In a nutshell: Remember the good old days when phones were made to last and had batteries you could take out? Samsung does. The company has quietly launched a new Galaxy handset that joins its lineup of rugged devices while boasting a 4,050mAh removable battery.
With their fragile bodies covered in glass, many of today's smartphones break if you so much as cough in their direction. The new XCover Pro, however, isn't as easy to destroy, thanks to its US military standard MIL-STD-810 certification and IP68 water/dust resistance rating.
Unlike many rugged smartphones, the successor to the Galaxy XCover 4 has many of the design features found in modern handsets. There's a large 6.3-inch LCD screen with a 20:9 aspect ratio and a punch hole notch in the top left corner.
The XCover Pro's internals includes a mid-range octa-core Exynos 9611 chipset, 4 GB of RAM, and 64 GB of memory that's expandable through a microSD card. There's also a rear camera setup consisting of a 25MP and 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens, a 13MP selfie cam, and a capacitive fingerprint reader in the power button.
As this phone is designed for use in hostile environments, it comes with two programmable buttons that control the flashlight or for creating text messages via voice. But the most compelling aspect for many people might be the removable battery---something we rarely see these days.
The Galaxy XCover Pro, which comes with Android 9 Pie but could receive a future Android 10 update, launches in Europe next month for around 500 Euros (about $556). No word on if or when it'll come to the US.