Accident-prone builders, drunken sailors and careless outdoor types may be pleased to hear that Dragons’ Den television entrepreneur Peter Jones has launched a series of extra-tough mobile phones – one of which floats on water.
His company, Distributor Data Select has teamed up with forklift trucks firm JCB to launch four extra-rugged mobiles last night under the Toughphone brand.
Targeting builders, swarthy artisans, tractor drivers, people who make a habit of driving over their handsets and the thousands who drop their phones down the loo every year, Jones also thinks sporty types may be interested too:
“These phones are not just suitable for tough working conditions, they’re also ideal for people who lead outdoor lifestyles such as mountain climbing, skiing and sailing,” he commented.
Not pretty. But tough.
A total of four new Toughphone handsets were announced, none of them exactly lookers, but all of them looking tougher than a drunken Glaswegian docker after a Celtic home defeat.
Peter Jones was on hand to big up the new products, although the presentation didn’t go as smoothly as the twelve foot giant from Maidenhead might have liked, with the promo DVD stuttering and pausing repeatedly.
We could almost hear the distant sound of Duncan Bannatyne cackling with delight as the DVD was bashed back into life.
S&M
The video demo showed the phones suffering prolonged bouts of S&M punishment, courtesy of various heavily branded JCB products.
Phone-hauling tractors raced around the screen, phones were buried under gravel or rather pointlessly placed on top of performing JCB diggers just so they could fall off, with the enthusiastic presenter insisting that they were all working fine at the end of it (we had no reason to doubt him, but the video was so badly filmed you couldn’t actually see if the screens were on or not).
Here’s the run down of the new phones on offer:
The Tradesman
The Tradesman (billed as the “world’s first floating mobile”) is the softie of the pack, and aimed at sailors, coastguards and fans of watersports.
Retailing for £69.99, the 111 x 49 x 20 mm tri-band handset comes with a squinty 1.44 inch CSTN screen, 650 mAh Li-ion battery, Bluetooth 2.0 / MicroUSB and a talk time of 180 minutes and standby time of 130 hours.
The Sitemaster
Built to withstand over one tonne of pressure, this is the phone to take with you if you’re in the company of clumsy elephants.
The £109.99 handset has been 2m drop tested, and packs a laser pointer, torch, 2.0 inch TFT 262k colour display, Bluetooth 2.0, 270 minutes talk time/450hrs standby time – and there’s a free wind up charger lobbed in the box.
Toughphone Pro
The 100% waterproof Pro retails for around £240 and ups the specs to a 2.2 inch LCM / QVGA touchscreen, with a 1800 mAh Li-ion battery, Bluetooth2.0m GPRS and Java 2.0.
Measuring up at 126 x 60 x 22 mm, the quad-band handset also comes with 256MB Flash memory and a 2MP camera.
Toughphone Pro-Talk
Waterproof and dustproof, the top of the line £250 Pro-Talk is clearly the one to be seen with as you shovel gravel around a construction site.
Offering handy dual SIM slots, there’s also an 8 channel two-way radio on-board for delivering urgent tea requests and a 2.2 inch LCM / QVGA touchscreen.
The quad band beefcake measures up at 126 x 60 x 22 mm and comes with a 1800 mAh Li-ion battery, Bluetooth 2.0, GPRS, Java 2.0, 256MB Flash and a 2MP camera.
