The World Toughest Phone

Testing a rugged phone like the Sonim XP3 Quest is always fun. It's not every day that you get to throw a handset down the stairs as part of the review. With most phones, a drop to the floor and even a few drops of water can render it useless. But with the XP3, it's all part of the fun.

As the successor to the XP1, the XP3 is also built like a tank, bit it goes a step further by being able to withstand a full dunking. We did just that, and even placed a call to the Sonim while it was taking a dip. Besides the aforementioned fall down the stairs, we also used it to hammer a nail, we tried to hammer a nail in its display, we dropped it onto a concrete floor, and we tried to stomp it into oblivion. We didn't run it over a car or freeze it in ice as other reviewers have, but it survived our torture tests without a scratch. This is one phone that's built to last.

Inside the XP3 isn't as exciting. Feature are pretty minimal--a 2-megapixel camera and GPS are the most notable offerings--and we don't like that it lacks multimedia messaging. Call quality is decent even if we didn't test the call quality while underwater.