Gadgetory

is there a reason why we haven't seen many rugged phablets before this Kyocera how do you protect a larger sheet of glass and how should we test a device to see if that protection works i'm juan carlos bag now for pocket now and those are some of the questions we'll try to answer in this video while we torture test the dura force XD on 18 t now full disclosure I am NOT a fan of gadget destruction porn videos and I feel it's important to preface this test by saying there is no such thing as a truly ruggedized or indestructible phone if you're trying to break one if you're going out of your way to stress test a device eventually you will succeed after our first impressions video I had some serious questions about how to proceed testing the dura force XD I've never handled an armor-plated phablet before the rugged casing certainly looks the part but the screen size introduces an interesting challenge this is a lot of surface area to protect and we don't have the benefit of a fancier material like the sapphire crystal display on the Kyocera Brigadier ultimately we decided on a small number of tests meant to try and simulate what a device might live through over the course of the year or so getting the easy stuff out of the way first we just wanted to test some of the basic claims from Kyocera cold for example the phone easily survived a half hour in my freezer with a responsive touchscreen and performance and say you dropped your phone in a snowbank and it took you a little while to find it the Kyocera would still be responsive when you found it next up ip68 water resistance means you should be able to leave the phone underwater for a half hour and again the dura force handled this easily escalating the abuse to test the milspec 810g drop-in track resistance we planned a series of 15 drops three different scenarios with five drops per setup first test the car drop I've had a number of friends tell me this is a combination getting a phone is in their lap fumbling the phone out of a cup holder so we dropped the XD five times on the concrete and the phone survived with flying colors next up a drop from waist height onto concrete the idea here being you missed a belt clip or fumbled a back pocket grab another five drops and again the dur force handles the abuse without issue I think it's important to note here that keyless air is designed for a locking backplate works really well there's an older article on pocketnow.com about the issues facing the galaxy s5 Actives rugged shell that phone was water resistant but a minor drop could easily pop open the back plate which defeats the water resistant design I have a galaxy s4 active and a rugby which suffers similar back plate fragility the Brigadier and galaxy s6 active are sealed up with non user replaceable batteries which greatly reduces the likelihood of water damage after a drop the XD made me nervous to go back to a removable back plate but after 10 drops not a single tab had popped out of place this is an impressive implementation for a locking rear casing now our last test was the one that made me the most nervous 5 drops onto hard packed dirt you wouldn't think that this would be the tough test but having been a boy scout and later working on location film sets many gadgets are claimed by rugged hiking conditions my last desert shoot was for a film called the ABCs of death in that location claimed the screens on two iPhones here the dura force wouldn't survive is gracefully drop one was clean drop two was fine drop three landed with a sickening smack screen first it caught a couple rocks and that smashed the front glass again gotta give the phone credit here that everything still works the screen is still responsive camera still works the back plate is still locked and secured the phone charges and takes calls just fine we just have a cracked screen which now also compromises water resistance and that's where I'm a bit torn on the XD if you keep lobbying abuse at a device eventually you will kill it but I'm torn on the idea of phablets for really rugged conditions the Brigadier handled similar abuse with a little more grace but I'm not sure that a more exotic material like Sapphire is the answer here covering this much surface area in Crystal I think we still would have ended up with a similar result focusing the force of a drop on one or two rocks one or two impact points would probably concentrate the energy of that drop enough to shatter a sapphire display - and I don't think the gorilla glass on the s6 active would have handled these drops any better either the idea of this dura force makes total sense if you have a bunch of big tough construction workers with big rough hands wearing big thick gloves I can see the appeal of outfitting them with phablets however the conditions they'd be working in are exactly the conditions where I would worry most about protecting that extra screen real estate a frieze a swim and 13 drops and the result is a nearly fully functional phone with a cracked front face it's never fun seeing a shattered screen but overall I'm satisfied with how this device handled the abuse we threw at it we have all kinds of ways that we can test foam performance for battery life in benchmarking and gaming performance but what kinds of tests would you like to see for lifestyle abuse and manufacturers durability claims drop us a comment below maybe someday I'll get to run over one of these with my car fingers crossed it could happen as always folks thanks for watching be sure to subscribe for more smart phone and tablet news and hit that thumbs up button to help us out with a little positive reinforcement for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos back now you can chat me up on Instagram and Twitter as some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next video