Gadgetory

people who work or play in extreme conditions don't always care about bezel size chrome accents and chamfered edges they want a phone that will work even when it's being kicked and dropped and smashed to pieces or when it's being subjected to the occasional downpour I'm Michael Fisher this is pocket now and this is the rugged to kyocera torque for Sprint let's take a look inside the box and then have a look at the hardware of this beast of a phone so starting with the box here normally I would give sprint some bunk for it's beyond minimalistic packaging here but sprint has made a big point of being one hundred percent recyclable very green for for quite some time now so we got to give them some kudos for that not much going on on the box as a result we just have the printed image of the device itself alongside some call ads for 4G LTE capability and sprint Direct Connect built in which we will talk about some barcodes on the side there a little QR code and some text that is not terribly illegible because of its low contrast ratio so we're going to go ahead and ignore that and just go ahead and get inside the box pop in the Box open we can see the device revealed front and center and a special cardboard cradle we're going to take it out and give it a little heft and then we'll put it right alongside so we can get to the rest of the box dump expecting much inside here and probably not going to be surprised some getting started guides bundled together the recycling perhaps you can send your old phone back to sprint if you like got a wall wart there for the USB cable and there is that USB cable right down below getting all the packaging out of the way we can finally come back to the device the kyocera torque appears to be every bit the rugged device its builders claim it is 156 grams in weight so it's actually a little lighter than we expected but it is still heavier than some planking galaxy s3 substantially lighter than something like a Nokia Lumia 920 obviously brings a lot more ruggedness to the portfolio with military standard 810g and ip67 ratings which will explain further in our full review but the there's also as you'll notice here there's no earpiece along the top of the device as we saw in our hands on from MW MW see this is a tissue conduction technology that allows the earpiece to function without the use of any holes kind of break in the glass up there which is fascinating and offers some practical conveniences as well there are some sacrifices that have been made for to make this a durable phone as we've talked about on other durable phones before see this is a 4 inch display a little smaller than we're used to and it is at 800 x 480 resolution so it's not going to please any resolution enthusiasts out there the camera on the back is also a 5 megapixel shooter so there's some compromises being made here but let's just take a hardware tour and see what's up android home button menu key and back button our physical keys not touch keys good feedback and responsiveness from those as well as the volume rocker and the sprint nextel direct connect button called out in yellow on the left here this device uses direct connect on the cdma network not on the ID n network that old nextel phones used dedicated hammer camera button on the right hand side coming around the back we can see some charging ports above the gasket lock there this is familiar to us from other devices you could just get a screwdriver or a dime a coin in there turn it and lock it in position to lock down the back on a gasket and keep water out part of the immersion rating up top we have some additional buttons in addition to the power standby button familiar to Android there's the speakerphone toggle familiar to Nextel users of old allows you to turn the speaker phone on and off and walkie-talkie and phone calls and there's the headphone jack also covered with a protective gasket let's see if we can go ahead and pull the screen protector off here screen protector comes off there and we have access to that display the battery is already installed so I'm going to go ahead and power on this device for a first boot to close out our video and while it does power on I will tell you this is Android Ice Cream Sandwich running here not because this Kia Sara didn't want to put jelly bean on but because sprint has not yet made the cdma-based direct connect technology compatible with Android jelly bean and there is our lock screen preparing SD card and we're checking for a firmware update there we can see we don't have much battery power to work with so our boot up is complete the device is downloading a new firmware package it is also talking to the network to enable that direct connect functionality we will cover all of this the software features even more of the hardware we're going to put this phone through its paces stay tuned for come harrison videos and our quick review treatment but for now just an unboxing and quick look the key is here at torque for sprint this is just the first in a series of videos covering the kyocera torque for sprint follow us on all the usual channels subscribe in the usual manner so you don't miss it we've got comparisons and our quick review coming up till then I'm Michael with pocket now thank you for watching we'll see you next time