CAT PHONES' HIDDEN DIFFERENTIATION

A decade of rugged design and engineering innovation sets the Cat phones range apart.

2022 marks 10 years since the launch of the first Cat phones products back in 2012 - the Cat B25 feature phone and Cat B10 Android smartphone. Those were certainly tough devices, achieved through bulky protective casings and aided substantially by smaller displays and lighter weight batteries than would be acceptable in today's products.

Bullitt Group, the global mobile licensee for Caterpillar Inc. and maker of Cat phones, has spent the decade since then refining and innovating around the rugged design of its products to achieve much greater resilience and reliability, while stripping away bulky and unwieldy design features. The result is today's range of incredibly tough and uncompromising Cat phones products.

Cat phones are engineered 'from the ground up' to be as tough as possible, with unparalleled attention to detail. These are not ordinary, mass-market handsets in a case. Unique construction techniques, high-grade materials, and multi-layered protective measures to ward against damage from drops, shock, and liquid or dust ingress, ensure that a Cat smartphone is able to survive whatever comes its way.

Hidden differentiation through design innovation

The Cat S62 Pro - the current flagship in the Cat phones range, boasting market-leading rugged credentials and the most advanced mobile thermal imaging solution on the market - is a fantastic example of this deep-rooted robust design approach, benefiting fully from Bullitt's extensive rugged engineering expertise and experience.

Structural elements brace and reinforce components such as the battery to limit unpredictable movement due to impacts from a drop or fall, which can cause internal component damage and even sever connections. Cold-pressed adhesive seals are used in tandem with waterproof components, membranes and rubber port seals, to achieve a durably watertight housing that can remain intact through the life of the device. Flexible printed circuit mountings are used for the USB type-C port, helping to prevent damage caused by impacts or incorrect cable insertions. The high-grade aluminium frame provides impressive structural rigidity to the device, making it less susceptible to damage from bending and flexing. The display is protected not only by an extra-thick pane of toughened Gorilla Glass, but also by a testing-calibrated recess below a protective ridge that surrounds it, as well as a factory-fitted screen protector. And there's lots more besides.

These design choices, taken together, yield a phenomenally strong and robust end-product, and innovative differentiation that is hidden from view. But it is all of these aspects combined that ensure Cat phones customers can rely on their products, confident that they are built to withstand and endure rough treatment.

Not all rugged phones are created equal

The entry-level Cat S42 H+ is similarly built, 'Rugged to the Core'. Just as with the flagship in the range, the entry-level device offers considered rugged design and engineering that has been refined and improved over the last decade. And here, the hidden value of a Cat phone versus poorer quality, cheaper alternatives can be clearly seen.

In 2021, independent teardowns of three rugged devices - the Doogee S58, Blackview BV4900, and Cat S42 - revealed huge differences in terms of build quality and robustness of the three devices. While comparable on paper, the Doogee and Blackview products were shown to merely approximate robustness through overtly rugged design cues, though their actual ability to withstand rough treatment in challenging contexts was found to be largely superficial.

The Cat S42, meanwhile, was distinguished by its advanced rugged design. One good example of this can be seen in the measures taken to preserve the integrity of the device's protection against water ingress, particularly around ports. In acknowledgement of the fact that the USB port represents a clear weak spot around which liquid might be able to get into the product, particularly if submerged, the Cat S42 is designed with three layers of protection:

1. A premium waterproof component is used.
2. A rubber gasket seal prevents water ingress around the component.
3. A rubber port cover is added to keep liquid out when the port is not in use.

Cat phones products do not rely solely on port covers of this kind to preserve waterproofing. Long experience has shown that users all-too-often forget to close them firmly when the port is not in use. Moreover, their watertight fit can become compromised over time through general wear and tear, and their removal - whether accidental or intentional - is among the most regularly seen forms of damage to devices. What is more, accidents happen, and a user could easily drop a phone into a puddle or onto a wet floor, or spill liquid over the product, while the port cover was not in place. Yet despite these clear deficiencies, port covers are the only form of ingress protection around the USB connector offered by Doogee or Blackview on their devices.

More alarmingly, the teardowns also found examples of low quality, sometimes recycled components being used, and even identified imitation components, including 'dummy' cameras, on both the Blackview and Doogee devices.

The distinction could not be more pronounced. The Cat S42 H+ is built to exacting standards, with authentic, high-quality components and materials, and is packed with design innovations that allow it to survive in the toughest conditions in which it may be used. It's a professional, tier-one operator-grade work phone.

By comparison, the cheaper 'rugged' competitor products were nowhere near as well-built, or nearly as robust. They are phones made to look tough, rather than tough phones built to last.

Buy once, buy right

In a business context where phone damage is commonplace, the deployment of rugged devices can offer organisations the chance to realise significant productivity and total cost of ownership benefits. Mass-market handsets are too fragile, reputable repairs can be very costly, and businesses report that employees with broken phones are more often-than-not unable to carry out their job roles without notable or significant disruption to their productivity. Robustly designed devices can drastically mitigate this expense, disruption and inconvenience - but only if they are able to live up to their promised resilience and toughness.

Cat phones boast market-leading rugged credentials. As a minimum:

• All Cat smartphones are drop tested from up to 1.8m on to an unyielding steel plate, including repeated drops on each side and corner.
• All Cat smartphones are fully sand, dirt and dust-proof, and fully waterproof and submergible - tested to IP68 and IP69/IP69K.
• All Cat smartphone exceed the US military's MIL-SPEC 810H standard, passing tests including their ability to withstand thermal shocks, high and low temperature extremes, high humidity, vibration, and additional drop tests.
• All Cat smartphones undergo a series of 'real-world' testing, including real-life drop scenarios on to different surfaces, tumble tests, spill tests, and tests to ensure they can be washed and sanitised with soap and hot water, with alcohol gels or wipes, or with bleach-based chemical cleaners.
• All Cat smartphones have displays protected by thick, recessed, toughened glass and are shipped with factory-fitted screen protectors for additional protection.
• All Cat smartphones have hidden structural elements that prevent damage from moving internal components, bending, flexing, and impact forces.

There is nothing superficial or skin deep about these credentials. They are achieved consistently across the range on the back of a decade of design and engineering enhancements and progress. Phones have never been so tough. Today's Cat smartphones are Rugged to the Core.

by Tim Shepherd; Senior Director, Apps and Product Marketing, Bullitt.

I have been proud to be part of the Cat phones team at Bullitt since 2014 and have first-hand experience of the work, expertise, and attention-to-detail that goes into making Cat phones products as tough as they can be. The progress and innovation over the past decade - much of which I have seen - has been nothing short of staggering, and there's plenty more to come!