Caterpillar the company that makes some of the largest earth moving equipment around, is moving into Smartphones and just like that equipment, the B15 from CatPhones is a ruggedised device built to withstand potential damage from water, shock and dust.
Built in co-operation with Bullitt Mobile – a British company – the B15 is IP67 certified, meaning it’s both dustproof and waterproof and it also has wet finger tracking meaning it can be used with wet hands. The body is made of aluminium and comes in a toughened rubberised casing with Corning Gorilla Glass covering the screen and Cat advise it will survive a 1.8M drop onto concrete.
Caterpillar B15 Specifications :
- 4″ 480 x 800 Multi-Touch Capacative screen
- Dual-Core 1GHz CPU
- 512MB RAM
- 4GB Internal Storage with microSD Card(up to 32GB)
- 5MP Rear Camera
- A-GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM Radio
- 3G : 850/1900 or 900/2100
- IP67 Ingress Protection : Water and Dustproof
- Operating from -20°C to 55°C
- Android 4.1
- 2000mah Battery
- Talk Time – Up to 16.3 Hours
- Standby Time – Up to 26 Days(Single SIM) or 19 Days(Dual SIM)
- 125×69.5×14.95mm @ 170 grams
Caterpillar has also been thinking about accessories as well, they’re offering a set of branded ear buds with on-wire volume control and three sizes of ear buds. There is also a Caterpillar branded car charger available as well.
The B15 is not available for sale in Australia, however it is available in the US and Europe. The complete list of carriers is available over on the CatPhones website. We’ve approached Caterpillar about whether the phone will be released here and will advise when they respond.
Just how rugged do you need your Smartphone?
As a work mobile, it’s ideal for, well people who use Cat machinery, work in building industry etc. 1 gig and 512 ram is enough for a basic communication device, calls, email etc, not a full on media device.
This thing could have been really impressive to me if it had higher specs. At least it seems to be on AOSP.
I agree. I’ve been waiting for a Motorola MC75/FR68 replacement with Android and we’ve finally found it. But I do agree with specs… they actually suck. I’m the Development Manager for our business and I’ve gotten rid of our rugged Motorola’s with WinMo 6.5 on it for Android so we can take our windows native app and make it HTML5. So we asked all our drivers to use their smart phones and if they didn’t have one, then go buy one lol. People are loving our app but afraid to use their devices for everyday work because of it’s lack… Read more »
The specs are actually very very terrible, even for a low end phone, not even 1gb of ram. Very low internal storage, flash is cheap come on. Dual core cpu is clocked very low, and the touch screen res is horrible. Ah first world problems.
I think a bigger battery might have been a good idea for this “ruggedised” market.
Seems very over-priced for what it seems to be though – a cheap chinese dual-SIM Android phone with a CAT case on it …
Maybe I’m just getting old and jaded though.
The Working Mans Lamborghini phone.
Actually, the specs on it are pretty good. Not from the standpoint of speed or screen pixels, but it has been built for rough conditions and long battery life. It’s not just a lame phone with a Cat logo on it.