By Stephen Schenck | March 8, 2012 10:58 AM
When we’re talking about super chunky-looking, ruggedized Androids, we’re often dealing with Casio. Though a few other manufacturers work on similarly ruggedized models, its Casio’s that really look the part. They could be up for some new competition, though, in the form of an upcoming Android featuring the branding of heavy machine manufacturer Caterpillar.
Obviously, Caterpillar didn’t just go from bulldozers to smartphones, and is lending its name to this hardware, but that leaves the question of who’s actually behind it. Huawei or ZTE are the obvious guesses, but neither company has model with which we’re familiar that matches this Caterpillar phone.
The CAT B10 rocks a 3.2-inch display under strengthened glass, runs an 800MHz single-core CPU, and has a five-megapixel main camera with front-facer. As should be expected from a phone looking like this, it’s built to withstand impact, is dust-tight, and can survive underwater. We’re used to see handsets like this get stuck with ancient Android builds, so it’s nice to see Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread here, especially alongside a claim that an ICS update is in the works. The CAT B10 should go for the equivalent of about $500 when it launches this May.
