Verizon has announced the forthcoming launch of the successor to its previous Casio G’zOne Android smartphone in the Commando 4G LTE. The Commando is a fully ruggedized Android smartphone that can withstand shock, dust, water, fog, sand, and extreme temperatures under M810G specifications and certification.
It features Casio’s G’zWorld app and Gz’Gear sensor integration for mapping and interacting with the outside world, and can provide information on tides, constellations, barometric pressure, and includes integration with select Casio G-Shock watches that can display alerts from the phone, acting as a pseudo smart watch and a secondary display for the G’z Gear functionality. The phone also has an 8.0 megapixel camera that can record 1080p video and slow-motion video.
The rest of the featureset is rounded out by a 1.3-megapixel camera front-facing camera for video chats and self portraits. The touch display measures 4 inches, but still remains at 800 x 480 resolution, is protected by Gorilla Glass 2, and features a new Glove Mode, which allows the Commando to be used when wearing gloves. It is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage underpinned by Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and supports microSD cards up to 64GB. The phone will be available on Thursday for $149.99 after a new 2 year agreement before an additional $50 mail-in rebate, bringing the total to $99.99.
I think the lack of Jelly Bean is really the main holdback on this one. Most are going to wait to see where Moto X comes out in the field, or if it comes to Verizon at all (which, it probably will).
Still, the nice thing about the new Commado is you can SIM-swap to something for outdoor treks on the weekend. The old Commando required a *228 – and a replacement LTE SIM card when returning to civilization.