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The Android landscape's certainly getting crowded, isn't it? We can
still vividly remember the days when the T-Mobile G1 was the only game
in town, and now here we are -- just two years later -- flush with
options covering virtually every market segment from the ultra-high
end to the ultra-low and everything in between. One niche market
that's usually underserved, though, is the beat-the-crap-out-of-your-
phone market. You know who you are: you work hard, you play hard, or
you've just got an incurable case of butterfingers -- but whatever the
case, you need a phone that you aren't breaking, bricking, melting,
freezing, or otherwise destroying every few weeks.
It's not that rugged phones haven't existed, of course. Far from it:
Nextel and Motorola practically invented (and thrived off of) the
concept, and options like AT&T's Samsung Rugby and Verizon's Casio
G'zOne series have been available for some time. By and large, though,
it's been a field devoid of smartphones -- and these days, that's just
not going to cut it. The kinds of people that need a phone that can
take a few knocks don't necessarily want to buy them at the expense of
power or capability anymore. On that note, Motorola's new Android-
powered Defy for T-Mobile USA (and other carriers abroad) is one of
the few to take a shot at elegantly combining environmental resistance
with a no-compromise smartphone experience, featuring Blur atop
Android 2.1 with a 5 megapixel autofocus cam, LED flash, 800MHz TI
OMAP3610 core, and a 3.7-inch 854 x 480 display. In other words, on
paper, it's no slouch -- but can it hang? Let's find out.
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