NEC ends 8 year hiatus, launches tough as nails Terrain

There are rugged phones like the Sony Xperia Z, and then there are rugged phones with a face only a mother could love, like the NEC Terrain, the company’s first US phone in over eight years.

The NEC Terrain will drop with a meaty thwack into calloused hands for US$99 on the US-based AT&T network. According to Engadget.com, the Terrain can handle being submersed for up to 30 minutes in a meter of water, that makes it IP67 certified last time we checked. IP68 is the sturdiest certification (can be submersed below a meter of water) but no phone is yet to crack this magic number.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvjgBVoHWv4

Can it survive, the Day After Tomorrow?

It’s a very workman-like phone and it’s reported that it won’t be sold to the general public and is instead aimed at the enterprise market. Those geniuses who fix our landlines and downed internet, they’re the ones who’ll be using the Terrain in the field. The specs are poor, with Android 4.0, a 640×480 display, a dual-core 1.5Ghz CPU and a full QWERTY keyboard paired with the touchscreen.

This chunky smartphone is covered in rubber and has a tightly-sealed USB port, along with a “supports up to 8GB” microSD card slot, push to talk (PPT), a 5MP-rear and 0.3MP-front camera, NFC and LTE. Engadget.com reports that the phone is very comfortable to hold compared to phones of the same size and shape (such as the BlackBerry Q10). For those State-side, the phone should be out 21 June on the AT&T network.

Life proofing

It’s funny to see what you can get on the opposite end of the price spectrum when it comes to IP67 certified phones. Dust and waterproofing (we think life-proofing is a great term it can all be tied to) seems to be de rigueur these days and the IP67 phones are starting to pile up. There’s the above-mentioned Sony Xperia Z which in our opinion, is not only the best phone but the sturdiest. The Xperia Z Tablet, the newly announced S4 Active, the Xperia Go, Motorola Defy+, the list goes on. As it was with Gorilla Glass, which is now in practically every high-end phone, IP67 becomes a new safety standard that when combined with an “unbreakable” screen, turns our smartphones into worry-free devices. It’s about time too.

Image via Phonedog.com