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Sonim brings a trio of rugged devices to CTIA E&A 2011, we go hands-on (video)

Sonim doesn't crank out smartphones. It's too busy flooding the earth with uber-rugged featurephones that would most likely withstand an actual flood, and it's darn proud of that fact. That's the impression we got, at least, after visiting the company's booth at this week's CTIA Enterprise & Applications. We had the opportunity to play around with Sonim's three new devices: the XP1301 Core NFC, XP3340 Sentinel and XP1330 Core PTT. Announced on Monday, the first two phones are already available in the US while the third is targeted squarely at Latin America over the next two months. Quite frankly, the new GSM / EDGE lineup looks so similar that it'd be incredibly easy to forget which one was which -- aside from having an appearance not unlike a tank, all three devices seem to come from the same mold. As similar as they are, each one has its own specialty: the XP1301 offers a Near-Field Communication tag reader, the XP1330 takes advantage of Push to Talk and the XP3340 Sentinel throws in a customizable man-down sensor that triggers an emergency alarm when something is awry. But we'll tell you what won't require emergency assistance -- viewing the galleries and videos below.
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Zachary Lutz contributed to this report.