A Damn Tough Phone.

My Casio EXILIM C721 by Verizon.

Do not try this at home.

I have had this phone for about 3 months. I regularly use it for taking photos for work. (Accident scenes, and so on.) There were three major factors in choosing this phone for my personal use.

• Price: I think it was $25 with my plan.
• Camera: This phone has a 5.1 mp camera with OPTICAL zoom. (Seriously, how many phones have optical zoom.) Good enough to shoot a 3x5 print.
• Mil-Spec rating: It is rated 810F, meeting standards for Water (immersion and rain), Humidity, Salt-Fog, Shock, Vibration, Dust, Altitude and Temperature. (From the manual.)

I am hard on my equipment (you should see my prior phone, still alive after 4 years.) So I was looking for something durable. This was it.

Just this last week I was on vacation in California, and was taking photos at the beach. After the last photo, I bumped my hand while re-holstering the camera, dropping the camera into the receding surf. It was immersed for about 5 seconds in a salt-water and fine sand slurry. I jumped down off the rock and recovered the phone giving it a quick shake and rinse in the salt water to remove the sand. Great relief showing that it still worked. About 20 minutes later at the car, I gave it a fresh water rinse to be sure that the salt would not damage it. My wife gasped as I poured water over my phone, but it did the job. Still works like a charm. Mind you, it was in 'sealed' mode, no ports were open (the SD card and headphone port have watertight seal covers.)

A recent addition was getting a Zagg Invisible Sheild for the phone, it covers the screen, back and back of the flip. It still fits in the charging stand, it is maybe 4 mils thick, and protects the body from scratches. It took about 20 minutes to apply.