Samsung has long offered a range of relatively high-end rugged phones, and the company has just launched a new one. The Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro boasts modern features like a hole-punch front-facing camera, along with older design elements that will appeal to rugged phone buyers — like a removable battery.
A removable battery can seriously come in handy for those who won’t be able to charge a device for long periods of time. That’s because you can have a few batteries on hand, and switch the battery out for a charged one, as needed.
The phone is built to be able to withstand any day-to-day abuse that you can throw at it. Notably, it has an IP68 dust- and water-resistance rating, along with the ability to survive drops of up to 1.5 meters, or almost 5 feet. The phone also has two programmable buttons and a barcode scanner. The programmable buttons can be used for things like turning the flashlight on and off, or activating a digital assistant.
Under the hood, it’s not a bad phone. Sure, it won’t outperform the Galaxy S10, but it should still be able to handle most normal tasks. The device offers a Samsung Exynos 9611 chipset, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The display sits in at 6.3 inches with a 1,080p resolution, and can be used with wet hands or with gloves. The rear-facing camera offers a main 25-megapixel sensor and an 8-megapixel ultrawide sensor. The battery capacity on the device comes in at 4,050mAh, and it offers 15W fast-charging.
The phone does have some downsides. It ships with Android 9.0 Pie — instead of the latest version, Android 10. In other words, if you’re looking for the latest and greatest software experience, don’t expect to find it here, though it’s entirely possible that Samsung will bring Android 10 to the device in the future.
The Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro will be available at the end of January in parts of Europe, and will cost 500 euros, or around $555 U.S. There’s currently no word on U.S. availability, and it’s very possible that the phone will never see a release here.
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