Cat S31

Terrible phone, terrible company – I have made multiple requests to the CAT warranty team to get my phone either refunded or replaced. (They already took it away for two weeks and did not fix all the problems). So far I have just been ignored. The phone speaker doesn't work. It rings and locks so I can't answer the call. It is just full of small bugs, like sometimes the camera works sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people try to call and it doesn't even ring they just get my voicemail.

would give this a 0 stars if i could – I would give this a 0 stars if i could. Slow, unresponsive, apps always failing to run and awkward to use. Wouldn't recommend to anyone and i would much rather use carrier pidgins to communicate with my friends, at least they would be more reliable than this "thing" they call a smartphone....

Great – Great easy to use and access and be able to have games and all my apps needed and also be able to Bluetooth and and wifi and data access with loads of memory

Get a higher model – Great phone. If you require a rugged phone, cat phones are probably the number one choice out there. There are a few 'water resistant' phones on the market, but very limited options for rugged phones that can truly take a beating. So on to this phone: Pros: -True 2 day battery life in regular use, including mapping and music streaming -External physical buttons are fantastic - they keep the screen clear and work great with gloves

-This screen works with gloves

-Seems to be extremely well built, aside from being drop proof the actual quality of finish is good

-I love love love the removable memory card. Makes file transfer to a computer a simple drag + drop.

-The operating system is very clean, very intuitive, the standard software works very well, no real unnecessary apps clogging the phone up

Cons:

-It's far too slow. Not sure if it's the processor or RAM, but it's unacceptably laggy in absolutely normal use. You can have a 3-5 second delay after a button press, even just doing low demand tasks like browsing websites. I don't demand much computing out of my phones but it goes past 'undesirable' to being so slow that it's impractical. Hassle.

-Mediocre cameras front and back

-Not specific to cat phones, but the touch screen gets a bit erratic when there's water sitting on it. As in, yes it won't fail due to water, but you can't send a text message in the rain.

-Loudspeakers don't work when they get wet - dry them out and they go back to normal.

-No official presence in australia, so you have to find an importer. Or take a big risk and grey import the device. It's not hard to find sellers, but it will probably make life hard if you have a warranty claim. Although given the nature of this phone, you won't likely have a warranty claim.

So you keep all of the pros, and lose a couple of cons, if you get an s41 or s61. So spend a little extra and grab one of those to get yourself a phone that you don't have to baby with careful placement and constant recharging. I will keep my s31 and likely sideload 'lite' apps to try and speed it up a bit. Honestly if it wasn't for the fact it's slow, this would be an almost perfect phone that I would recommend to anybody.