Standby times and talktimes have always been a bit of a contentious area. If you’ve traded up from a regular mobile to a smartphone, you’ll be used to feeding the thing with mains electricity every day like some ravenous electronic dog.

Even if you’re using an ordinary mobile, you’re probably still having to charge it every three or four days. So the claim by Land Rover that its rugged mobile can snooze away in standby months for two months sounds a bit far-fetched.

Having tried the phone for three or four weeks, I can report that the battery lasts an astonishingly long time. Twenty-two hours of talktime? I didn’t get to do that much chatting but I guess it could be possible.

How does it do it? As far as I could see, it was mainly the fact that it has a very big battery. In fact its dimensions are more like those of a matchbox rather than the wafer-thin mint that powers many mobiles.

But there’s more to this phone than just electrical staying power. The S2 (which is actually made by Californian rugged phone specialist Sonim) is a pretty tough cookie. It’s waterproof to 2m depth (provided you’ve remembered to push the rubber bungs in) and it’s happy to be dropped from 2m on to concrete.

This latest version, however, is surprisingly sophisticated. There’s a 2MP camera, video camera, torch and music player. Also, the somewhat crude buttons on previous Sonim models have been replaced with rather more precise and expensive-feeling versions.

It’s not a smartphone, though you can access WAP, which gives you a relatively crude version of the web. But if you’re tough on your phones, this is the one for you.

You can buy it from Land Rover or Daventry firm The Phone Trader. Retail price is £299 plus VAT.

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