Sonim XP8 Rugged Phone Review By Big Sexy Beast Adventures

Do, hey everybody JP from big sexybeast. com, and I'm going to do a series of gear reviews here. The first one is going to be the sonum xp8, so I switched away from a traditional, iPhone or android device about a year and a half ago for a variety of reasons, but one of which is durability because I'm always outside in the wilderness. In a variety of situations, I needed a device that I wasn't worried about breaking and that I could depend on because this is really the heart of my mobile office setup. For the first year I had the sonar xp5, which is a smaller version of this. These son devices are designed for first responders and people that work in kind of high impact industries, petroleum oil and gas, people that are outdoors using things and can't take a risk of them getting wet or breaking easily, and they need to depend on them.

The xp5 was a smaller device that had the old-school tactile keys. It was not a smartphone and then Sodom come out with the xp8, which is an android based smartphone. It does have fingerprint sensing. Furthermore, it has three tactile buttons across the bottom here for your home screen for your open, apps and a back button, and then it's got of course flashlight on the back. Furthermore, it has a series of programmable keys, that's the one I use for my flashlight there.

Furthermore, it also has an emergency button and a push to talk button. You can program a variety of different ways right now, I'm not using push to talk, because that's just not my application, but I've got the push to talk button set up as my flashlight button. You've got positive and negative audio controls there, a really, really loud, 100 decibel plus speakerphone on it, and it is a replaceable battery. So you can take the back off here, replace the battery one of the reasons I like these phones is: they have a much better actual antenna design than most your smartphones today and so places where an iPhone wouldn't have any reception or a regular uh smartphone wouldn't have any reception. The Sonoma will actually pick up a bar or two of signal because it actually has a better antenna design in it.

In addition to that, it works really well with my signal booster, which I'll do in another review. So a lot of times like this weekend, I was camping in the spot that had no cell phone coverage at all. I was able to boost a signal to get uh five bars um, so uh it charges with an USB uh and the camera is okay uh. So it's not really a phone. That's gonna, replace your camera.

So much you know. I carry the GoPro and a big camera and I do not use this for photography. So it's really not a one. Size fits all it's just. This is a perfect phone.

It is a really tough phone uh. It is a phone that when you need a phone- and in this case when I need access to my email and calendar, that's what this thing does exceptionally well, and I don't have to worry about so much breaking it in the back country. That being said, I did break my first sonum xp8 in Montana. I called up Verizon told him that I called up sonum first, they said Verizon handles the first year. The warranty uh I called Verizon um, told them that I had broken the phone.

They said no problem, I gave them an address. They overnighted me a phone the next day. No questions asked how'd, you do it nothing like that, so they have a fantastic warranty on these devices. Should you manage to break one? It's not easy to do. Unless you do something kind of crazy um, you can put it's a Bluetooth compatible.

I use it as a mobile hotspot, and so I can connect my laptop my iPad again. This kind of becomes the center of my mobile office. Perfect 4g mobile hotspot, perfect phone. It does run android apps. Well, I primarily use things like email.

I do use it to check kind of YouTube statistics and things like that for SMS and texting. I can pair this with my Garmin over lander. Furthermore, I have not yet, but I plan on doing that in the future. So this is not a long-term review. Yet I've had this uh.

I guess about three and a half months or so uh, but I love the phone. It is a little bigger. It is a little more chunky. Furthermore, it has um a gorilla glass screen. If I can talk, it also has a'm not going to pull it off, but the screen print it comes shipped with a screen protector on it um I had scratched that thing to um it just looked like.

I had sandpapered it by the time I got back from the summer expedition. I ordered another um screen protector off sonar's website. Furthermore, I think it was about 20 bucks. They literally just peel off put a new one on and now my screen looks great, so pretty happy. That is the Sodom xp8 I'll do a longer term.

Video review after I've had it about a year, but my other sonum product, I loved it s-o-n-I-m, and it's on Verizon. It does have dual sim cards, and so you can put a Verizon sim card in it and a T-Mobile sim card. So if you roll into a spot, and you're like, I want to see if Verizon has service here or Verizon doesn't have service here, let's check and see. If T-Mobile does so, you can switch it back and forth between different sim cards, it is compatible with the first net and the first responders um LTE bands. If you qualify for that, you can put those types of sim cards in here as well, which gives you priority access to the towers and emergencies, but a good device.

So far, again, USB charging, if I didn't say it before down there um and on the whole, it's a pretty modern device, uh comparable with a lot of other smartphone specs um in a very ruggedized um package, so check out the monomer b8.

Source : Big Sexy Beast Adventures