Photos: two rugged Windows Mobile handhelds

Motorola's MC55 Enterprise Digital Assistant carries DNA from company's 2007 purchase of rugged device specialist Symbol Technologies.

The MC55 cannot be described as attractive, but this 336g, 152mm by 77mm by 27mm device (the version without the external antenna is slightly smaller and lighter) is designed to handle tough conditions. It 'meets and exceeds' MIL-STD 810F and should withstand drops from 1.2 metres onto concrete and 250 'tumbles' from 0.5m (equivalent to 500 drops). The innards are sealed to IP54 level.

The MC55 runs Windows Mobile 6.1 on a platform comprising a 520MHz Intel PXA270 processor, 128MB of RAM, 256MB of ROM and a microSD card slot. The 3.5in. 240-by-320-pixel touch-screen is accompanied by by either a QWERTY keyboard or a phone-style number pad. Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g or b/g) and Bluetooth (2.0+EDR) are built in, with wide-area wireless — albeit only at 2.5G (GPRS/EDGE) speeds — and GPS available on the external antenna model.

Image capture options include a 2-megapixel camera with flash and a bar code scanner (1D or 2D).