[Tangerine-Alert]

jonathan, I would recommend the JCB toughphone, which is also sold as the Sonim XP1. Which will go on sale (supposedly exclusively at Crazy John's at the end of April).

The toughphone will take a wall off a roof and into a bucket of water...it's the only "unbreakable phone available in Europe". Sonim give a 3 year replacement warranty, if you break it take it back to the shop they'll replace it no questions asked (according to the online info).

Okay it's not an iPhone, it doesn't have a camera, but it's shock, dust, water and drop resistant and will work in temperatures -20 to +60 degrees C.

[mac rant]

If you're prepared to spring for an invisibleSHIELD.com, which is military grade clear film protection, you'll at least keep the thing looking new and shiny. It doesn't get in the way of connectors, retains the beauty of the device (you don't even know it's there after a while) and no bubbles on the screen. It won't scratch (not even with a key) and offers some percussive protection.

I have one for my Nano and I'm absolutely confident just chucking the Nano anywhere, knowing it's protected. I'd do it anyway, then get some kind of hard rubber case if you need to be able to play football with it.

You only need to type rugged iphone into google to get an idea what cases are available.

I went through Sydney airport recently and saw a few 'tradies' with iPhones, so I guess they last.

[jonathan]

I found this link which seems a pretty good test...

http://www.pcworld.com/video/id,545-page,1-bid,0/video.html

[Alexander]

Well, back to the original post - No, iPhone won't survive the abuse that Jonathan will throw at it. Having said that, I've had mine since January and it hasn't missed a beat. A few drops, but not onto cement and it's in my pocket all day every day with the car keys etc. No silver has come off the back, and because the display is made of hardened glass, not plastic like most phones, there are absolutely no scratches of any kind on it! Miraculous when I look at how my other phones looked after just a couple of months.

Battery life is great, I could easily go three days before charging, but choose to use the alarm function to wake me up each day. So it just sits it in it's charging cradle each night beside my bed - hardly a chore. Even after a day's very heavy use I've never seen it below one third battery used (ie, two thirds remaining). Often it will only use about one sixth of a charge in a day.

It's interface is like no other phone, just fantastic and intuitive to use. I also like having all my photos, a few music videos, podcasts, loads of music etc, all just sitting there waiting to be used on that big gorgeous screen. I just love it and will update to the 3G model as soon as it's out in Oz in June/July. I'll be looking at which phone company has the best combined data/phone bundle, as you can really chew through the dollars when you use all the phone's functionality and have a resulting heavy data use.

[gazza]

Well, back to the original post - No, iPhone won't survive the abuse that Jonathan will throw at it. Having said that, I've had mine since January and it hasn't missed a beat. A few drops, but not onto cement and it's in my pocket all day every day with the car keys etc. No silver has come off the back, and because the display is made of hardened glass, not plastic like most phones, there are absolutely no scratches of any kind on it! Miraculous when I look at how my other phones looked after just a couple of months.

Battery life is great, I could easily go three days before charging, but choose to use the alarm function to wake me up each day. So it just sits it in it's charging cradle each night beside my bed - hardly a chore. Even after a day's very heavy use I've never seen it below one third battery used (ie, two thirds remaining). Often it will only use about one sixth of a charge in a day.

It's interface is like no other phone, just fantastic and intuitive to use. I also like having all my photos, a few music videos, podcasts, loads of music etc, all just sitting there waiting to be used on that big gorgeous screen. I just love it and will update to the 3G model as soon as it's out in Oz in June/July. I'll be looking at which phone company has the best combined data/phone bundle, as you can really chew through the dollars when you use all the phone's functionality and have a resulting heavy data use.

What's your memory capacity there Alexander?

gazza

[Ken Gracey]

so dropping it has not cracked the glass? That would be my greatest fear that the front screen would shatter like a dropped a drinking glass on cement


Tl

[Alexander]

What's your memory capacity there Alexander?

gazza

Well, mine's not too flash any more, lots of RAMming it in, but it doesn't stay too long - it could be all the beer! Oh, the iPhone. Mine's 8Gb, bought the day before they announced the 16Gb model, would you believe? The way Samsung and others are going with flash memory (228Gb SSD announced recently), there's every chance the new 3G model will have 16Gb and 32Gb on launch. Like old fashioned horsepower, you can never have too much!

[Ken Gracey]

Yeah the guy at my local telstra shop keeps shooting off at the Hip that the new one will be 16 and 32 gig, i hope he is right.


TL

[pmoeser]

Yeah the guy at my local telstra shop keeps shooting off at the Hip that the new one will be 16 and 32 gig, i hope he is right.

TL

I think the fact that the Touch is those amounts of memory is a pretty good sign they can fit it in.

If not, it won't be too far away. Steve does like follow up sales remember.

[gazza]

Well, mine's not too flash any more, lots of RAMming it in, but it doesn't stay too long - it could be all the beer! Oh, the iPhone..........

Gee, sorry Alexander I promise to make my posts a little bit clearer in future!!!???

gazza

[Alexander]

so dropping it has not cracked the glass? That would be my greatest fear that the front screen would shatter like a dropped a drinking glass on cement


Tl

Well mine hasn't cracked or shattered when dropped, so far. It's toughened glass and feels almost bullet proof, as if the rest of the phone would give up before the glass covered display does. But if this is an issue for you, search the Apple Discussions on iPhone ( http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=201 ), I'm sure if there's a problem with the glass, it will have been well and truly covered in that forum.

[kim jong il]

Gday,

With all this excitement about the impending arrival of the iPhone I have been giving the matter some thought. I like the idea of having a phone that does more than the current crop do and works with my mac which the LG I have now fails to do quite spectacularly...

My major issue is just how rugged is this device?

My phone has a hard life. It gets chucked on the dashboard of the truck or thrown on the seat. It spends a lot of time in my shirt pocket and gets dropped regularly, once off a roof and once into a bucket of water. Neither were terminal. Oh I washed it in the washing machine once too. It survived that as well.

Is it likely that the iphone could survive any of that abuse.

Forget about the iPhone. It is just never going to be a good option for you in my opinion. From what I have heard they are not even remotely water proof (the one that I know of that got dropped in a drink never worked again and that was only seconds of immersion). Scratches on the screen would be the least of your problems and falls from waist height onto hard surfaces can badly crack the screen. Being a touch operated device this can be sort of critical and is then more than just a cosmetic issue. Although sometimes they still work quite happily after this they are really not going to be the same and will be substantially less able to take further less severe punishment in the future. The most commonly sought after service component seems to be screens (or entire dead phones with a good screen). As is normally the case they are not only never covered under warranty but like all Apple service parts, insanely expensive.

EDIT: I note that the poster above me says that he hasn't yet managed to break his screen but I guess it depends how it falls and onto what. Like I said above; the component I have seen most requests for are for replacement screens.