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The Explore R is a fairly hefty phone measuring 160 x 76 x 11mm and weighing 225 grams. There’s no need for a protective case though so this is the size and weight you’ll be carrying. The battery is 3,100 mAh, which Land Rover says is enough for 1.5 days with “medium=to-heavy” use. The phone has a 12mp Sony dual pixel rear camera and an 8mp front camera. There’s a compass, your exact latitude and longitude, altitude, the local time, sunset and sunrise times, tide times, a stopwatch, humidity, UV index, wind speed, visibility, sea temperature, swell height, SOS torch (which flashes)… the list is endless. Mobile phones are pretty much the piece of tech that the majority of us tend to carry on a ride, so why not choose a phone suited to getting muddy, wet and generally abused? This is where the Land Rover Explore comes in. Land Rover is a name synonymous with durability, the venerable Defender 4×4 is renowned for being pretty hard to kill, so when the Explore was announced What do you get? As for battery life, the team behind it claim it’ll run for 1.5 days. Not bad, but certainly not anything groundbreaking.
The Land Rover Explore is also water-resistant to IP68. This means it can be submerged at a depth of 1.5 metres for over half an hour. However, this doesn’t make it truly water-sports-ready. For that you need 5-10ATM resistance, because it needs to withstand the added pressure of movement, not just submersion. However, despite the Explore’s ‘Land Rover DNA’ being of little interest to true outdoor types, this phone - with its cute car-inspired design motifs - has fans of the luxury car brand firmly in its sights. So the Explore will likely be welcomed just as much by posers as by pioneers.Another highlight of the Land Rover Explore smartphone is its ViewRanger app, which allows hikers and cyclists to navigate using off-road topographical mapping in conjunction with that ceramic patch GPS antenna. Google apps like Chrome, Gmail and Play Store are preinstalled. There’s also an app called Explore Hub with links to a wide range of potentially useful outdoor apps. use policy may apply. Standard 1 year subscription, which can be extended after the initial term advised by your Land Rover Retailer. In car features should be used by drivers only when safe to do so. Drivers must ensure they are in full control of the vehicle at all times. Our personal favorite feature is that it can still work okay in freezing temperatures, from -30°C to 65°C/-22°F to 149°F. Regular smartphones stop working at about 0°C/32°F. For anyone who frequently skis or hikes in winter, that’s a potentially vital feature.
The figures provided are manufacturer’s estimates and will be replaced with the official EU test figures as soon as they are available. For comparison purposes only. Real world figures may differ. CO 2 and fuel economy figures may vary according to factors such as driving styles, environmental conditions, load, wheel fitment and accessories. While you can get take reasonable day-lit shots with a little patience, the Explore’s low-light image quality is fairly poor. Pictures look soft. The app is simplistic, too. Panorama is the only extra mode, although dig into settings and you can record RAW images rather than JPEGs, letting you coax the most from this under-optimised camera. Selfies are soft and milky-looking, too. If you want to take memory-sculpting photos of a mountain ascent, bring a proper camera.Powered by a 2.6 GHz MediaTek processor, this smartphone delivers efficient performance for daily tasks and applications. It supports 3G bands in the frequencies of 850, 900, 1900, and 2100 MHz, as well as 2G bands (primary SIM) in the frequencies of 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz. We learned only from the press release that the rear camera’s lens is designed like a Land Rover headlight, and that the front-mounted speakers resemble the engine’s grille. Clever stuff, but unless you’re a Land Rover fan, you won’t notice any of that. We didn’t.
Peak brightness could also be improved. An outdoors phone has some of the greatest need for an ultra-high nit display such as that of the LG G7 ThinQ, but the Explore’s max brightness is just conventional. On a bright day you can see what’s on-screen, but you may need to cup a hand over it to see clearly.
Verdict
Although the phone’s display is covered with regular Corning Gorilla Glass 5, and a tough factory-fitted screen protector, Land Rover has worked with the Bullitt Group (which makes the CAT phones) to ensure the display will respond to gloved fingers, even when it’s wet. The phone also comes with a built-in offline topographical map service from Ordnance Survey for UK travelling and ViewRanger for European travelling. Additionally, it has a pre-loaded app curation portal called Explore Hub that provides a selection of outdoor activity apps.
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