Nokia XR20
Price: £399 from /fave.co/2WcMIYj
Nokia might just have hit the ‘affordable rugged phone’ sweet spot with the Nokia XR20. It’s a reasonably priced, super-tough phone that isn’t awful to use.
That might sound like I’m damning it with faint praise, but I’m not. Rugged phones are typically very good at the ‘rugged’ bit and not so good at the ‘phone’ bit, and with very good reason.
As a rugged phone manufacturer, the sheer investment required to make your smartphone atypically drop, heat, dust and water-resistant is surprisingly high. That means you have to cut corners with the internal specifications, at least if you want your rugged phone to come in at a price that hard-working people are willing to pay.
Case in point: the recent Motorola Defy. Built like a tank and competitively priced at £279, it nonetheless performs about as well as a normal phone worth less than half that amount. Its first line of defence against damage is that you don’t want to use it much.
Nokia has elected to bump everything up a notch. At a slightly higher price of £399/€499, it retains its affordability. But a competent processor, display, and camera, as well as one or two unexpected luxuries, ensure that it just about passes muster as a modern smartphone.
DESIGN
I’ll deal with the Nokia XR20’s rugged credentials in the next section. What’s most striking about it, though, is that it’s relatively pleasant to handle.
At 10.6mm thick and 248g, it’s no one’s idea of a slim and pocketable modern smartphone.
