Samsung will launch its rugged XCover Pro worldwide
No, you won’t have to go to Finland just to get Samsung’s latest rugged phone. The tech giant has confirmed that the XCover Pro will be available around the world. It’ll also be available in some markets as an Enterprise Edition with both two years of guaranteed availability and four years of security updates. Samsung will sell the phone in the US for $499 in the first half of 2020, with Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) as a partner.
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The new XCover is ostensibly built for workers, including walkie talkie-like voice chat (for apps like Microsoft Team), the ability to double as a point-of-sale device and two programmable buttons to handle common tasks without touching the screen. However, it might also be viable as a solid mid-range phone for anyone who wants a rough-and-ready device. It’s water-, dust- and drop-resistant, as you’d expect, but it also includes a healthy 4,050mAh replaceable battery and a 6.3-inch 1080p screen that supports wet finger and glove touches. Yes, where an S10 might fall flat in the midst of a day of heavy use, the XCover Pro should keep going.
Just dial down your performance expectations accordingly. There’s a middling 2GHz eight-core Exynos 9611 chip inside along with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of external storage, a 13-megapixel front-facing camera and a dual rear camera system that includes a 25MP autofocusing sensor and an 8MP fixed-focus unit. This is for field crews that care less about raw performance than they do completing a job.
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