I am not much of a gadget freak. I beleive its always better to look at them with the eye of necessity... you may be in a better position to bargain! But this one object has caught my attention of late. They are these couple of water/shock/dust resistant phones. Why own such a phone?

well... just that i am getting weary of protecting my phone in the Mumbai rains! (i've had some bad experience with Nokia support in the past with regards to water resistance capabilities of a phone... well, i know they are not to blame..)

The first in line is the Motorola i580. Now this looks like one hell of a phone! Its water, shock and dust resistant, and has all the features one would expect out of a phone. The one i have been looking out for lately is the GPS feature, and that it has. Does it not look like the daddy of all phones? It may look ugly to some... but that is the least of my worries. Its beautiful for what it does :-) But one major let down would turn this phone into a stone for me... and thats to be found in the tech specs. This looks to be supporting the Motorola proprietary iDen network only, which makes it unusable for GSM Networks :-(  (Nowhere in google did i find that it is GSM compatible)

The next one, more promising is the Sonim XP3. Like the i580, this too has all the rugged features. And Voila! this is GSM compatible too! Just two things going against it... for one, it does not seem to have the GPS functionality. Secondly, the pricing seems to be too steep. I cannot imagine spending over £ 450 for this!

Nevertheless, both look good at what they do. If available here, i would definately buy them, provided they are priced reasonably.