My brother is a 4th year apprentice tradie. In those 4 years he's killed about 4 mobile phones, usually just due to tradie life. Fortunately these mobiles have been just old ones. Apart from scratching the crap out of the screen or melting part of the case from welding adventures, the speaker for your ear seems to deteriorate in quality rather rapidly, this is a reoccuring theme, so much so that the speaker becomes of so poor quality that you can barely make out what the other person says. So i suggested to him that rather than kill another phone like he's done so far with his 2100, 7250 and 1110, he get himself one of those ruggedised tradie phones. I remember the Nokia 5210 was a ruggedised one, have there been any others? do you guys know of/use one? Any recommendations?

Sonim XP1 apparently available from Crazy Johns. Telstra/ZTE F158 is apparently ruggedised also.

last edited by exo at 16:07:37 21/Oct/08

oh ok. looks interesting. shoulda specified must be GSM not NextG.

A NextG phone will still work on GSM, they're not mutually exclusive.

oh.
ok.

Oh yeah and I f***ed up, its the F158 not 156. Details here.

My brother in law is a roof tiler and has the Nokia tradie phone.

He hates it. Although it's durable, he said you can't read the screen in the daylight so he has to find a shady area to get the light of it.

This is probably made harder by the fact he is on a roof.

and that he's gay too?

I hope he gave you a reach around.

Sometimes he can be so selfish.

I'm not saying you should buy one because they're s*** but I've thrown my motorazr v3 at the car window causing it to bounce across the car and the battery to come flying out, dropped it on the ground denting the case numerous times (yes I hate the phone and am trying to kill it) but the son of a bitch still works. I've done everything but wash it or drive over it.

Nokia 5140.
My dad (Tech illiterate, Chippie) hasn't managed to kill his in ~3 or so years.

So it has to be very strong. Had one for a Short time during uni, I dropped it off a 15m high roof and it still worked fine (very small crack in screen though)
Would still have it now if I didn't have a free work phone.

but will it last a night in the valley? that is how most tradies wreck their phones.

My brother has the 5140.

He's not a tradie but his wife has a habit of throwing his phones at him.

It was thrown a few days after he got it and it ended up in several pices on the floor. Put it all back together and it's fine.

Although I hate talking to him on it because the reception is always s***.

the speaker for your ear seems to deteriorate in quality rather rapidly, this is a reoccuring theme, so much so that the speaker becomes of so poor quality that you can barely make out what the other person says.

Probably from all the metal shavings stuck to the magnet inside phone. Did it to my Motorola years back..