IN 2014, CHERRY MOBILE introduced the U Series of rugged basic phones that has higher ingress protection ratings than most phones. An ingress protection rating of 6 and 7, or IP67, meant that it is totally protected against dust and can be dropped or submerged in water at one meter depth inside of a half hour without any ill effects to the internal components.
This type of phone certainly fits to my lifestyle of a weekend outdoorsman then. I ranged the mountains of Cebu to look for perfect campsites and I was also in the middle of a route exploration of the 400-kilometer Cebu Highlands Trail Project. My lifestyle demand that I have a phone that could function under great stress and does not break down.
Late in that same year, I acquired a black CHERRY MOBILE U2 with an IP67 rating. It is thick, bulky-looking but it is lightweight. Because of its lightness, it floats on water. It lights up and creates bubbles when it receives a call or a text message if I forcibly submerged it in a bucket of water. It has a hard-shell housing with rubber grips on the sides.
Originally
made by OINOM and re-branded for CHERRY MOBILE, it is impervious to the
elements, accidental and intentional drops, and rugged handling. Battery life
is three days average when in constant usage but could run five or more days
when on standby. The charging port and headphone plughole are found on the
upper left side, perfectly sealed by a rubber cover.
It has slots for two SIM cards and another slot for a microSD card, giving it the capacity to expand its memory of up to 16 gigabytes. It has Bluetooth, an FM radio, MP3 and MP4 players and a 0.3 MP VGA camera that could capture both still images and videos. When needed to use the internet, its own built-in browser could surf the web through GSM/WAP/GPRS technology.
It was the perfect phone. I carried this during my exploration of routes for the Cebu Highlands Trail in 2014-2016. The exploration was a well-fought battle against the elements where a failure of communication and time-keeping was unacceptable. It gave me a morale booster as it provided me entertainment in MP3 music and MP4 movies during rests in my campsites.
Its drawbacks were, after being removed from underneath the water, the moisture would dull the sound of the tiny speaker for hours; and there is no source to acquire and replace the battery. Fully-tested and nearing the end of its battery life, I carried this again during my epic Thruhike of Cebu in January-February 2017. It performed perfectly according to its specifications.
The CHERRY
MOBILE U2 is very flexible. You can customize features to your personal liking
like displaying your own wallpaper, convert time/date into military format and
be on alert with your own personal choice of ring tones. You can listen to your
own favorite collection of songs from the microSD. Although these features are
secondary to communications, your phone is greatly appreciated if you have
these, especially when you are on idle.
They don't make basic rugged phones like this anymore that floats on water yet small enough to fit comfortably in pockets. The CHERRY MOBILE U2 is my gold standard of my search of better rugged all-weather basic phones. I highly recommend this to all active individuals and adventure-seekers if it would only be available in the market. If only CHERRY MOBILE reintroduce this again. I hope they should.
Before I end
this piece, it is best you know that CHERRY MOBILE is a Filipino mobile phone
and electronics brand owned by Cosmic Technologies, that was established by CEO
Maynard Ngu in 2009. The company imports mobile phones manufactured by original
design manufacturers in China and markets them under the CHERRY MOBILE brand.
(Source: Google).
