Sonim XP3300 Force

The Sonim XP3300 Force has been around for a while, but it recently hit the headlines when it was officially certified as the world's toughest phone, when it survived a 25 metre drop onto concrete without breaking.

The Sonim XP3300 Force is a premium, ultra-rugged GSM phone specifi­cally designed to enhance mobile workforce productivity and safety for professionals with the toughest jobs in the world, ranging from transportation enterprises to utility fi­eld managers, backed by Sonim's industry-leading 3-Year Comprehensive Warranty.  

Building on lessons learned from serving half a million workers in the most extreme environments, the Sonim RPS certifi­ed phone was engineered to handle any working condition. The Sonim RPS go far beyond MIL-SPEC ruggedness, so managers can be assured of minimum downtime, keeping critical business processes running smoothly. Even wastewater 2 meters deep is no challenge for this IP-68 rated, water and dust proof handset, which can also be dropped from 2 meters onto concrete. The 2 inch high-resolution display is protected by a class leading 1.5mm thick Corning® Gorilla® Glass lens for the highest scratch and shock resistance.

The XP3300 Force has enterprise class GPS capabilities for optimized accurate real-time location tracking, and is ready for Mobile Resource Management applications developers*. The 2 MP camera with a bright LED fl‑ash and digital zoom captures critical job site information while worker safety is enhanced by strong antenna performance, very long battery life and active noise cancellation. Sonim has further improved the reliability, speed and available memory for JAVA applications. The Sonim JAVA Application Manager (JAM) store offers a range of pre-tested and certifi­ed third party workforce management applications for download. NoteVault, for the construction industry, records and transcribes voice notes to track last minute change requests and verbal safety reports right from the work site, making good use of the noise cancellation, GPS tagging and image capture capabilities of the Sonim XP3300 Force

The XP1300 Core has comfortable keys and controls.

The beefy volume rocker sits on the phone's right spine above a control that activates the bright flashlight on the rear side. A programmable shortcut key is on the left side below the aforementioned 3.5mm ports. You can also program the toggle for one-touch access to your favorite features. You'll have to remove the battery cover to access the microSD card slot, but that's understandable in a water-resistant phone

Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 Mini Pro

The lack of a pink option when it comes to Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 Mini Pro, has swayed some consumers into choosing the X10 Mini over the mightier X10 Mini. However those who want a pink smart phone will no longer have to ditch the QWERTY keyboard in favour of the color availability.
The Xperia X10 Mini Pro is now available in pink and has been spotted on a UK online retailer, Additions Direct. It is available for £199 on the O2 network. It doesn’t appear to be in stock at the moment but, should be delivered within the next 14 days. The company also sell the standard black X10 Mini Pro, which again is on the O2 network. Likewise, it usually retails for £199 but, is currently on offer for £179.

When the keyboard is slid away out of sight, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro looks exactly the same as the Xperia Mini.
The three physical buttons of last year's X10 Mini Pro have been replaced by one bigger, chunkier Home button, with new capacitive touch buttons for Menu and Back either side of it.

 

As with the Xperia Mini, it's a change for the better. The Home key is big enough to find without fumbling, while the touch buttons are sensitive enough to work every time, also without fuss. The change makes the Mini Pro look a little more stylish than the X10 Mini Pro, too, with the glass of the screen extending right down to the base of the phone.

 

There's one extra bit of functionality revealed by the front face of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro - there's a second front-facing camera in here, producing low-res video and stills for web chats.
The connectivity options have been jiggled about to accommodate the sliding QWERTY keyboard. The top of the phone has the USB connector, which is covered by a little plastic stopper, plus the power and headphone jack, leaving the bottom of the phone completely featureless.

The right-hand edge houses the volume up/down rocker, while there's a nice, sensitive, two-stage shutter button for controlling the camera at the bottom.

The back is the same as the Xperia Mini. The snap-on cover has a matte, rubberised finish, making it easy to grip in the hand, plus the silver logos, trim and 'HD' text give it a nice designer appeal.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro features the same Bravia Engine and Reality Display combination as the Xperia Mini, with the result being a sharp, bright display running at 320 x 480 (HVGA) resolution.
Text is readable and icons clean and clear, while it's perfectly usable outdoors if you shove the brightness up to maximum.

As you may have noticed, the word "pro" is mobile phone manufacturer shorthand for saying "has a QWERTY keyboard", so there is... a QWERTY keyboard.

he keyboard's sliding mechanism is solid, with the phone snapping open and shut in a reassuringly stiff manner. The keys are backlit, featuring a similar rubberised coating to the back of the phone, so they have a rougher, grippier feel to them than the ones on last year's X10 Mini Pro.

There's a useful selection of alternate characters accessed by pressing the blue button, plus you can pull up a selection of awful smiley faces and the even more special special characters by tapping the Sym button.
There's also a four-button cursor key array, a shortcut to the keyboard settings menu and a tiny status display in the Android notifications bar, alerting you if Caps Lock is on or if you've double-pressed and therefore locked the alternate character function.