as Telus in Canada. The models We reviewed were fitted with AT&T SIM charge cards for my testing, and performed ably. There's a 1. 4GHz quad-core processor chip and 1GB regarding RAM, which aren't exactly standout specs -- especially as of this price -- but serve the XP7 very well. The phone flies through general work with, and the video game titles I brought together with me -- Deceased Trigger 2 as well as Angry Birds: Transformers -- missed out along without absent a beat.

The actual 4, 800mAh battery is rated at as much as 40 hours regarding talk time. My very own use involved many Web browsing (and looking for a signal in the desert), snapping photographs, and making cell phone calls once I returned to civilization. Four days later once i finally got all-around to plugging that in, the phone hovered at in relation to 22 percent electric battery life.

Call top quality was excellent: people I spoke for you to could hear myself clearly, and the noise-canceling microphone does an excellent job of quelling the actual noise around myself. And the front-facing presenter is loud, so i didn't have any trouble carrying on a conversation. You'll wish to stick to earbuds for music, however, as the bass can be a little weak, which will make audio sound a bit tinny.

Camera

I honestly weren't expecting too much out of the 8-megapixel camera that sits around the rear of the actual XP7. Image top quality isn't stellar, as well as details are ambiguous, but these ailments -- a rainy, cloudy day -- were not even close to ideal. The autofocus just isn't too sluggish, and the camera is ready to go within a second . 5 of tapping the actual camera app icon, or holding lower the dedicated shutter button around the left side of the phone.