New rugged waterproof smartphone rocks!

As some of you know, I ditched my Samsung Galaxy S6 around 18 months ago in favour of a generic rugged phone out of Asia.

Well, I was about to sign up for a 24 mth contract for the new Galaxy S8 at $149 a month (what’s that, nearly $3600 all up in order to get a $1400 phone ‘free’), when the new range of AGM smartphones arrived for InvestigateDaily’s OutdoorPhoneStore.

Glad I held off. My S6 used to gasp for breath by 6pm…battery all over rover, and while it had a good screen I couldn’t see it well in sunlight, and the Galaxy hated being dropped.

Been running my new AGM for a fortnight now, on Android 7 Nougat – the very latest iteration of Android’s candy-coded operating systems. This phone is a dream. Not only is it waterproof submersible, and rugged enough to be dropped, but by midnight it still has 40% juice left. Gone is the electric-car style panic that sets in around 5pm when you wonder if your phone will last through dinner. The AGM has genuine power. Not only that, it achieves it despite checking emails every 15 mins, running GPS and bluetooth all day. On my earlier Galaxy, the 6pm lights-out came despite turning all the bells and whistles off all day.

But the battery life is not my only newfound joy…I can now actually comfortably see the screen in full midday sunlight. Unprecedented!

OK, at $499 it doesn’t have all the trim and pizazz of a $1400 unit, but it looks good, it’s rugged enough for those of us who work or play outdoors, it has longer battery life than the new S8 and it operates two sim cards simultaneously (if you are travelling overseas this is a Godsend. Keep your main NZ number in one slot so people can call you and use the second slot for a local sim and a cheap data plan at your destination. It’s running 3GB of RAM for seamless processing and offers 32GB of onboard storage expandable to 64GB, and its 5 inch IPS screen with adaptive brightness is simply beautiful.

So, no, I won’t be trading up to a fragile new Galaxy after all. The AGM is Investigate’s choice of smartphone for 2017.

We have a limited number in stock this weekend, move fast if you want one.