Land Rover Explore Outdoor Phone: Overview

“We’re the UK’s only remaining mobile phone maker,” explained John Helliwell, the senior brand manager from Bullitt, “and we specialise in building phones for niche audiences, with specific requirements.”

Set up by three former Motorola employees, Bullitt had previously teamed up with Caterpillar to make the Cat phone – an especially rugged device aimed at tradesmen that can “sit in a toolbox and get bashed around without breaking”.

The Cat phone was a runaway success, so when they started talking to Land Rover about making a similarly tough model for outdoor enthusiasts, Bullitt knew they had a good foundation to build on.

“We know from our research that 30% of our audience break a phone,” Helliwell explained, “and we also know there are 8.9 million people in the UK who are active in the outdoors, and double that who’d like to be.”

As a snowboarder who spends a lot of time outdoors, he knew that phones breaking wasn’t the only issue. Battery life was a big problem, especially in cold conditions. So he and his colleagues set out to make a phone that would solve these problems.

Durability

The phone’s indestructible qualities were demonstrated by repeatedly dropping it from waist height on a concrete floor – something that would give your average iPhone owner a heart attack. At one point John poured coke all over it, then washed it off under the tap to demonstrate how waterproof it is.

“It will work underwater,” he said. “You could even take pictures. The touch screen would freak out of course, but you could turn it on and take pictures using the buttons on the side.”

“It will work underwater, and you could even take pictures underwater using the buttons on the side.”

Location Services

Other features include a bigger and more accurate GPS aerial than your average smartphone (equivalent to the one in most standalone GPS devices), and a dashboard app that allows you to see essential info of your choosing with one touch – rather than having separate apps for weather, location, altitude etc. This works even with gloves on – we tried it.

Other Notable Features

The phone will be shipped with bike mounts, and will also come with Viewranger’s industry-leading mapping app bundled as standard. We had a lot of fun playing with their eye-catching Viewranger Skyline function, which uses augmented reality to tell you the names and heights of mountains around you.

Whether or not it will persuade proper Apple fanboys to convert remains to be seen. But as a long-term iPhone user who’s had to replace several screens and finds themselves continually frustrated by the battery dying when I’m snowboarding, it definitely got me excited.

The phone will be available to pre-order from select outdoor shops including Cotswold Outdoor and Snow + Rock in the UK, Sporthaus Schuster in Germany and AS Adventure in Belgium. We’ll let you know more when we do.