It’s predecessor, the Sonim XP1 (makes you wonder what ever happened to the ‘XP2’ model. It probably died during development ;-)), didn’t really live up to its expectations of being the strongest phone in the world as can be seen in several video reports.
According to the specifications the Sonim XP3 should be resistant to dust, water (even fully submersed for 30 minutes), extreme temperatures (-4 to +140 degrees Fahrenheit), shocks, sand, mud and so on.
Well that sounded very promising and so I decided to give it a try. To my surprise the phone actually withstood a fair amount of beating. Things like playing soccer with it on a conrete floor, dropping it in water for over half an hour, smashing it against a wall and even a night in the freezer at -13 (F) and two hours in an oven at 150 (F) didn’t seem to hurt the Sonim XP3 at all and after a couple of days it was still fully functional.
Still, I thought I should expose Worlds Strongest Phone to a much greater threat: a supermodel. I mean, most of you know Naomi Campbell’s reputation with mobile phones. Over the course of the last five years she destroyed a fair amount of cell phones, in some cases by throwing it at her servants heads or other body parts ;-)
Unfortunately miss Campbell was not available but as you will see in the video below we found an evenly, and certainly better looking (but that’s just my humble opinion), replacement in Paris at the LeWeb 08 conference: Anina, from 360fashion.net.
I met Anina a couple of years ago at LeBlogs, back in 2005, and she was also present at Nokia World, earlier this month in Barcelona where we chatted for a while. When I met her again, a week ago at LeWeb’s MySpace party, I decided to ask her if she would like to destroy, no, test, the Sonim XP3 for us and much to my surprise she immediately said yes and even had some good ideas about what to do with it.
Well, look and see for yourself what a supermodel can do to Worlds Strongest Cell Phone. . .
Kudos to Marjolijn form DutchCowgirls who was kind enough to play the part of the victim in this video.
Quite frankly I have to admit that the Sonim XP3, as you can see in the pictures below, still looks quite good, even after Anina’s beating ;-) However, it’s completely dead. The screen is broken and it won’t start up anymore. I tried changing the battery and connecting the charger for over an hour but the phone is officially destroyed.
Still, I think that the Sonim XP3 is a great device for people who are looking for a cell phone that can take a fair amount of beating and is able to survice in places like construction sites, car shops, or during expeditions to the North Pole, Amazon Rainforest or mountaineering and other, maybe less romantic but evenly harsh environments.
Like I said, the Sonim XP3, before it was put in the hands of a supermodel ;-), already survived a fair amount of beating, extreme temperatures and water.
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