Thursday seems like an appropriate day to check out something of a throwback from Samsung. Remember how, back in the day, you could pop the battery out of your phone if it was going wonky? Or was, you know, flat and you happened to have a spare battery on hand? Well that’s a thing again with Samsung’s new Galaxy XCover Pro smartphone.

There’s always a catch

But, of course, there’s a catch. The rugged (yeah, it’s rugged too) smartphone is set to be available first in Finland, previously the stronghold of one Nokia. Samsung’s playing in someone else’s back yard — they must be feeling rather confident of late.

And why not? The Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro might have a huge 4,050mAh battery but that hasn’t stopped the company from securing an IP69 rating for the handset. So even with the ability to crack the case open without tools, you should still battle to drown the phone.

The XCover Pro’s other specs aren’t bad either. It features a 6.3in display, a 13MP front camera and dual (24MP+8MP) rear sensors, as well as a couple of programmable buttons — something we wish they’d put on more smartphones. A Wet Touch and Glove mode make it easier to use in Finland’s climate (and possibly other locations too — it could move to other European countries this February). There’s an Exynos 9611 processor riding shotgun, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage packing Android 9 to look forward to.

There’s no word on whether we’ll ever see it in the Southern Hemisphere but if it does rock up, expect it to start at around R8,000 or so.

Source: Android Police