You are probably familiar with the people at Cat, or Caterpillar Inc. They are the ones with that rugged black and yellow construction equipment that you see everywhere and are the makers of those tough work boots. Well, now comes the time where they've built durability in the place we need it the most – our smartphones.
Bullitt Mobile is the worldwide licensee of Cat, and this week it introduced the new CatB15 Android smartphone in North America. The device is designed for those who like to get a little down and dirty, whether it be on the hiking trail or on the industrial job site.
The device originally appeared overseas last year, and most recently it showed up at Mobile World Congress back in March. It is made to withstand a six-foot drop to the ground, has a rubber and aluminum shell to reinforce durability, and is also certified IP67, meaning the device is both dustproof and water poof. There is even wet finger tracking for all of you who hate to dry your hands before using your phone.
As far as features go, the CatB15 is lacking. That is to be expected, however, since some sacrifice was needed in order to focus strongly on the design. The smartphone's OS is almost entirely a vanilla clone of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and runs on a dual 1GHz Cortex A9 processor. Screen size is four inches and it displays at a 480 x 800 resolution. The rear camera is 5MP and shoots 720p video.
Opening up the back, you have a 2000 mAh battery and microSD slot with up to 32GB of additional storage. That is a good thing as there is only 4GB of onboard storage.
While the device won't be winning over any fans with its specs, the CatB15 is a solid budget phone that is well constructed.
Currently Quality One Wireless is the only known location for buying the device. The CatB15 is priced at $350.
Edited by
Alisen Downey 
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