For most Smartphones, the biggest threat is being dropped. But a Smartphone in the hands of a farmer faces a much harder life. Being dropped is just the beginning. There is being stepped on by a 1200 pound steer, dropped into an auger, run over by a tractor, or — worse yet — being buried under a pile of tools on the floor of a pick-up. The newly redesigned RAZR phone by Motorola is thin and light, but built of some tough stuff. The case is shielded with a KEVLAR® strong backplate which will suppress an onslaught of scratches and scrapes, and is reinforced by a Corning® Gorilla® Glass screen. The Hoosier Ag Today staff gave the phone a good workout during December and found it stood up to the test. While very thin, it stood up to the Farm Bureau State Convention and the Indiana/Illinois Farm Show. Even after a few unintended bounces off the floor of the State Fair cattle barn, the RAZR showed no signs of stress and kept working fine.
We found the phone to be very fast, with a Dual–Core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of rapid–fire LP DDR2 RAM. We download the HAT app and got amazing speed on market quotes and audio reports. We tested the 4G LTE model and were impressed with the speed of internet processing. During the farm show, we used the phone to connect our broadcast equipment to the internet to upload programs to our HAT radio stations.
We found reading market quotes or weather radar images was easy on this phone with a 4.3” Super AMOLED Advanced display. In fact, during some of the farm show broadcasts, Andy Eubank used the RAZR and read the markets right off the phone during his radio program. The RAZR also comes with a 8MP rear-facing camera and HD video capture unit. This would be handy for taking photos of field conditions to e-mail to your agronomist.
Razr Thin Phone
The phone boasts of talk time of 12 hours and stand-by time of 8 days. We did not put this to the test, but it did hold a charge longer than my old Android 1 phone. There are several optional docking station accessories that can turn the phone into a laptop computer, almost. While these adaptors do allow for the connection of many other devices, including a large 10 inch screen, we were not really impressed with them. Though the extra connectivity, with multiple USB ports, is nice and may have some useful applications, overall the extra stuff was not as rugged as the phone and not easy to assemble.
The Hot Spot application that created a local wifi connection came in handy when one of our computers lost its connection with the internet. We fired up the hot spot option on the RAZR and were back on the air in no time.
These phones are incredibly thin and light. It is a bit deceiving that anything this small can be tough, fast, and powerful. If you are looking for a Smartphone that is tough enough for farm work yet sleek enough for personal use, this may be a good choice.
