Better-looking than some rugged phones, ultra-wide operating temperature range, touchscreen works when wet
Relatively poor camera, unremarkable battery life without add-on, extremely large with battery/GPS pack
Land Rover is a quintessential British brand, even if the car maker is owned by Indian giant TATA. These days the image of a Range Rover owner is of a middle-class family with kids strapped in the back, perhaps holding iPads.
But the company is also interested in phones. The Land Rover Explore is more likely to appeal to the classic outdoorsy Land Rover fan. Hikers, campers and others who prefer the wilderness over urban sprawl will appreciate its style and features. Those into Range Rovers for their Chelsea tractor appeal should stick to their iPhones, though.
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Design
The first Land Rover phone was released in 2009. Ranulph Fiennes emerged from Everest base camp to endorse it, as one of the few mobiles at the time that could be used in well below freezing temperatures.
Every Land Rover phone to date has looked like the sort that might be used on a building site: tough, rubbery and fat. The Land Rover Explore has a few more elements taken from the actual cars. Ridges on the back look just like those seen on some Range Rover roofs. The speaker cover on the front is similar to the grille on some Land Rovers.
It’s also not made like a normal ultra-rugged phone. There’s no prominent lip around the screen, and the sides are series 7000 aluminium, rather than impact-sponge rubber. Gorilla Glass 5 sits on its screen. This is about the toughest glass found on a phone, but it is not immune to shattering. It’s a curious mix of tough and conventional premium design. But the Explore is still tougher than most.
Ruggedisation
The phone is drop-tested to 1.8m, and is water and dust resistant to IP68, meaning it can handle submersion at a depth of 1.5m for 30 minutes. It’ll handle salt water, too.
The Land Rover Explore also copes with other extremes. An iPhone X is designed to function between zero and 35 degrees Celsius. If it gets too cold or hot it’ll switch off. The Explore will continue working at -30 degrees, and up to 65 degrees C. Its touchscreen works when wet, too, which might be the most useful feature of all, day-to-day.
It’s one of the best phones out there for mountain hikers, even if that does result in a phone 14mm thick. That is almost twice as thick as an iPhone. At 232g, it’s heavy, too.
This will test the brand loyalty of those who simply like Land Rover. There are none of the usual trappings of high-end phones either: no fingerprint scanner or face unlocking, and the screen is the old 16:9 kind rather than the 18:9 shape used by almost every other new phone. It’s sharp and colourful, but there’s a lot of phone that extends beyond the display itself.
The Explore is also less deep down the rugged rabbit hole than the CAT S61, made by the same company. That phone has a thermal-imaging camera and a laser distance measure, but is also £200 more expensive. This phone is for those left scratching their heads about why you’d need these extras. Instead, it has and 'Adventure Pack'.
Accessories
The Adventure Pack is a magnetised back that fits onto the Explore’s rear. It doubles battery capacity and adds a more powerful GPS antenna to make it reliable for route tracking in the middle of nowhere. There’s also an extra case, providing additional drop protection.
Adventure Pack added, though, and the Explore is huge. It won’t fit in the average trouser pocket. To solve this sartorial conundrum, you get a carabiner to attach it to a bag or belt loop, but you probably won’t want it banging against your thigh on a day hike. It’s hefty.
Considering its size, the Explore’s battery life is surprisingly ordinary, too. Flying solo, the phone ends up with around 20 per cent battery at bed time with moderate use. It’s not quite the trooper you might expect. The Adventure Pack battery roughly doubles longevity, but you won’t want to use it daily.
Software
This phone comes into its own in the outdoors, partly thanks to additional software. A Dashboard app lets you create a quick-fix screen of stats harvested from the phone’s sensors, like your latitude, elevation and compass direction.
The Explore also comes with a subscription to ViewRanger, a year’s worth of access to 50,000:1 UK ordinance survey maps. They can be downloaded for offline use. Any Android phone can use ViewRanger. It’s a very popular GPS maps app. But this subscription usually costs £25. There’s also a mini app store of apps for adventurer types, called Explore Hub. It just points you towards Google Play apps you might like, but does cut down on app searching.
Camera
The Land Rover Explore is great for tracking long walks, hikes and cycling trips. However, it’s far worse at recording them in photographic form than other phones at the price.
There’s a 16-megapixel main camera on the back. This isn’t low-end hardware, but there are several issues with it. It doesn’t have the Auto HDR smarts of other expensive phones, the separate HDR mode is overbearing and shooting performance is quite poor. There’s significant shutter lag, shooting HDR images is far too slow, and the phone has a habit of actually not capturing some images when you shoot a number in quick succession.
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While you can get take reasonable day-lit shots with a little patience, the Explore’s low-light image quality is fairly poor. Pictures look soft. The app is simplistic, too. Panorama is the only extra mode, although dig into settings and you can record RAW images rather than JPEGs, letting you coax the most from this under-optimised camera. Selfies are soft and milky-looking, too. If you want to take memory-sculpting photos of a mountain ascent, bring a proper camera.
There are a few other little issues, too. The Land Rover Explore’s Bluetooth is unreliable, causing an unusual amount of interference with wireless headphones, for the first few minutes at least. A lot of work has gone into making the phone rugged and wilderness-ready, but other core elements aren’t as polished as those of other phones.
Verdict
The Land Rover Explore is one of the most attractive rugged phones to date. It’s no beauty next to ordinary models, but by losing the rubber nobbly parts some have, it seems less like it belongs on a construction site. Sensible software extras and the included Adventure Pack make the Explore great for outdoors adventuring.
However, battery life without it is comparable with that of a much smaller phone, and the camera is not as smart, or as good, as most phones above the £300 mark. This narrows the Explore’s appeal a little, but that appeal is still real for the right crowd.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
