Best Rugged Smartphone For Hiking Adventures

Motorola Defy, 1.8m drop proof, fully waterproof up to 1.5m waters for 35 minutes, sand and dust proof and built to military specification 810H for thermal shock ranging from -30C and +75C for up to 30 minutes.

At around €200 and with a sleek profile, great stock android performance and a really good camera, this could well be the best budget rugged smartphone for hiking and outdoor adventure seekers.

Over the last two month I’ve been living my everyday outdoor lifestyle with the Motorola Defy. I've been really impressed by its build quality and performance, and most importantly for me the camera is also really good.

Every phone I’ve bought over the years ends up getting smashed when I drop them on the road while running and the last phone I had got destroyed when I dropped it in the wet sand at the beach.

Incredibly the Motorola Defy can withstand all of those scenarios in a sleek and attractive design. If you remove the supplied wrist strap, it really just looks and feels like a regular smartphone in a tough rubber case. And that’s what I really love about this phone, this rubberised rugged case is actually part of the phone. Also the screen is a scratch proof super tough Corning Gorilla glass Victus which is slightly recessed into the case for even more protection.

Performance is smooth with the Android 11 included update. Rear fingerprint reader works without any flaws and the battery life is mighty impressive. I can easily get a day and a half of battery life even with heavy use of the camera and video. 

Camera quality is a big surprise for me. The quality is far better than I was expecting, providing sharp and bright photos in any condition thanks to the 48MP sensor with Quad Pixel technology. Video is pretty good too, although I find results are much better with the image stabiliser switched to off. Camera quality on other rugged smartphones I’ve tested in the past has always been disappointing to a point of being useless for my social media work, not so with the Motorola Defy. All the pictures on our new Instagram were taken with the Motorola Defy and the videos on our TikTok were also taken with the Motorola Defy.
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Best budget priced rugged smartphone for hiking and extreme sports and with a really good camera…I can highly recommend the Motorola Defy, I really love this phone as my everyday companion built for hiking adventures in Cyprus and beyond,

Article by 
Michael Rivers
Founder of Rejuvenation Hiking, Limassol

Motorola Defy, unbreakable construction, fully waterproof, great value hiking adventure phone at around $200. Available from Amazon.

Amazon U.S. https://amzn.to/3XcNZZj
Amazon U.K. https://amzn.to/3Xg8rbO
Amazon DE https://amzn.to/3XjTPbx

Best deal is Amazon DE with fast shipping to Cyprus