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The Kyocera Torque only hit the FCC exactly two weeks ago, and it’s already gotten some official announcement love by Sprint. The Now Network has officially announced forthcoming availability for the rugged Android 4.0 smartphone. The device’s most notable claim to fame is its military spec engineering, with the standard dust, water and shock proof features that should make any field-working man happy.
The device can be submerged in water for up to 30 minutes, withstand extreme temperatures for up to a few hours at a time, endure typical drops, eat dust for up to 6 hours, and more obscure conditions such as solar radiation exposure, low pressure, high humidity and salt fog. In other words, you’re free to go absolutely nuts with this device without a worry in the world.
Of course, such ruggedness doesn’t come without the typical price tag of “ugly.” The device doesn’t have the boyish good looks and attractive curves of today’s typical smartphones, but that’s a decent trade-off for durability. For what it’s worth the device looks better than your average rugged smartphone so there shouldn’t be any worries there.
As for functional specs, you can expect a 4 inch WVGA display, Qualcomm’s 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, 4G LTE, a 5 megapixel rear camera with a 1.3 megapixel front camera, NFC, Bluetooth 40. and more.
The Kyocera Torque also features the proprietary Smart Sonic Receiver Technology, a ceramic-based bone-conduction sound technology that will eliminate the need for a traditional speaker and send sounds to the user’s eardrum using vibrations. The feature is sure to be a lifesaver for those who work in noisy fields like construction as sound won’t be drowned out by your mechanical surroundings.
It’s quite the remarkable phone for what it is, and those of you who need a phone like this are probably wondering when, exactly, you can get it. Unfortunately we don’t have those details yet, but it wouldn’t be unwise to set your expectations to “sometime in February.” Read on for full press details.
[via Business Wire]
Looks like a good phone for my dad.
This is a good phone (and it has pretty decent specs overall) for construction workers and most other tradesmen, of course I expect several comments where people complain “who needs this phone? bla bla bla”.
Great workhorse phone. But if this were to come to t-mobile then people would be whining about another low end offering.
can’t say i’m SUPER impressed by the specs, but I do like the direction this is going.
let’s just say if this thing and the SG4 had the same internals… i’d probably have a very ugly phone for the next two years when my contract came up. like i said, good direction but needs to go further.. gimme the high end performance, don’t really care too much about sleek looks but love the durability.. CAMPING/SPORTING phone. let me fall in love.