Motorola Defy rugged Android phone defies British weather

Motorola has announced a new 'Defy' smart phone, which looks like it might be good for those of you who like to give your gadget a bit of a battering.

Announced alongside the new Motorola Milestone 2 it's a different beast, with no keyboard and running Android 2.1 rather than 2.2, though it does have a 3.7 inch touch screen.

But the less fancy specs are made up by the potential toughness of the little phone, which is described as 'dust proof and water resistant, protecting you from life's little challenges'.

The Defy screen is supposed to be scratch resistant, and is said to cope with problems such as sudden rain showers, spilt drinks, or dropping your phone in the sand.

Motorola says the Defy meets or exceeds the IP67 standard. This means it should be dust resistant, and can be immersed in up to 1m of water.

But its toughness doesn't mean it has scrimped on all of the features that we expect from our smart phones. As well as Android, it has a 5-megapixel camera with flash, digital zoom and autofocus.

There's also something called CrystalTalk PLUS, which is supposed to filter out background noise and amplify your voice by using two microphones. 

Like the Milestone 2, it also has the fancy text messaging system Swype. The lack of Android 2.2 means that it won't have full Flash support in the web browser, instead relying on the rubbish Adobe Flash Lite.

We'll test out how sturdy it is when we get to test one in a full review.