Bombproof gadgets: Our most trusty technology

AnonymousMon 4 February, 2008 9:44pm

HTC TyTN
survives college, pubs, and concrete.

best smartphone ever.

AnonymousMon 4 February, 2008 11:03pm

I have a Sony NZR900 MD walkman that has been through the wars. Ive dropped it onto all manner of surfaces from all manner of heights, stood on it, soaked it, and it still works. Once or twice I have had to do some minor tinkering to keep it going. Saying that it still looks good - even the battery door is still intact (usually the first thing to break off any such product).

Most importantly it sounds fantastic. None of my MP3 players have faired so well, yet my MD still rocks on at the grand old age of 6 1/2 years!

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 10:14am

The original Game Boy is the best.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 7:08pm

The Lomo? BIG FAT BS.

The shutter dies often. It'll end up sticking and just stop working completely. Sometimes the electronics inside die too and it doesn't do the "purported" automatic metering like it's supposed to. Whoever wrote this article obviously is a poser and hasn't had his Lomo for more than a few months.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 7:13pm

The HP 15C or most any of its predecessors gets my vote

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 7:22pm

The Nokia 6250 actually was a tough phone, mine survived many high falls AND beer immersions.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 7:46pm

My HP-15C still works 25 years later! I have dropped it, dripped coffee on it, and left in my car when it was -25F!! There is a reason they toss TI-30 and not the HP-15C, because the 15C would probably dent the ground FIRST.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 7:47pm

Completely agree about the HP 15C. The one I bought in September 1982 is sitting right next to my keyboard as I type. I use it at least once a day. The only thing that's ever gone wrong with it was the "hp" badge falling off the faceplate.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 7:59pm

My gameboy survived being doused in fortnight-old soapy dirtwater, and the game still played as well. Definitely a tough product.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 8:02pm

No, I don't agree that it's the toughest product ever. Perhaps the "journalist" should go a bit further back - anyone with an interest in Commodore's products knows that all of their stuff with manufacturing dates of late 70's and early 80's - some 10 years before the GB - still work perfectly. Tough break, Gameboy.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 8:37pm

There's an original Game Boy in a case at the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center, New York which shows heavy battle damage from its time in the possession of an American serviceman overseas. It's charred, melted, misshapen, and distorted.

… and it still works.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 8:40pm

I gotta disagree with the Motorola V220. I've know 4-6 people with this phone and it was horrible. I know you are thinking...naw, it can't be that bad! But it is! I'd rather use a pair of cups and string or smoke signals than use this phone. Positively one of the worst pieces of technology ever created. I can guarantee that this phone is in the back of Motorola's phone closet and they are hoping that like your one night stand with the girl who looked better with every drink, that you will forget it forever.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 8:48pm

Game boys weren't that great. a five foot drop onto tile floor killed my brother's and an single hour in 75 degree sun killed mine.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 8:50pm

I remember back in the day my friend thought he could wash the dust out of his gameboy with water poured into the slot where games normally go. It had a weird line of black pixels running down the screen for a couple days but once that went away you would never have known!

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 9:08pm

I'd love to agree with this article, but I'm sad to say I haven't yet found the tech toy which could survive me...oops.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 9:20pm

You're lucky your pod-style imac works -- at the surplus I work at, they're more reliable than the older Imacs but still have roughly a 33% failure rate (versus the older Imacs having closer to 75% failure rate.) 5 years just isn't a big deal for a PC; we get Dells by the hundred and have perhaps 5% failure rate all the way back to Pentium 2s (although, the P2s and most P3s are unsellable because no one wants one.)

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 9:37pm

I had a Sony alarm clock for 21 years, and I got it at second hand from my parents after they used it for a year or two as well. It got knocked around, dropped, moved from Maine to Minnesota to Georgia to Colorado, spent some time in Scotland, and held up beautifully until its speaker finally died earlier this year. I hope my new Sony alarm clock lasts me half as long.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 10:08pm

"-- apart from its considerable girth, I've never seen a phone smaller than this. -Nick Hide"
Check out the VK V2000 ;)

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 10:19pm

I have an iMac G3 which has outlived its successor, a G4 much like the one featured here. The G4 I had was trouble almost from day 1. During its lifetime, the hard drive malfunctioned repeatedly, and the original motherboard was faulty (fortunately, it was still under warranty when I figured that out.), and what finally killed it was the simultaneous, spontaneous total breakdown of the LCD monitor, the video cable connecting said monitor to the GPU, and the GPU itself. By contrast, the G3 is approaching six or seven years in service. The only things not in new working order are the CD drive, which needs a little assistance in ejecting disks every now and the, and the speakers.

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 11:21pm

The V220 may be small, but I think the Samsung X830 is smaller.

And all hail the Gameboy!

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 11:24pm

The Mac that I have the most ruggedness respect for has been my 600MHz G3 iBook 12". The thing went down half a flight of stairs, up a mountain in a backpack with two 10lb rocks in it (don't ask why, just accept it), survived my entire college career and is now in the hands of my step mother and four year old half sister, who apply more abuse than I ever could. My deepest respect for that laptop!

AnonymousTue 5 February, 2008 11:49pm

The 5210 - no one believed me when i told them how strong it was. my solution...throw it at a brick wall. the problem - my friend walked right in front of the wall at the same time i threw it... gave him 5 stitches under his eye. there was not a scratch on the phone.

my rating - 5 stars.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 12:14am

Well don't forget about nintendo's other systems like NES and SNES. I've had both since I was five or six (10 years ago) and they still work like a charm.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 12:42am

The flash-based Creative MuVos have got to be some of the toughest mp3 players out there. My 1Gb MuVo TX FM has been dropped, stepped on, washed, ground against other bulkier gadgets numerous times, and I still use it today. The battery cover, the most fragile part, is long gone, I just go without it. My friend's dad had one, and one time he was riding his motorcycle and noticed a rattling behind him. He had been dragging his MuVo on the road, and it was still playing.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 12:50am

My son found a gameboy in the bottom of a pool. A little drying out and it works fine.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 12:51am

YES. The Motorola Vx series is indestructable. I owned a v551 for many years and found it near-impossible to break. Drops from any number of heights on to any number of surfaces, much sweat, the elements...

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 1:23am

I must say my most bulletproof gadget is my Zippo. Been through 2 1/2 wars in my family and still works as good as a new one after like 60 years. I also agree on the MD Walkman. I had mine through 10+ years of serious abuse and travel. Finally ditched it for an iPod about 3 three years ago. Been through probably 3 iPods since.
The Lomo's are hit or miss. They are either tanks or giant smoldering pieces of crapola. A friend bought a Yugo new in 86 and was still driving it like 10 years later. He never had a problem with it. We always accused him of having a couple spares around but for some reason his happened to be bulletproof.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 1:23am

ZOMFGLOL MY HP PDA HAS LASTED ME 3 YEARS SO IT MUST BE TEH AWESOMES! OH OH OH AND MY OLD 400MHZ COMPUTER THAT SITS HERE BEHIND ME, IT IS TEH AWESOMES IT IS SO OLD AND WORKING SO GUD.

holy sh**, a 2 year old could have written a better article. No wonder I left cnet 4 years ago

OMFG CNET IZ R AWESOMES U R GUD ET RITING ITZ BEEN YRS AND U ARENT BROKE!

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 1:24am

Lost an HP 11C for several years in a recliner. When it was finally found it had broken in half but was still useable and my sister used through high school and possibly college if I remember correctly. Most of these lost the HP logo after a few years of abuse.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 1:40am

My Vote goes to the Pentax Optio WP.
Im into enjoying myself, and not (holding back) worring about breaking things.
Rain, snow, mud, Beer, Gravel, Rock, Vibration, Baked in car, Hang off D-Ring below freezing, Pub pass around camera, Dropped.
Sure its dented, scratched, but Ive Clocked the Filenames, and it keeps going.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 2:57am

I can't believe there's no love for the old SNES controllers. Now THAT'S how you make something durable. Countless times mine were spiked into concrete floors, brick walls, the SNES itself, you name it...and it possibly worked better every time. I still have the originals. A crack here or there never stopped the functionality at all. I wish I could say the same about my PS1 and PS2 controllers...

timothyb89Wed 6 February, 2008 4:42am

I've got an NES that still works, as do all the games. Almost every part of it has had a chance to be broken, but its still in one piece (the full set: the gun controller, two normal controllers, several games, the console itself, and even an old cheats book).

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 5:26am

WHERE-THE-HELL-IS the Nokia 3390? That thing is immortal, my most mentally troubled friends all managed to make their 3390s last years, they only stopped using it when they got a new camera phone. All of their other phones have exploded in pieces after their usual careless use of them.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 9:07am

"anyone with an interest in Commodore's products"

Yes, because we all carried our 128 and 64's around with us. You do understand the point, right? Portable technology is exposed to far more drops, foreign substances and general abuse than a desktop that camps, well, on a desk top for it's entire useage period.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 10:06am

Ipt shuffle. Dropped it, squeezed it, sat on it, soaked it, generally abused it.... and it took it with a smile...

Admittedly though, Game Boy deserves to last longer... Tetris anyone?

B-Boy BeaumontWed 6 February, 2008 11:27am

My Nokia 5210 broke the first goddamn day i got it! Drop proof my muscular buttocks. I had it in my bag, i drop my bag on the floor, i get my phone out - BROKEN SCREEN. It had that thing where the screen is split and it looks like ink is spilling out of it. I had to conjure a contorted workflow for finding out what people's phone numbers were by going to edit people's numbers and adding three zeros to the front of them so that it would push their number onto the right hand side of the screen.

I did love that phone though.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 12:15pm

The Apple II must be the most reliable piece of machinery that I know of. When I worked at an Apple dealer in the early 90s we had customer who had an original Apple II running continually in a chemical factory (Kemira) since 1978.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 1:27pm

Agreed, there's nothing stronger than the Nintendo Game Boy.

I've never seen a product come close to taking as much abuse as that unit takes and still work fine. I still remember the story of the kid who lost his, out the window and into the snow behind his house in the middle of winter. He didn't find it again until summer, long after the spring thaw, and it still powered up with game functioning just fine. I've also seen many survive fires and work fine even though they looked awful, all melted and distorted...

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 4:27pm

the game boy is brilliant, i found one under by bed, and used for a week without the battery cover, the batteries didnt need changing from constant play, and these are the cheap alkies you get, found the battery cover, feels nicer to hold now, it was made it 1989, 1989! i was made in 1992! and it probably has more memory than me, be it at 8K... got pokemon yellow and its awesome, no cracks, no breaks, no buttons sticking, its brilliant, its even so old there is dust on the inside of the screen

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 4:27pm

NOKIA 6010. It has since been washed down a river, but it was run over by our Jeep Cherokee and kept ticking. I would toss it around and bounce it off payment to show it off to my friends. It has since been discontinued, and I now have a 6030, which makes me laugh at its build quality.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 4:32pm

+1 for the Nokia 5210. I had one which regularly ended up slamming around under the car seat after falling out of my pocket, and a good friend once remembered he left his in his shirt pocket - just as the washing machine containing said shirt started on the final rinse and spin. Dried out in the sun, it worked fine. In comparison I have to treat a modern phone like it's made of china....

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 5:19pm

Cannot Beat a Motorola iDen i700 Monochrome Phone From Nextel

I *Hated* This Phone, But It Sure Was Durable, I Have Seen This Phone Thrown From Moving Cars, I Have Seen It Dropped From 2nd and 3rd Floor Roofs, I Have Seen It Submersed In Water, I Have Seen It Left In The Rain For Days, I Have Seen It Left In Piles Of Snow For Days... And It Still Worked, Flawlessly No Less, Not One Dead Pixel Or Anything

Its Only Major Downfall Was It Was *Huge*, Far Too Clunky To Carry Around Every Day

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 6:10pm

This isn't a game piece or music box, but I have a TI-35 calculator that was bought in 1981, and a year later I had to change the battery. It is STILL operating on that battery!!! It's ben dropped soiled, the cover is falling off, but it keeps on ticking!! Lee W. Palm Beach

Ryan_pepperWed 6 February, 2008 6:32pm

I have a muvo MP3 player, and although it's only about 6 years old it sure has seen some abuse.
i once dropped it out of a moving bus window into the middle o f the road without realising. I somehow figured out where it was and had to dash into the middle of a busy road to fetch it... it had been ran over about 5 times and it still worked, despite the screen not working. nowadays, it doesn't have a cover after someone sat on it in class, but yet it continues to work. Good old creative. Shame my 30gb zen vision m didn't last that long. it stopped transfering songs for some reason

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 6:37pm

LG VX-9800 "The V"

I don't know what the enV is like. But, I dropped mine on cement at least 5 times over the space of the 2 years I had it and it always worked perfectly. Now that I've gotten a new phone, it's now being used by another member of my family and is still working perfectly. I also still have the original GameBoy, NES and SNES. All work perfectly, as well.

AnonymousWed 6 February, 2008 7:50pm

This is precisely why I detest Alienware. I payed a few thousand for my 51m 7700 laptop, and it was falling apart within the first year. Overheating, screws and rubber feat falling out, a broken display hinge, scorching marks across the face, the keyboard texture rubbing off, curious scratching where the display rests when closed, and on and on. They do not know how to build a laptop.

AnonymousThu 7 February, 2008 5:36pm

6 years from an iMac is nothing. I regularly expect my Mac not only to last 6 or 8 years, but to run the most recent software up ttil almost the very end of their usable life. My Sawtooth G4 is still going strong, though the DVD-RAM drive isn't supported in the OS since OS X came out. Oh, and it runs Tiger. In realtime. At age... let's see, it turns 8 this summer. I plan to hand it down to my kids if I ever get he dough to buy a Mac Pro to replace it. And I've fallen down the stairs with three different iBooks (an SE, a G4 1.4 and a Macbook) and none of them have even so much as whined. I can only hope my MacBook Pro is so tough.

Also, my vote for the GameBoy Advance. Those things are BULLETPROOF. I have one that my 13 year old, who has broken everything and destroyed everything she has ever touched, has had since she was about 7. It's STILL going strong. Though granted, her little sister's newer GBA was heaved hard across the room and shattered the screen. It only last 2 years. I can't count how many games I've put through the wash.

iampavFri 8 February, 2008 9:18pm

Find it tough to choose between the Nokia 7610, which suffered many falls, my Amstrad CPC, which survived many more falls (mostly tripping over cables) and the Microsoft Xbox, which understand could survive a bullet at point blank range!

AnonymousMon 11 February, 2008 12:40am

Gameboy. Yes. I remember I dropped mine 12ft onto a hard tile floor and it was barely damaged at all. Also, my old nokia was pretty indestructable, no idea what model it was, but this was just before colour screens became standard. Ironicly I finally managed to destroy it by throwing it at a wall to prove to my flatmates how indestructable it was...

AnonymousSun 17 February, 2008 6:23pm

I put a Nokia 3510 in a cement mixer filled with gravel, for a bit of a giggle. It had also been dropped from heights onto concrete multiple times and booted down the street after a drunken night out - and it still worked, until I lost it...

Also the Nintendo 64 - had mine since '97, it was used for hours every day, yet still works. Try playing an xbox 360 11 years after buying it, bet it doesn't work.

redmozzyThu 21 February, 2008 12:16am

My Sinclair Spectrum is pretty tough. Owned it since 1982, it's been dropped many times, is all scratched up, has spent months at a time in the loft (in all heats) and still works! It looks pretty tatty now though

AnonymousThu 17 April, 2008 12:15am

The LG 8300 for Verizon. It fell out of my pocket as I was riding my bike home from work and bounced into traffic. Four cars ran it over with one swerving into it just to be a prick. The screen was shot and the battery would overheat which would shut off the phone after a bit, but it worked well enough to call the insurance company and have them send me a new one.

AnonymousTue 29 April, 2008 11:19pm

I have a set of cobra walkie talkies that I've been using snowboarding, at the lake, concerts.....I've had them for 4 years, and I can't believe they still work perfectly. They have been beaten on pretty hard, dropped in the lake, one fell off the back of the truck while driving, and I dropped one off a chair lift. 3 months later when most of the snow was gone, it was turned in by ski patrol. Still works perfectly somehow.

AnonymousTue 29 April, 2008 11:21pm

the drums that come with rockband! I've been beating the crap out of mine for months and they still work great.

AnonymousFri 16 May, 2008 8:51pm

i love my gameboy, it was bought second hand in the 90s, had me and my little brother fight over (and with) it , its been buried in sand, dropped many many times and even dropped in a stream and it still works, no problem! the only damage it has are slight scratches on the screen.
i bow to nintendo

AnonymousTue 29 July, 2008 2:02pm

My Siemens M35! It's seven years old, still going strong - I can throw it around, it bounces and has easy peasy, one-handed, speedy texting (I have not found a phone to replace it as regards texting - designers note please - with space key on top row your thumb only moves between 3 rows of keys not 4 (except for v occasional use of punctuation, but who needs that?! - it is therefore the most ergonomic I have come across in terms of being virtually RSI proof). I have two phones, 3 batteries, but charger on last legs and parts now obsolete - boo hoo. Reckon I'll try one of Sony's new basic handsets (R300) - smaller screen = higher keypad and better ergonomics for texting. So sadly, despite all the fantastic technology around, I find I have to choose between texting and internet on a phone. Sorry - but no way am I regressing and doing TWO-handed phone use/texting as with sliders eg.