Quechua first sold some samples of their 5" outdoor phone to a few customers to gather feedback from amateur hikers testing the product. Few weeks later, the Quechua Phone 5' phone is presented to the press and is now available at a larger scale in Decathlon stores. This article will cover the product presentation and will given some insights on the this new "Mountain proof" smartphone.

The Quechua Phone 5" genesis

The original product idea was to design a hike App then it appears that something was missing to host this App: a device. Ensuing follows a selection process to find the host which corresponded to the requirements: a screen bright enough to allow reading in full sun, a long-life battery, a rugged internal/external design to resist in harsh conditions.

The Quechua team did not find such device on the market and they decided to discard the idea to adapt an existing device by designing a device from scratch. They also mentioned that 25% of Quechua budget is dedicated to Research and Development. The Quechua design team wanted to equip their smartphone with special items:

• An Alti/baro (altimeter and barometer)
• A seal to enhance the case water resistance.
• An internal steel plate (1mm thick) in charge of phone stiffness.
• A rubber to absorb shocks and to improve gripping ability.
• A MicroSD card slot to counterbalance the lower level of internal memory (1Go RAM and 4Go flash)

And more usual ones:

• a 5” screen (840x480) with a brightness of 350cd/m² and anti-reflective treatment. It is not a Gorilla Glass (GFF?) but it could be thicker which shall be of sufficient strength.
• A Qualcomm S4 MSM8225Q at 1.2 GHz.
• A long life battery (3500mAh)
• According to Quechua this smartphone can support up to 3 days in a “normal” use… The objective is to allow the hikers to use it for an entire week-end. On this specific…