The imminent Land Rover smartphone, Explore (£599), sounds exciting. Described variously as “ultra-rugged” and the “toughest phone in the world”, it’s bulkier than a regular smartphone (great, I love carrying stuff) and splash- and dust-resistant. One presumes that this is in case the au pair hasn’t done a diligent enough cleaning job or the jets in the wetroom go off accidentally?
Explore offers extra battery life from an “adventure pack”, which also improves the phone’s GPS signal – so useful for when people are finding it difficult to find their way out of the car park of a particularly large Waitrose. And – hurrah! – there’s a built-in compass. Only the other day, I got completely lost among the bath-bombs in Lush and was considering sending up a flare.
I love the sound of the Explore phone (I actually do). I also love that it sounds as though it might be bought by the same people who see the countryside about once a year and, instead, drive their Land Rovers in towns and cities, where the roughest terrain they’ll encounter comes courtesy of speed bumps, and the odd discarded Badoit water bottle. Ultra-rugged or utterly delusional – it’s all the same.
