Caterpillar equips ‘construction worker phone’ with Android 6.0 with thermal camera

Caterpillar announces the Cat S60, a rugged smartphone with built-in thermal camera from manufacturer Flir. It is the first time that a telephone manufacturer has built such a camera into a device, the manufacturer claims.

The thermal camera allows users to explore spaces in the dark, measure heat loss at windows and doors and spot moisture, says Caterpillar. Until now, the thermal camera was only available as a case for other smartphones. With the Cat S60, the Flir camera is located on the back of the device as a second camera.

In addition, the device is drop-resistant and waterproof to a depth of two meters. By flipping a switch on the front of the device, the device can be submerged up to five meters under water. That switch closes off the speaker, among other things. According to Caterpillar, the camera can also be used underwater.

The phone has a 4.7″ screen with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels. The device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617-soc, with eight Cortex A53 processor cores and an Adreno 405 GPU, assisted by 3GB of memory. The storage is 32GB. The battery has a capacity of 3800mAh The device measures approximately 15×7.3cm and is 14mm thick.

The phone has support for 4G, but it is unknown whether the smartphone supports all frequencies. The smartphone runs on Android 6.0. Caterpillar will release the device in June for a suggested retail price of 649 euros.