Gadgetory

Kyocera is pitching it as a smartphone that's scratch proof drop proof waterproof and therefore worry proof is that true the company has invited us to put it to the test it sent along an elaborate kit for that purpose particularly with respect to its screen so is this sapphire screen smartphone really scratch proof let's find out i'm michael fisher with pocket now this is the Kyocera brigadiere let's beat it up and see how well it fares first a quick look at the phone itself the bear grylls endorsed brigadiere is obviously targeted for outdoorsy types and as such it skips a bit on the specs beneath its bulky brawny chassis a Snapdragon 400 powers Android 4.4 on a 4.5 inch 720p display that's pretty middle-of-the-road for 2014 but on the bright side there's a big battery 4G LTE is obviously on board and the base 16 gigs of storage is expandable via microSD so how about the figures that rugged folks care about well the Brigadier carries ip68 dust and water immersion protection up to six feet a little deeper than we're used to seeing which is nice along with the military standard 810g rating covering lots of other damage scenarios from vibration to extreme temperatures to salt fog and beyond of course the biggest durability advantage Kia is touting is the display protection which instead of reinforced glass is made of synthetic sapphire that Kyocera has spent years perfecting we spent some time learning about this process in a visit to GT advanced technologies last year so it's exciting to finally put this material to the test in a real-world setting what we found is that yes you can scratch a sapphire screen but it takes some doing and you need to go beyond what they give you in the box to test with we started out by the book popping open the bear grylls pocket knife Kyocera furnished we liberated some rounded beach stones from they're carrying sack and dump them into the blender like test shaker then we dropped in the Brigadier and gave it very best martini shake the result no damage then we switched to the natural enemy of all mobile phones steel wool we've lost count of the number of times we've popped a phone in the same pocket as our daily brillo pad and hey well okay that's never happened but anyway if you're anything like us you'd expect the same results we did after pressing as hard as we could on this display with this steel wool disaster right instead nothing there Kyocera was also kind enough to supply us with a rusty thirty-six cents so we could do our best at carving up the display with pocket change well when that didn't work we switch to the more direct approach taking the bear grylls knife directly to the display we tried carving a big pocket now pea into the sapphire can you guess what happened that's right not a thing the glass is just as untarnished and smooth to the touch as it was out of the box if you're not surprised by these outcomes we don't blame you Kyocera obviously chose its materials very carefully when offering up review kits so we upgraded to a bigger screen cutting knife and we augmented the Round River stones with some sharp boston-area red gravel but the Brigadier refused to yield its display stubbornly staying unscratched no matter how hard we shook it and when we tossed it into the water to wash off the dust we took the opportunity to test another of kiya Sera's claims that if you had a gloved hand say because you're working around hazardous material you could still use your phone and once again the Brigadier delivered but for all its scratch resistance the sapphire crystal is still susceptible to impact which is probably why the phone's display is sunken a few millimeters into its casing dropping a smartphone is almost a foregone conclusion everyone does it at some point so we did it right on the gravel a lot and then we did it on hard stone with gravel on it even more and that's how we got the brigadiers sapphire crystal to succumb a very specific but also quite common type of impact a fall from three feet our Brigadier now exhibits several visible scratches on the display though not so many as you might expect considering the rest of the case the reason for this is simple scratch resistance isn't the same as impact resistance even though the rocks we dropped our review unit onto are technically softer than sapphire given enough force of impact it doesn't matter after all even water can cut steel if you move it fast enough to kiya Sarah's credit it only goes so far as to say that it's sapphire crystal display is virtually scratch proof and the company is also going for a longer term type of durability here in resisting many of the day-in day-out scratches that plague most screens the brigadiers panel should stay stronger longer and no matter how staged the whole stress test felt at times there are no trick props in this kit the knives are sharp the rocks are hard the wool is steel or at least something like it given the degree of abuse we subjected it to kiya Sarah's homegrown sapphire crystal holds up very nicely indeed a sapphire crystal is still a great display material just don't expect it to be indestructible don't forget to check out our look at how synthetic sapphire crystal is made and check out our other durable smartphone coverage here on YouTube and at pocketnow.com till next time this has been michael fisher with PocketNow & captain two phones on twitter stay tough out there and we'll see you next time you