Motorola, T-Mobile Announce Rugged Defy Smartphone

Motorola and T-Mobile on Monday announced the Defy, a new ruggedized cell phone powered by Google's Android OS.

The Defy is a slab-style, touch-screen smartphone with a 3.7-inch, scratch-resistant 854-by-480 screen. It's tough, water-resistant, and dustproof, according to Motorola. Dual-microphone noise cancellation helps keep calls clear.

This is Motorola's second rugged Android phone, after the Motorola i1 on Sprint's Nextel network. The i1 hasn't been a huge success, but that's in part because the Nextel network has extremely slow Internet speeds, making smartphones less appealing than on other networks.

Motorola and T-Mobile are holding back a bunch of specs, which could make or break the device. Most notably, we don't what version of Android is running on the Defy or its processor speed. We do know it has a 5-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi.

Motorola does have a version of the Defy available overseas, though. That model runs Android 2.1 with an HSPA 7.2 Internet connection. Other specs include an FM radio, video recording, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, a large-ish 1540 mAh battery, and the usual Bluetooth, GPS and such. The European model has 512MB of RAM and 2GB of internal storage, along with a MicroSD card slot.

According to various Web sites, the European Defy runs on a TI OMAP 3610 chipset, which is an 800-MHz ARM Cortex-A8 — faster than the original Motorola Droid and the current Motorola Charm, but not as fast as the Droid X or Droid 2.

The Defy will be coming by "the holidays," Motorola said.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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