CAT Ultra-Rugged Smartphone

BARCELONA — CAT, the same company that designs and manufactures heavy machinery, has got a rugged Android smartphone on display here in Barcelona, offering some serious durability for a reasonable price.

The CAT B15 is an Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" device, with a 4-inch, 800 x 480-pixel screen, a dual-core, 1GHz Cortex A9 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage memory.

Of course, you're not buying this one for its specs; you're buying it for its durability, and at first sight, the B15 looks the part. Its case is made from a combination of aluminium and rubber; it's dustproof, impact-resistant if you drop it from heights of about six feet, waterproof and scratch resistant, courtesy of Gorilla glass.

Despite all this protection, it feels very light in your hand, but it definitely has the rugged feel you'd expect from such a device. CAT's actually got a little waterfall where you can test the B15's durability, and, unsurprisingly, it escapes encounters with rocks and water unscathed.

The 300 euro ($392) price doesn't sound bad for an Android 4.1 device with these specs and the added durability. However, compare it to the Kyocera Torque, which goes for $99 and has similar specs, and it suddenly feels expensive.

The B15 will be available in April 2013, we've been told, in the U.S. and in key European markets.

Images by Mashable