Sonim XP3300 Force rugged mobile phone

Mail bonding

Wireless connectivity is limited to quad-band GSM, so you’ll have to learn to live without 3G or Wi-Fi but then fast over-the-air data is not what this phone is about and the e-mail client works perfectly well at GPRS speeds.

Chunky for a reason

The LCD screen is bright and colourful and works very well in sunlight. It’s also far more crisp than the 240 x 320 resolution would suggest. The MediaTek-sourced operating system and menu structure looks and works very much like S40, so getting the hang of the XP is very straightforward.

The XP3300 can also run third party Java applications and comes with the Opera Mini web browser and City Cruiser sat-nav installed. To bolster the 65MB of built-in storage there is a MicroSD slot, good for 16GB cards, tucked safely away under the battery.