The rise of super-rugged phones has been led by Cat, but up until now you had to buy them online. After striking a partnership with Sprint, and with a Verizon deal in the works, the Cat S48c is the first rugged Cat phone to appear in U.S. stores.
The Caterpillar brand is actually licensed to British phone makers, the Bullitt Group, and we reviewed its flagship Cat S61 last year. That phone boasts thermal imaging, air quality monitoring, and a host of other tools, not to mention a whopping price tag, but the Cat S48c is a much simpler, and more affordable prospect at around $500.
Besides it’s toughness, the Cat S48c is chunky, and weighs in at around 9.1 ounces.
There’s a standard 3.5mm audio port up top, a USB-C charging port on the bottom edge, SD and SIM card slots and volume controls on the right side.
The power button is on the left, and below it you’ll find a large, orange, textured button that supports the push-to-talk (PTT) feature, turning your phone into a walkie-talkie. You can reprogram this button to another shortcut function if you don’t want to use PTT.
There are large bezels on the front of the Cat S48c, with the earpiece and a selfie camera up top, and a large and loud speaker at the bottom along with physical home, recent apps and back buttons. The display is a standard IPS LCD with a respectable resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, Gorilla Glass 5, and the ability to register touches even if your hands are wet or you have gloves on.
The Cat S48c is also IP68 rated, which means it’s dust-proof, dirt-proof, and can survive water immersion up to 4 feet of water for 35 minutes without suffering any damage. It also has MIL-SPEC 810G and Non-Incendive Class1 Div2 certification, which means it can withstand drops of up to 6 feet onto concrete, temperatures of -13°F (-25°C) to 131°F (55°C), and most importantly, it won’t ignite flammable vapor or gas.
A Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage powers the unit, with pretty speedy performance. It runs Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box, but an update to Android 9.0 Pie will come shortly. There’s also room for a MicroSD card up to 128GB in size.
Camera-wise, the CAT S48c sports a 13-megapixel main camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. It also have HDR, and Cat’s camera app allows for underwater photography.
Battery life is where the Cat S48c shines. It has a 4,000mAh battery, which is huge, and it will easily last 2-days between charges. There’s also a USB-C port in the Cat S48c and the supplied charger seems to replenish the battery very quickly.
You can purchase the Cat S48c at Sprint for $480, or sign up to Sprint’s Flex Lease agreement where you’ll pay $20 per month for 18 months and then have the option to hand the phone back or pay off the remaining $120. It will also be available from Verizon from the end of January and you can pay $600 for an unlocked handset or $250 if you sign up to a 2-year contract.
