Sacrificing the fine and thin form factor of
smartphone to have a case is equivalent to sacrilege in some people. Others
feel uncomfortable when going out if the phone is not wrapped in a cover or
something else. However, Kyocera Torque of Sprint is for those who require more
than a silicone cover to keep the device safe. Instead of depending on the
cover for protection, it’s every durable on itself, with IP67 indicator and Military
Standard 810G certification to help it sit down under everything from water to hoarfrost.
Besides, the phone has a feature of being
the first ever phone released in America with Smart Sonic Receiver tissue-conduction
tech of Kyocera, removing the traditional earpiece. We have taken the first
push-to-talk LTE phone of Now Network for a test not only to check how hard it
is but also find out how good it can run.
Hardware
If you’ve used an OtterBox Defender cover,
you will find it familiar to Torque. It’s wrapped in a rubber cover, and being
a little thinner than the iPhone 4 wrapped in Otterbox case, with the
dimensions of 5.06x2.69x0.5 inch. While it’s built to be overused, the hardware
is not heavy – in fact, it feels slightly lightweight with 5.94 ounce (168.5g),
depending on the kind of punishment it’s designed to bear. With IP67 and
MIL-STA-810G indicator, Torque can withstand wind and rain, dust, moisture,
impact, low pressure, hoarfrost, sun radiation, extreme temperature, vibration
and being plunged into water for about 30 minutes at the depth of 1m.
If
you’ve used an Otterbox Defender cover, you will find it familiar to Torque.
When talking about the super-durable smartphones,
there’s not much to talk about the style, but Torque has managed itself a
pretty nice figure regardless of the additional sleeve. Everyone will know that
you attach special importance to jobs, but they won’t wonder why you stagger
out of the construction area with an industrial handheld transceiver. However,
when you want to keep it away from you vision, you will find it slide
comfortably onto you jeans pocket. In general, taking a large smartphone out of
the pocket is a challenge, especially if it has the rubber cover, but the
plastic cover of Torque is not much sticky, making it an easy process.
Instead of depending on the special deck to
make the device withstand the severe environments, Torque uses sealing wax and
cap to keep dust and water away. For example, the battery cover has a layer of
rubber locking the important components and keeping the device from being
leaked out. The rear also has a metal lock mechanism to keep the entire cover
sitting in the proper position. Luckily, it’s easy to flip out with nails or
finger tips, but not too loose to be opened accidentally. 3.5mm headphone jack
sitting on the top of the phone, is also hidden under a lid, and it’s
reinforced on both sides with 2 buttons: one for turning on/off the power and
one to turn on/off speaker mode for Direct Connect feature of Sprint. The
speaker mode button in one of our testing models seems to be a little stuck and
don’t go down when it should be, but on the other hand, it feels quite tactile.
We doubt that the damage could have been caused by one of the drop tests.
Instead
of depending on the special deck to make the device withstand the severe
environments, Torque uses sealing wax and cap to keep dust and water away.
Only 1 convenient dedicated camera button occupies
the right side of Torque, but the left edge has a volume rocker and a separate push-to-talk
key. Pressing the button connecting directly to the home screen will launch menu
Direct Connect. Another press begins with a turn with the last phone performed
through push-to-talk. Of course, holding the button allows users to talk as if
they’re using the old two-way radio. The addition is certainly useful, but
holding the phone tightly means that you will regularly press the button down
without intention into DC mode. Luckily, push-to-talk can only be activated
when the phone is on the home screen, so holding the button you’re using other
apps won’t mess anything up. However, being able to press the button with
nothing happening can feels a bit unnatural – though we may prefer it rather
than being suddenly kicked out of an app. Without using DC, you can map the
button to another function.
Under the screen, you will find the
standard back, home and menu keys, along with 2 chrome speaker grille. This
phone is not only designed to bare punishment but also able to create amazingly
powerful sound. Everything from ringtones to speaker sound is excellently loud,
so it’s easy to imagine that it seems to be superior in a noisy construction
area, or can be heard from the bottom of the travel rucksack. Even the turn-by-turn
instruction can easily be heard on our music we’re playing in the car stereo system.
Unfortunately, that means the reason for “I don’t hear the phone ring” don’t have
any value once your friends and family know its audio power.
Under
the screen, you will find the standard back, home and menu keys, along with 2
chrome speaker grille.
Things you may not realize when having a
glance at the phone is that it lacks speaker slot where users listen to phone
calls. Instead of that, Kyocera has inserted the Smart Sonic Receiver tissue-conduction
tech in, and Torque is the first phone with this tech released in America.
Using a piezoelectric transducer, the system transmits the sound through the
vibration areas which can go through the on-ear headphones. Just touch the earpiece
area of the phone with headphones (or your ears), and the sound will go
through. We don’t believe this one will have many practical apps, but we imagine
it can be useful if your hat is being an obstacle.
However, like the tradition speakers, you
ears don’t need to be jammed into the smartphone body just to hear what’s being
said. The quality and loudness of the call is equal to other phones – in fact, it’s
hard to point out the difference between the new settings of Kyocera and the
old-styled speakers. Maybe removing the speaker slot is the way to turn it to a
point that doesn’t leaks for water and dust.
On the inside, the phone supports Sprint
LTE having 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 processor along with 1GB
RAM and 4GB of built-in capacity. For the battery, it’s preloaded with 2,500mAh
battery reaching 18.5 hours of talk time. The image on the phone is served by
the 4inch IPS touch screen being able to resist impact with WVGA (800x480)
resolution. It’s not a prominent screen, but does its jobs well. The auto-brightness
feature of the hardware can help you view the screen in direct sunlight, but
maxing out the brightness manually helps to solve the problem.
On
the inside, the phone supports Sprint LTE having 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4
Plus MSM8960 processor along with 1GB RAM and 4GB of built-in capacity.
In terms of connections, the super-durable
device has LTE on 25 bands, CDMA 800/1900 radio with voice HD support,
802.11b/g/n and 4.0+ LE/EDR. Torque also has the NFC support that works well
with Google Wallet, a accelerometer, a proximity sensor, an ambient light
sensor, compass and barometer. Talking about shooting, smartphone has 5MP autofocus
back camera coming with LED flash and 1.3MP camera on the front.
