During the summer, Samsung announced the Galaxy XCover6 Pro, and only a few short weeks later, the company also made available to the public the Galaxy Tab Active4 Pro. Now, presumably inspired by our previous series of throwbacks, the Korean manufacturer has made the decision to take us on a trip down memory lane and examine the accomplishments of the two formidable lineups.
The Galaxy XCover was the catalyst for everything that followed. In August of 2011, Samsung debuted its first fully ruggedized smartphone. Equipped with Wi-Fi, an accelerometer, and a touch screen protected by Corning Gorilla Glass, it boasted a number of capabilities that were absent from the majority of conventional handsets at the time. The next version, which was released in March 2013, was called XCover 2, and it was the successor. It included a camera for taking selfies, the ability to capture videos in high definition, and the Android Jelly Bean operating system with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI 5
Galaxy Tab Active was Samsung’s first attempt at creating a tough tablet, and it was released before the end of 2014. It was designed primarily for business-to-business use and had IP67 dust and water protection for use by field employees. In addition to that, it possessed a Snapdragon 400 chipset with a quad-core CPU, therefore its performance was satisfactory.
In April of 2015, Samsung added the Galaxy XCover 3 to its line of tough smartphones. A larger screen, the ability to connect to 4G LTE networks, and a key that can be programmed to quickly access apps are all featured on this device. After all, the majority of people who used these devices were businesspeople who frequently dealt with sensitive information. Samsung responded to this market need by developing its own security system, which it called Samsung Knox.
After another year had passed, in April of 2017, the XCover 4 was finally introduced to the audience. It did, however, feature a chipset that was speedier as well as greater RAM and storage space, all of which are logical steps of evolution in the world of smartphones. Despite this, Samsung has additionally brought MIL-STD810G certification for even greater durability. The military-grade standard encompasses the greatest number of different types of durability evaluations.
The Galaxy Tab Active 2 was released in the fall of 2017, and it is an 8-inch rugged tablet with support for the S Pen, 3 gigabytes of random access memory, and IP68 certification once again for dust and water resistance. Big screens are essential, and that is why the Galaxy Tab Active 2 was released. Two years later, in the summer of 2019, the XCover 4s received a small upgrade that included dual-SIM capabilities and double the storage capacity of its predecessor.
In the autumn of 2019, Samsung added another level of functionality to the rugged devices it manufactures. We discovered that the Galaxy Tab Active Pro used a 10nm Snapdragon 670 CPU, 4 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM), and a 10.1-inch display. It was compatible with Samsung DeX and added the ability to use touch sensitivity even while wearing thick gloves.
Early in the year 2020, Samsung released the Galaxy XCover Pro, a B2B smartphone that featured a screen measuring 6.3 inches and offered protection against drops of up to 1.5 metres in height. A contract between Samsung and Walmart, in which the world’s largest retailer made the decision to buy 740,000 units of the business-focused product for its employees, is a tribute to the product’s superiority as a commercial offering.
The Galaxy Tab Active3, which debuted in the fall of 2020, was an even more cutting-edge tablet than its two immediate predecessors. When the device was plugged in, Samsung made available a cool function that it named No Battery Mode. This mode enabled the phone to function normally without making use of the battery. In addition to that, it featured rapid Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and was toughness-certified to the MIL-STD-810H standard.
In addition, the Galaxy XCover 5 features a larger 5.3-inch screen, an Exynos 850 chipset, and the most recent version of the MIL-STD-810H military-grade protective standard. It was also the first XCover phone to do away with the physical keys that were located on the front of the device, which is something that its non-rugged Samsung Galaxy siblings had already done in 2017.
This brief tour comes to a close with one of the newest products, the XCover6 Pro, which is the first smartphone in the series to support 5G connectivity. In addition to that, it supports Samsung DeX and comes with 6 GB of RAM. Thanks to the Snapdragon 778G processor, the Galaxy Tab Active4 Pro was also able to hop aboard the bandwagon of next-generation connectivity. Touch Sensitivity, No Battery Mode, and an Active Key are some of the additional features that were formerly exclusive to the XCover smartphones and are now included on this device.
The progression of the XCover series is without a doubt astounding, as it demonstrates how far we have come in terms of achieving greater durability without significantly diminishing the quality of the user experience. Who knows, in a few years the rugged line might become the latest victim of its popularity as conventional phones acquire the same level of durability. But who knows?
