Two days ago, we posted that Nokia is up to something that is unbreakable and it is about to release the “unbreakable” phone in less that two months. Well it happened.
That rumored imminent announcement has come sooner rather than later as Nokia has made the rugged 3720 classic official today. The press release was light on the specifications but did confirm that the 3720 classic will be IP54 certified for water, dust and shock, and will feature an Integrated LED flashlight, 2.2-inch display, 2 megapixel camera with flash, microSD card slot (ships with 1GB card installed) and extended battery life. The Nokia 3720 will be available later this summer in a variety of colors. This summer you will be able to pick up what Nokia is calling their “most rugged mobile handset to date.” It’s fairly standard, feature wise, with triband GSM/EDGE supporting the 900/1800/1900 MHz bands, 240 x 320 pixel 16 million color screen and Bluetooth 2.1. What stands out is the IEC 60529/Level IP54 certification for being dust and water resistant.
She is pretty small at only 115 mm x 47 mm x 15.3 mm, weighing in at 94 grams with a 1050 mAh battery that can provide 7 hours of talk time and 18 days standby. I can see a lot of my friends picking this up as a holiday/weekend phone for the cottage/lake.
Nokia’s not exactly known for its beefy, ultra-survivable gear, but unless the human race plans on getting a whole lot less clumsy, rugged phones will always be a good idea — and Nokia 3720 certainly seems to fill the bill. The Series 40-based mobile phone features a 2 megapixel cam with LED flash, triband EDGE, FM radio, microSD expansion, and the latest and greatest Bluetooth 2.1, but the real news here is that the phone is built to meet IP54 standards. A quick check with our handy-dandy IP code reference tells us that means that “ingress of dust is not entirely prevented, but it must not enter in sufficient quantity to interfere with the satisfactory operation of the equipment; complete protection against contact” — in other words, your phone might get nasty dirty, but it’ll keep chugging — and it can withstand “splashing” water.
Over the past few days, the folks over at Nokia have been putting an unknown handset through a variety of torture tests on video, presumably to whet our appetites for an imminent announcement. The poor little guy has been dunked in a pint of beer, smacked with a golf club, punted through the air, drowned in a pool and even dropped two stories off a ladder — each and every time followed by the phrase “it’s still working!” Suffice it to say, this new Nokia kit is ruggedized and it fairs extremely well in a variety of real world accident scenarios.
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