While Kyocera are not a name we associate with the Elite of the smartphone world, but they are known for a number of things – outside of being best friends with Sprint – for a long time now, the company has been churning out devices that are built out of tougher stuff than your everyday smartphones. This week sees CTIA 2013 and while it’s certainly nothing as big as Mobile World Congress, or even CES when it comes to smartphones. Kyocera and Sprint had a couple of things to show off to the world.
The first of these is the Kyocera Hydro Edge which is a smartphone that can hold for 30 minutes at a depth of 3.28 meters and is generally able to stand up to water a lot better than everyday smartphones. Of course, with that comes some compromises on the specs and the Hydro Edge is a device that comes with just a 1 Ghz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera 4GB of internal storage with microSD support and a 4-inch 800 x 480 display that’s also “impact resistant”. All this makes for a device that might not turn heads but, will certainly hold out against everyday life much better than that Galaxy S 4 would.
The Hydro XTRM is much the same but, it’s made out of even tougher stuff than the Hydro Edge and features military-standard shock resistance, that’s good for a drop of four feet or so. It’s also waterproof and dust proof. Specs are very similar again with a Qualcomm 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and 1GB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory with microSD support, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2,000mAh battery.
Both devices are running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and come with a feature called Smart Sonic technology, that allows the devices to be heard in loud environments, which should make those calls on the train home that little bit easier to understand. Pricing for the devices has yet to be confirmed but, we’d be surprised if these devices went for much.
[Source: Sprint]