HMD’s new phone is purpose-built for military personnel, law enforcement agents, first responders, and infrastructure operators who find themselves in super hot or cold environments on the job. It’s all about essential features for tough conditions with this one – starting from how you interact with it.
The Terra M is part feature phone – with its physical keypad taking up most of the front fascia – and part smartphone, with a touchscreen and Android-based Smart OS 14 that comes with a clutch of productivity and secure communication apps. Like the keypad, the 2.8-inch display is designed to be used with gloves on or even with wet hands, thanks to increased touch sensitivity.
That’s neat because if you’re wearing work-prescribed gloves for demanding or dangerous tasks, you might not have the option to take them off to use your phone. Some types of gloves, like those worn by motorcyclists, have conductive fingertips for interacting with screens – but those can’t be integrated into every glove, and aren’t as durable as the rest of the gloves’ material. A specialized screen means you can wear whatever sort of protection you need and still use it reliably.
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HMD says this model is rated for military-grade durability, and it’s got TPU bumpers to protect it from drop damage from heights of up to nearly 6 ft (1.8 m). It should run just fine in temperatures ranging from -13 °F (-25 °C) to 131 °F (55 °C).
It’s also IP68 and IP69K rated, which means it can handle being immersed in water for up to half an hour and down to depths of 5 ft (1.5 m), and it can even hold up against high-pressure water jets. The Terra M is also chemical resistant, so it should be able to resist damage from having gasoline and solvents spilled on it.
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The phone’s exterior frame includes a loop for a lanyard, as well as physical keys to activate push-to-talk and emergency outreach shortcuts. You can also replace the 2,510-mAh battery with a spare by simply unscrewing the rear panel on your own – something I’d love to see as standard on more consumer handsets. That battery, HMD notes, should last up to 10 days in standby mode.
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Beyond that, you’ll get a modest 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage – the latter can be expanded with a microSD card of up to 1TB capacity. A simple 8-megapixel camera graces the back.
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There’s some other useful hardware on here, like a 100-dB loudspeaker, a 3.5-mm audio output jack, a red LED flashlight for working in dark environments, and pogo pins that allow for charging in a companion desktop dock.
With its enterprise-grade security and managed communication features, HMD expects this to roll out across hospitals, airports, and construction sites. So it’s a lot different than the usual crop of rugged phones designed for outdoor adventures (like this one that includes a projector, and this other one with an outrageously large 33,000-mAh battery).
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The Terra M will roll out across Europe, starting with the UK – where it’s priced at £180 (US$245) – Germany, and France. I’m always fascinated by commonplace gadgets that are adapted for special use cases like this one; I imagine that with a little tweaking, it could well be the indestructible minimalist phone many of us could adopt to cut down on screen time.
Source: HMD