Cat S60 Smartphone

Great service, delivered on time. Only had it three days and helping with my work already. Used the IR camera today. Had an issue with the expansion tank overflow running. Pointed the IR at the pressurisation unit and within seconds detected a non return valve passing slightly, only a few degrees deferential but showed up on the camera. Also used in the warehouse to check the heat coming through the high level radiant strips after a boiler reset. Works a treat. I'm a electrician by trade so can't wait untill I start pointing it at some control panels or distribution boards. Well made, strong and heavy but feels light a true work phone. Camera is good too. I can get two days out of a charge. My last phone was a Sony z3, good phone my my line of work recked it. I am a maintenance electrician working in commercial and industrial environments. Regards Wayne

This phone, the Cat S60 is the best rugged phone on the market at this time (Autumn 2016), even without the FLIR thermal camera it is worth the money. Particularly when you consider grey importing a Kyocera Torque 2 or one of the other rugged phones not available in the UK. When you add on the value of the FLIR camera it is a great deal. The FLIR can be used for fault finding electronics, electrical equipment and building insulation amongst a host of other uses. One thing to note is that while it is not advertised, there was a screen protector in my box. I bought one separately because I prefer a toughened glass screen protector but if you use the standard film type ones there is one included. OS is almost unmolested Android 6.0, screen is 720p which is fine on a screen this size and helps with battery life. 3GB of RAM is enough and the 32GB memory is expandable with micro SD cards up to 128GB. Dual SIM slots and the SD slot are under a spring loaded flap on the back. Battery is removable. The back of the phone is not, you will see QI wireless charge kits for this, I can only imagine they suggest you glue it to the back or put it inside a case. Either way they would invalidate the IP68 rating. Avoid those. These are initial impressions, I look forward to at least a couple of years of phone use uninterrupted by failure.

Protective strip fell off the bottom just after a year so the seller wasn't interested and only replied to me after several messages. I doubt it is waterproof or dust proof anymore. This is supposed to be a durable phone which is why a bought it. It hasn't had any rough treatment, I've used it for hiking and camping. My previous phone was a third of the price. Way more durable and apart from the near useless infrared feature, similar or better performance. If you want a durable, waterproof phone I urge you to look elsewhere. Update. Now three of the buttons don't work and it doesn't hold charge. Again this phone has only had light use. Easily without a shadow of a doubt the worst phone I have ever bought. I have been robbed. Spend £200 on two tin cans and a piece of string and you'll get way better value for money and massively better functionality. Gets worse. Now it won't charge at all or do anything. Just the Cat screen to remind me of the hundreds of pounds I've wasted on it. Update. Sent it back to cat for repair. A week after getting it back the charger port cover fell off. Asked for a refund but was refused. Sent it back for repair. A few weeks after getting it back it started to switch itself off several times a day. Yesterday the mobile data stopped working on both sim cards. They work fine in another phone. I spend time in remote hazardous places which is why I bought this phone. It is clearly not fit for purpose. Not only is its unreliability inconvenient it compromises my safety. I have emailed them asking for a refund. Watch this space.

This is a great smart phone it keeps up with most of the top smartphone on the market , as I am tired of smashing iphone after iphone ive opted for this ,the only issue with this phone is the camera in low light (indoors) is absolutely terrible and the thermal imaging camera is ok but it's a bit buggy , and the touchscreen is too sensitive you will find yourself pressing parts of the screen you didn't mean to because you do not need to touch it to work it just responds to your finger about 1mm above the screen, it's not unusable but can be a bit annoying, hopefully CAT will release an update to resolve issues but as I I've never used a CAT phone I do not know weather they keep on top of updates or not These are only minor issues and the phone is overall a good and pretty impressive phone and the battery life is amazing I found it lasts around 2 days with fair use By far the best rugged smartphone around

Battery life is a huge plus! Working great and with good control over both sim cards and an SD card in. My pc cant read it but I dont update windows so I assume thats d problem. Camera is shit, it makes my face so red on skype, I look like an old school drunk and its useless for any kind of decent photo representation of smthng. I kept an old Iphone to use as a camera when a good photo is needed. Thermal is great, but doesnt show the full heat scale. Point it to fire (or a fresh weld) and it shows its max and min capacity. +150° & -60° :/ Case is a must, this phone is slippery! Touchscreen is super sensitive. No quick typing. Took me some time to adjust to holding it. Its a massive phone. But still, Id recommend it and get it all over again cause its what I needed - a rough smart phone that can take rough environment, let me use two sim cards and an SD card and wont bother me with feeding it with electricity.

I bought this phone primarily because I wanted one that would be difficult to break; after my Sony Experia took a fall and needed its screen repaired but kept malfunctioning and eventually broke again. So, naturally I was impressed with S60’s military specifications and all-round outdoor/tough design. Not exactly cheap at £500, but I figured I would get many years of use out of such a tough phone so would be money well spent. The reality was very disappointing. First, the good points. • It certainly *feels* strong and sturdy, a bit on the heavy side but at least you know which pocket it is in! • At the same time it is a nice looking phone with a clear shiny screen (perhaps a bit too shiny for outdoor-oriented phone though?!). Photo quality decent though it struggles a bit with low-light photography (seems reasonable for outdoors phone though) • It took a couple of drops and kept working fine with a few small scratches. • Speakers work well so saves trouble of carrying around external speakers eg if you want to use by the pool. Never tried using speakers underwater, but that feature may be of use to someone out there! • Normally the apps that ship with a phone are annoying bloatware that I remove while setting up new phone, but this one came with some quite interesting outdoor/building/farming apps. • The thermal imaging was not a reason for me to buy the phone, but actually quite a cool party trick to take those predator-style photos….the novelty wears off quickly though. This can in any case be bought as a separate device if you really need it. The Bad: • Phone overheats a lot especially when using maps and other data-hungry apps – not a great thing for a rugged/outdoors phone to do! Sometimes phone just switched itself off; other times a hard reset with all the re-installing of apps etc was needed – annoying!! • Although overall the phone has a quite tough exterior and could take a few knocks; the design left a couple of glaring vulnerabilities that made a mockery of the “rugged” phone. One is the back flap where SIM and SD cards went – easy to imagine the phone being dropped and this coming open or breaking…also this makes waterproofing useless if it can just seep in through this opened latch. Luckily this never happened to me; however: • The other glaring vulnerability is the side slots that open to allow headphone or charger to be plugged in. These were very flimsy and eventually the charger latch broke. Caterpillar support had it fixed and back to me in a week, but in the meantime I had to source a new phone to use – very inconvenient! Again, what is the use of building a phone that is 95% “tough” but with such a gaping vulnerability?! I mostly used Bluetooth headphones so didn’t need that slot, but unlike earlier CAT phones there was no wireless charging – this would have mitigated the vulnerability so why take it away?! • The last straw was when I took the “tough” “waterproof” phone in the water for some underwater photography and it stopped working. At first I thought it had just overheated again but no luck resetting it so sent back for repairs again. All the more annoying because this was on holidays and I needed a phone for GPS, Skype etc but fortunately by this point I knew the S60 a bit too well and took a backup phone with me as a precaution. Still annoying – again what is the point of a "tough" phone if I need to carry a backup around with me cos it’s so unreliable?! This time I was without the phone for four weeks while they tried to repair it and they couldn’t, so I was given a new phone instead. Needless to say by this point I’d had enough so sold it second hand. So, there you go. Shame because I really liked the idea of this phone and its early use was promising, but overall a big disappointment.

Waterproof to 2 metres standard, 5 metres with some toggles, takes a 128 GB micro sd card and nano sim Drop proof around 1.8 metres, so falling off leg onto a solid floor is no big deal :) using 4g, no real issues, the thermal camera comes in useful camera is good, but less so on zoom plays music and films, but not one for games, just not my thing Update July 2019: the phone is totally dead and pending a return to CAT phones to fix it, the battery does not charge, just blinks a red light and the battery capacity was slowly being degraded. Any attempt to turn off was met with a reboot. 2020: Phone sent to approved repairer which was 2 weeks of emails with bullitt telling me it was out of warranty and me telling them that I knew it was out of warranty and that I needed it fixed. After a lot of fluffing around got it fixed, returned and made a call then the phone died and had to return it again. Long list of fixed stuff and probably a new phone inside. Currently misplaced, probably at a car park in watford

The build quality is good, although not sure how long the micro USB cover will last. Camera is poor in slightly lower than daylight, and has to be turned to backlight mode to compensate. There is no dedicated app drawer, so you need to obtain one from the Play store. The Google now launcher cannot be removed, and again the only way to do this is to use a third party launcher app, otherwise you are stuck with a white search bar across the home screen. Some of the built in apps are demo/trial versions, such as the file manager. The web browsing app even though you set it to your home location (UK), will search and default to US sites? The FLIR app is good, you have to download FLIR tools as an addition. It is good for close work, such as engineering and electrical diagnosis, but couldn't see it being useful in surveys for viewing heat loss on a house, as the range is about 10 metres before you lose definition, as you cannot zoom in or focus, as the FLIR camera has a fixed focal point. When viewing photos, you have the stock Google photo app, along with stock Google mail. Again you need to source your own mail, photo, video, music players as these appear to have been omitted from this, which is currently running Android 6.0.1. and no updates are available, even from CAT. Battery life is a day with average use, using a 4g signal, 20 minutes of phone calls, checking emails and social media. In the box, you get the handset, a USB cable, charger, instructions and a clear screen protector. What appears to be a Micro SD card, is a yellow piece of plastic, not sure what this signifies, but probably cost more to produce than a low capacity card. Overall I would say this more of an executive toy, than a heavy duty tool. It looks good, is well made, but the firmware and software need to be better.