Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The CAT B15 is clearly not being geared toward average Joes who work a conventional 9-to-5 in the safe confines of a climate-controlled office. It’s very much for people who work in construction and in other more “extreme” environments where their devices do need to be tougher. Not surprisingly, the CAT B15 offers military grade protection against all sorts of things, like drops, water submersion, dust and extreme weather.

It is disappointing that it’s built like a tank on the outside and like a toy on the inside. The specs are worthy of a smartphone from three years ago: 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9, 512MB of RAM, and a 4-inch WVGA display with Gorilla Glass. That’s equivalent to a first-gen Samsung Galaxy S. When you consider that the people working at construction sites really rely on this tech, you would think that Caterpillar would put some beefier specs to back up the beefier exterior. At least it’s running a newer version of Android, if the mocked up screen above is to be believed.

In any case, the Caterpillar CAT B15 should ship in March for the European market at an MSRP of £299. I’d assume Caterpillar will ship to North America too at a comparable price.

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Waiting for a really, really rugged Android smartphone that looks like it’s from a bond film? The device that you see above might be what you are looking for. The G-Shock smartphone, which is the latest in a range of rugged smartphones from Casio, was apparently one we missed at CES 2012 and it’s full of testosterone.

The Casio G-Shock follows the rugged G’zOne Commando from the company. But the new device is the toughest of the two and a bit ugly as well. But you can’t have everything all at once, right?

As you might have guessed by now, the G-Shock is coming with all kinds of ‘-resistant’ prefixes, such as shock resistant (up to 10 feet), water resistant to 1.0 bar (10m) and pressure resistant to 1.0 bar. And, as you can see, the phone also looks similar to the company’s successful line of durable wrist watches.

The G-Shock features a metal case back and over there you will find exposed screws as well. On the software side, it will be running Android (most probably Gingerbread), but you won’t find the usual capacitive buttons at the bottom. They have been placed on the sides near the corners.

No hints regarding pricing and availability at the moment. But we will keep you updated. In the meantime, don’t drop your current phone to hard.

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