Samsung announces 'mil-spec' cellphone

Samsung says its new Rugby Smart phone, set for a U.S. debut in March, meets military-grade levels of toughness to face the hard knocks of extreme usage. The company says the Android phone is built to meet both the U.S. military Mil-spec 810f and the IP67 international standards for ruggedness, CNET.com reported. The phone should be able to survive submersion in 3 feet of water for 30 minutes and prolonged exposure to dust, driving rain, extreme temperatures and falls onto hard surfaces, Samsung said. While previous "tough" phones have been big and considerably bulky, the Rugby Smart is only slightly larger and thicker than a typical phone at 4.8 inches long, 2.5 inches wide and half an inch thick. The Smart sports mid-range smartphone specifications like Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED screen, 4 gigabytes of internal memory and a microSD card expansion slot. The GSM phone will run on AT&T's HSPA "4G" data network, not the carrier's much faster LTE infrastructure, CNET.com reported.