Motorola announces DEFY rugged Android slab smartphone

Motorola DEFY

Motorola DEFY

Motorola DEFY

Today Motorola announced the new, rugged Motorola DEFY Android 2.1 smartphone. The DEFY features a simple slab form factor that is built to stand up to IP67 certification for water immersion and dust. The DEFY sports the same 3.7-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen^(INFO) display as is found on the DROID 2 (and MILESTONE 2), and manages to keep its thickness down to a relatively thin 13.4mm.

The DEFY comes with Adobe Flash Lite support for the Webkit-based browser built-in and offers Motorola's MOTOBLUR social networking and messaging user interface extensions, which include an array of home screen widgets. There is support for IMAP/POP and Exchange email as well as Gmail, and many different social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, can be easily integrated and imported as contacts. Users should appreciate the built-in Swype text input system since there is no hardware keyboard on the DEFY.

The Motorola DEFY features a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash. A music player is also available, and it can be used with both wired 3.5mm headphones as well as with wireless Bluetooth headphones and headsets, and media can also be accessed through the phone's DLNA^(INFO) support. A full suite of Google apps are also available on the phone, including Calendar, Latitude, Google Maps Navigation with Street View, and Google Search By Voice.

No word yet on pricing or availability of the Motorola DEFY.