Some of Samsung’s coolest devices are things we just don’t get here. Case in point: The company’s new Galaxy XCover 7 Pro and Tab Active 5 Pro rugged devices. The toughened pair contain features we haven’t seen since relatively early in the smartphone days.
The features? The ability to remove the backplate and swap out the battery. The ‘backward’ step makes sense in the context of Samsung’s target market. These are field devices intended to be used where power may not be reliably available. Eliminating the need for a recharge delay also means more efficiency for whoever uses them. Construction and military types. You know, people with head protection.
Get to XCover 7 Pro!
The removable battery feature isn’t new to the product lineup, but it’s still exciting. Even if we still haven’t seen one in person since the last time we were excited. The XCover 7 Pro is the smartphone of the pair, designed with an IP68 rating (almost every Samsung phone has that), drop resistance up to 1.5 metres (not every Samsung has that), and a MIL-STD-810H rating (ditto).
Inside is a fair collection of innards. The 1,080 x 2,408 6.6in display is an IPS LCD with a 120Hz refresh rate, coated in Gorilla Glass Victus+, with a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 doing all the hard work. 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM are your only options for the other key specs, but Samsung has left a space inside the XCover 7 Pro for a microSD card. Cameras are present but, as far as Samsung goes, not especially notable.
Some Galaxy AI functions, like Circle to Search, are present, but it’s the programmable keys and support for POGO charging interfaces that make this an attractive buy for a specific sort of customer. The 5G connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E, and network slicing support help in this regard as well, with both devices sharing this capability.
Tab Active 5 Pro away
The Tab Active 5 Pro goes a little harder than the XCover 7 Pro in that it includes an S Pen stylus — it seems to be the lacking-connectivity version Samsung is using now — and supports something called No Battery Mode. It’ll function when connected to a power source, whether there’s a battery or not. It’s in the name.
The 1,920 x 1,200 10.1in display is a 120Hz TFT LCD, while the Tab Active 5 Pro uses the same processor, RAM, and storage layout as its more mobile cousin. There is a 256GB/8GB model available as well. Both have microSD support. Whether you’ll ever buy one of these is up for debate, but it would be cool to swap batteries one more time.
Both the XCover 7 Pro and Tab Active 5 Pro are set for launch later this month, with pricing to follow. We wouldn’t count on seeing them available at retail locally. It seems South Africa doesn’t have much use for mobile devices that are hard to kill.
