We've been testing all four 'rugged' phones available in the UK and have given them a sound thrashing (including driving over them with a Land Rover Defender and dropping them 12ft on to concrete). The resulting article is in tomorrow's Farmers Weekly and will be on www.fwi.co.uk/machinery tomorrow (Friday) morning.

There's a chance to win a couple of the phones too. Just post any good stories about mobiles of yours that have gone through fire, flood, being run over by a tractor, power harrowed, fallen in the slurry pit etc - and survived. Or else any sad tales of the demise of your mobile under unspeakable or unpleasant circumstances!

We'll give you a couple of weeks to come up with some good stories and then tell you who's won.

Incidentally, the prize phones aren't the ones we've been testing. They're brand new. Honest.

 

Not mine but my dads Nokia 3210 fell ou this pocket on a huck heap and got buried by him driving over it, he did find it eventually, and it still worked.

Not the best stories but anyway,

My mums ran over 2 phones and dad's had alot drop out of his top worksuit pocket into horse water buckets!

I need one of these tough phones.... I dropped my last one down the toilet. Managed to retrieve it (don't ask!) but it never worked again.

 Was out ice fishing the other night with some freands and one of them droped his phone through the hole in the ice. When we texted his phone that was 12feet under at the botem of the river we decided wead better try and get it back. Attempet one was was an ax head with a flash light on to try and locate it a bit better this attempt failed. Next we put down the fish camaera (a plastick fish with a underwater camera and a littal TV on the surface) Managed to locate the phone with this and position it so that we could see it and start trying to hook it with line and hooks all this did was flip the phone over. Attempt 3 consisted of a 15 tree brance and a big ladel on the end that we used to try and scoop the phone up with this also failed. Lastnight we whent back with a magnet and suckseeded in removing some 20 beer botal caps from the river but no phone it may have to waight till the summer to be recoverd.

 

Nokia 3310 now that’s a good phone haha, My one lasted 3 years, it got driven over by my dads car twice and my mums car once, dropped out of my pocket many time haha, I dropped it in the Thames River and then jumped in after it and thankfully retrieved it, then it stopped working, after 2 days I tried switching it on again a it bursted into life, Then unfortunately when I was building new pig sties I was adding some cement to the sides and as I lent over the cement bucket to fill in a crack, my phone fell out of my pocket and landed in the bucket with the cement, unfortunately I did not realise:-( and so I added water and sturd the cement ,I put the cement on the wall and looked at it and my phone was in the wall haha, the phone stopped working, which is a shame but the simcard lived on, and i still use the simcard and i hasnt let me down haha

ricky

canadean farm hand:

Was out ice fishing the other night with some freands and one of them droped his phone through the hole in the ice.

And here was me thinking the treatment phones get on UK farms is about the roughest you could imagine - I now see that's not the case! Good luck with retrieving it, canadean farm hand.

many a poor phone has ended up thrown at an innocent wall, one fell out of my pocket when i was in a man basket on a tower crane and survived!!(couldnt believe it) drove over one with a 6920s, but the funniest one was when i was driving home one summer with all the windows open in my car, got to my turn which was a right turn   (handy to visualise this) , as i swung around to the right at some aggressive speed my phone slid across the dash in front of me and flew clean out of the passenger side window!!!, sadly she didnt survive but i did laugh my *** off!!!   nokia R.I.P

Some great stories already.  I only seem to have speaker and microphone problems, no really gory stories, though i've broken a screen once when quickly getting ready to go out, i threw wallet and phone on the bed, took off my belt and flung it towards the bed, but smacking the screen head on, and the sudden death of a good phone!!  I had a good one on the back of a potato harvester a few years ago.  I was busy grading on the back table, in overalls which then didn't have velcro pockets.  I happened to hear my phone ringing, felt my pocket - nothing there - and the noise was getting further away, then suddenly realised it had disappeared with the potatoes up the elevator into the trailer!!  Needless to say, a quick scramble into the trailer was required to retrieve the old 3210, which survived the fall as well as a battering from the spuds, and a pint owed to my mate who rang me up with timing to perfection!!

Hi, ok I have a rather random mobile phone story, which I hope should be up there with the rest of them.... A few years ago now, summer of 2001 (I Think) I had just taken delivery of brand new shiny Sony Ericsson T20s, two days later I was in a corn bin, shoveling the last few tons to top it off, mobile phone in my top pocket, and I manged to loose it, it must have fell out of my pocket. We then tried all of the usual things when you loose your phone, checking your pockets, time and time again, constantly ringing the phone! and after much searching gave up and bought another handset. Four months later whilst loading a hopper for a grain lorry that was due that afternoon, the alarm bells rang in the drier, informing me there was a blockage,I then set off to unblock the conveyor, the blockage was a good thirty foot from the bin I was unloading, and incidently  thirty foot away from the bin I lost my phone in, and yes I know what your thinking!?! when I removed the cover, there was my mobile phone, a little bruised and showing a few light war wounds, and it's fair to say more than a little dusty, but other than that it was in good order.

After loading the hopper, I paid the workshop a visit and blew the phone off with the air line, searched for the charger back at home, and once I had found it, thought I would see if it worked, and yes, sure enough the phone fired up and worked for a good few years afterwards, sadly the modern phone's these day's just dont seem to be able to stand up to that kind of abuse, on average most of my handset's now a days last me 6 months if I am lucky! 

 

 My longest survivor was one of those 'phones the size and weight of a half brick. I dropped it in a farrowing hut but rescued it before it was too badly chewed, the screen was cracked and the zero button loose. It fell out of my pocket into a trough, I dismantled it and laid it out to dry on a sow hut, and it survived! It was dropped off a straw rick, lost twice overnight, and eventually gave up the ghost after being run over by the Ford 5000 and water bowser combination! Three years made that mobile the record!

the 3210 nokias etc were hellish sturdy phone, dont make them like that anymore, got a 6300 now and rather than buy a new phone every time a scat the screen up i buy a new 20 quid  screen, can swap them around in 5 mins

had a sony ericsson k750i i was washing a fordson dexta off i had just used my phone then i put it back in my pocket then hadent fastend it in the top poket in my boilersuit then lent over then the phone fell strate out in to the bowl off warter so i got it out then turend the heater on in the workshop let it dry out for an hour then tried it then it come on strate away as if nothing had happend.

 

my dad dropped his Nokia 3110 into a pig pen without realising. later found it. it had been chewed, urinated on, excreted on, nuzzled around and stood on by a pen of 30kg weaners. didnt work. put it in rayburn for an hour. came out, turned on; just smelt a bit and has a very scratched screen  BUT STILL WORKS!!.

Some good stories here. Looks like the pig farmers amongst you seem to give your phones the ultimate test!

I read the article in FW.  The phones seem quite impressive but I find one of the main problems is that the screens get very scratched with abrasion of dust etc, and become unreadable over a period of time.  I always have a good quality fitted leather and clear plastic case on my phone (currently Nokia 6300) so if the case gets scratched, the phone is still OK.  Also I always have a case with a substantial belt clip fitted.

There are two features that would be really useful to me but which no phone manufacturer seems to have thought of.  The first is some sort of auto location device.   I often find that the phone has dropped out of my pocket and I haven't a clue where it might be.  It could be in any of the lambing pens, or in the rest of the strawed out section of the barn.  It could be up on the hay bales, or out in the field.  If I'm on my own, I have to go home to ring someone on the landline and ask them to keep ringing my mobile until I answer it.  I can usually find it by sound or light from the screen.  I have seen advertised key fobs which emit a whistle if you clap your hands and the inclusion of such a device in a mobile phone would be really useful.

The second feature would be some kind of device to warn me as I leave the house that my phone is still on the kitchen table.  This would save a great deal of aggravation.

I haven't heard of an auto-location device for phones, but I guess you could always get a cheap SIM card, put a few quid on it and put it in an old-but-still-working mobile. Then you could phone the main phone if it gets lost, which would save having to go home.  

And, yeah, I know you'd have to charge the second phone up too. But of course if you lost the back-up phone, you could phone it with your main phone.

And there are proximity sensor devices around that warn you if you're more than a certain distance (5m, I think) away from something you've already 'tagged'. People use them for keys, phones and small children. Google proximeter sensor children and I guess you'll find something.   

After seeing the tough phone test in this weeks issue. I was thinking about sending am email to Farmers weekly to tell them they forgot one phone, Sony Ericson k800i. After dropping it in a trough, losing it on holiday in Canada in 4ft of snow, -20c, overnight and on top of a frozen lake. And more recently, while chasing escaped heifers, it flew from my pocket and into the mud. A friend found it a week later it had been trampled, experienced -8c and terenchal rain. After 3 days of drying out and wack on the kitchen table it worked beautifully. It is also much better spec than the other tough phones, a good camera, large memory, mp3, (for holding songs for when the tractor radio is broken) 3G internet, colour screen, 3.2 mega pixel camera/video and everything else you can imagine. Adam

well i got a nokia 6620i and ive had it for about 5 years its fell out of my top pocket many times, its been amongst cow muck a fair few times, got ran over by my trusty fordson major, it also fell into a bucket of water and i had to sit next to the boiler to dry out over night, a log smashed it when i was log splitting and had it sat on another log, and it also got lost in a load of shavings and stopped working so i took it to my phone shop, they took it all to peices and blew all the dust and crap out of it and its still working to this day ! proper job

A few years ago i had a Nokia 5210, a great phone! ,In fact i still have one today. The first one i had for about 3 years untill one christmas when we had a little shoot with a few friends. After not seeing many pheasants, we tried the ducks who also took evasive action and would not fly! I waded in the pool as far as i could go then proceeded to jump up and down to try and frighten the ducks off, but all that happened was my phone jumped out of my overall pocket and fell in the pool. I groped about in the water for a couple of minutes before finding it, took it back to the rayburn for an overnight stay, and it worked next morning! Then 2 weeks later i had a blockage in the straw chopper, and after leaning in and unblocking it i spread te rest of the bale only to find my trusty phone missing, on closer examination of the cubicle beds i found quite a few bits of phone mixed with the straw.! No point trying to ring that one again!!!!

A few years ago, after I had got rid of the old travelling bug I decided to return to our family cereal farm, obviously I needed some method of communication, just so I could take those all important phonecalls from lorry drivers laden with fertiliser or better still keeping in contact with those all important pals, whilst powerharrowing on those long september evenings.......has anybody noticed how inane radio programming becomes between.the hours of 7 and 9pm. I decided that a practical, hard wearing, cheap, farmers phone was not for me and a flashy, expensive but incredibly flimsy Motorola V3i was.

I took delivery of my phone one january morning, ill never forget it as i spent half an hour flipping the lid on it, practising how to answer it with typical James Bond aplomb. After that it was placed carefully in my pocket waiting for that first ring. Unfortunately that would never materialise as i had forgotten my workshop keys were in the same pocket, and after bending down to check some tyre pressures (always think health and safety) and hearing a crunch it was sim card out and back into the old phone, 1 smashed screen within one hour of the courier knocking on my door.

 Luckily for me I took out a business insurance policy and V3i number 2 was soon despatched to start its life as a farmers most important tool. Luckily I had slightly more luck with number 2. It lasted till late march and came to a very sticky end. A new fence was erected and I gave myself the job of creasoting, which was going particularly well until I heard a plop! Yes it had fallen into my bucket..... and to give a bit of credit to Motorola the phone did not die straight away, granted the keys were a bit sticky and you got a headrush when answering it, but we had another couple of days together before it finally expired..... the courier's first question when he came to collect it was .....I thought creasote was banned?

 V3i number 3 fell into a puddle whilst walking the dog after approx 3 months......it did not dry out.

 V3i number 4 was genuinely faulty and number 5 died after answering it when I had wet hair after id just got out of a sauna!!

 It was decided that it was probably for the best to get an indistructable phone so I ordered a Samsung brick, which worked very well until it met a particularly gruesome death in a puddle whilst being driven over by my loader. I have to say the phone was fairly intact apart from the screen which was non existant. I was able to relay to my friends that the brick wasnt as indestructable as I was led to believe.

 I have now got a flimsy nokia thing which stays in the truck most of the time, its safer that way!!

 Phone has been rocoverd from the botem of the river and it WORKS it can send and receve calls just the screen dosent work to good but after a week of being submerged under 12 feet of freezing water dont think thats to bad.

 

I've the Sony Ericsson c702 at the minute and its been a great 'work' phone so far. Why didn't you guys review this one?? Its the new rugged phone from Sony and bloody good. Water proof, shock proof, dust proof etc etc etc.

 All the sony's i've had have been very good. Iploughed one in once when i opened tractor door to through apple core out and phone fell out of top pocket and before i could stop it was buried!! Took while to find it but was good as new when found. Also we were installing a big 5000l under ground water drianage tank once, for some reason i lent over the small opening at the top and phone fell out of top pocket straight into the tank. none of us workers were small enough to fit throught the small opening in tank so had to get the managers 5yr old to climb in and retrieve it!! poor sod!!

Got a nice new N95 ( far too good for the farm really but good mp3 player) and whilst servicing the Lexion 420 2 weeks ago, the engine oil drain pipe bung slipped from my somewhat frozen fingers. 15 lt of oil then poured all over myself helpfully filling the breast pockets of my boiler suit to the brim and submerging the phone. The well lubricated Nokia has eventually lost all speaker and microphone functions but screen remains good although a little blurry ( sounds like you having a conversation underwater apparently) and is now in intensive care in London. Outlook good.

Moral:if going to get a phone wet engine oil is better than water and zip up your pockets.

mildred:

I've the Sony Ericsson c702 at the minute and its been a great 'work' phone so far. Why didn't you guys review this one??

I think the criteria were that it had to be more than just splash and dust resistant. That said - it sounds like you are saying it is tough enough