Siemens intros rugged M75 for the wired outdoorsy types
posted March 9th 2005 4:40PM
When you just need to get away from it all, make sure you stay well-tethered whilst off the beaten path with Siemens' new rugged M75. Its metal frame and rubber sides could avert disaster when you accidentally drop it from the face of that cliff. The 1.3 megapixel camera and 262k display have been beefed up to survive boulder impact. The M75 supports Bluetooth and Push-to-Talk, plays MP3s from RS-MMC memory cards (ships with a 32MB card standard), as well as including support for 3D gaming — because Siemens knows that when you take a trip to the woods, you'd really rather be staring at a screen. Look for the M75 to be hanging obnoxiously from carabiners starting in June in black and military green (what else?) flavors — no price info as of yet.
This has got to be the best phone out there.. :)
I don't get why manufacturers aiming at the outdoor set never seem to get it right. Yeah, rubberized and somewhat tougher than usual is kinda cool. Flimsy phones suck for everybody, though. An outdoor type phone should have an increased power mode for greater range, and come with options built into the system for weather forecasts (including ski, avalanche, surf, and wind reports), tide tables, moon phase, and river flow reports. Those things would be useful, and could sell some airtime minutes or data charges. But no goddamn GPS, which just makes the thing heavy as a brick. Anybody who plays outside probably already has a compass and map or a GPS unit (or just doesn't need to know *exactly* where they are) anyway.
Ruggedized mobiles are great, especially when given some water resistant/proof capabilities.
Unfortunately in Japan, these are now nowhere to be seen after the demise of Casio's two G-shock phones from Au and a poorly implemented Japan Radio handset from Docomo two years ago.
What happened to these phone?
Well, I'd wager cell phone providers realized that they wouldn't sell many replacement phones to people whose phones didn't crap out because of water or droppage. Absolutely lame, but fairly predictable given the economics.
A rugged phone sounds good to me and it supports bluetooth too, even better. I did not see if it will support GMRS but if it does that as well as the rest of the features we have come to expect on a new phone these days then sign me up for one of these.
It would be very nice to have a phone and not be afraid to drop the thing. Even better if you can drop it to the shocked looks of people nearby and simply pick it up from the floor and keep on talking. I've seen too many people drop phones by accident and have to scramble to pick up the pieces and try to put things back together.
uh GPRS instead of what I typed above - it's 1am here afterall...
i have a m65 and i works great... looking forward to have the m75 but the military green color sucks... siemens has gone from WILD (m65 design) to MILD(m75 looks like a brick)...but has improve on other points on the m75... hope they come out with another rescue edition for the m75 and ship it to other parts of the wolrd...
The perfect phone for the office monkey who likes to tell the checks in accounting he is the RUGGED OUTDOOR TYPE!
Reality check, those who actually do go to the wilderness GSM is about as useless as the "office moneky's" pickup attempt!
CDMA or don't waste our time Siemens!
What a phone for the outdoors get something that works in the outdoors (CDMA or SAT) and stick it in a dry bag (until seimens & co give us a CDMA phone for the "RUGGED OUTDOORSY TYPE".