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Comment by thatguy0900 | Hacker News Reader

There's also a line of phones made by CAT, the construction company, that looks pretty durable. I've been thinking about getting one just to have fun with the thermal camera.

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Sonim too. Got to play with one for a client. It wasn’t pretty, I seem to recall it ran a pretty crusty version of Android, but damn was that thing tough. And the speaker! Oh boy... the app I was helping with had to do with personal safety, and if the volume was turned all the way up that thing was LOUD!

I like those phones and never had one (either CAT or third party) fail... the issue is that the processor / RAM setup is always a little on the weak side and OS updates are a problem.

I'd probably buy my first ever iPhone if Apple came out with a ruggedized version of the current iPhone SE.

Yeah, the os updates is why I've been holding off. Basically just have to accept you won't get any

I mean, to be honest, I didn't pay a lot of my original one (non-CAT) but it's on Android 8.0.1 forever... which isn't exactly a bad version.

I wish Android would decouple the device drivers from the kernel space kinda like a desktop OS so your manufacturer could just supply their drivers and you could upgrade the OS at will... a man can dream.

The desktop OSes that use Linux do not have the device drivers decoupled from the kernel. Apple also builds these drivers into Darwin (hence Nvidia GPUs breaking on MacOS), Windows (on x86-64 only) is the only platform that has a semi-stable ABI for device drivers.

Microsoft has dedicated many developer years to supporting said API, and all the kernel panics caused by said drivers.

Sony[1] has a ruggedized version of their flagship with all the same fancy specs. You might not like the price however.

https://electronics.sony.com/mobile/smartphone/professional-...

I'd pay it gladly if I knew I could get OS updates beyond 2 years... my issue with current flagships is unless you go Apple, you'll be buying a new one every few years.

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