Archos Quecha is a rugged Android phone for the outdoors

Rugged Android phones are usually rugged, ugly, low-spec and running an outdated version of Android. The new Archos Quecha isn’t though!

Archos’s new Quecha phone is designed with outdoors use in mind, but thankfully they haven’t decided it has to be a terribly ugly brick to get the job done. Instead of the usual nasty yellow and black rubber brick design, the Quecha has a modern rounded design and actually looks more like a standard Android phone with rugged case.

The phone meets IP54 certification meaning it is water and dust resistant and will remain operation after drop or trips to extreme hot or cold landscapes. If you’re not always playing Bear Grylls you can enjoy video on the large 5-inch display, and the 1.2Ghz quad-core Snapdragon CPU with 1GB RAM should be enough for some simple gaming. There is also a 5 mega-pixel rear camera and large 3500mAh battery.

Unfortunately Archos have decided to load Android 4.1 on the phone, while better than those Gingerbread phones which are still getting made it would have been nice to see at least Android 4.2.