Hands-on Olympus R1000 tough handheld review

MobileMag got their hands on the Olympus R1000 tough digital assistant, and used those hands to throw it around quite a bit. It's not that they were angry with the handheld
— in fact, they rather quite lurved it — but any PDA marketing itself as a rugged unit deserves to be put through the ringer a bit. They dropped it from 6 feet, threw it, spilled drinks on it, even fully submerged it in a tank of water —
and the polycarbonite plastic-cased unit played like the Energizer bunny and kept on going.

Overall, they found the unit sleek, light, and easy to use. They were extremely pleased with the 128MB RAM/256MB ROM
and 12 hours of battery life (they also note Olympus may double this at the expense of a few centimeters' thickness).
Notable also is your choice of Windows CE .NET 4.2 or Qtopia Linux 2.3.6 operating systems. The unit has integrated Bluetooth but no WiFi (though the R1018 version of this does come with onboard WiFi), and no SD or CF expansion slots —
the lack of which is intended as a security measure, as this handheld is designed around the twin concepts of rugged portability and security. Owning a handheld you can drop in the fish tank is gonna cost you, though: $899 for the R1000 and a whopping $1099 for the R1018 if you need the integrated WiFi.

[Thanks, fp!]