Samsung’s next-gen rugged Android phone with a mid-range SoC may launch soon

Samsung, apart from making all those gorgeous looking Galaxy phones, has a lineup of rugged phones as well. And the upcoming phone in this line-up - XCover Pro 2 has been spotted on the benchmarking database already.

The Galaxy XCover Pro 2 has paid a mandatory visit to the Geekbench database ahead of its launch and as a result, the key specifications of the phone have been revealed.

According to a report by MySmartPrice, this rugged phone bearing model number SM-G736B is expected to come with an Octa-Core Snapdragon 778G SoC coupled with Adreno 642L GPU. The phone might come in various storage and memory variants and the benchmark listing reveals that it will have at least 6GB of RAM and will ship with Android 12 out of the box.

This upcoming phone will be a successor to the Galaxy X Cover Pro which was released in 2020 and sported an Exynos 9611 SoC paired with 4GB RAM. Compared to the predecessor, the XCover Pro 2 could be a way more powerful device. The chipset powering the upcoming device is almost similar to the Snapdragon 860 SoC, however, since it is fabricated with a 6nm process, it is more power-efficient. The phone is expected to ship with Android 12 out of the box.

Also, it is worth noticing that the same -Snapdragon 778G chipset powers various mainstream devices like Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G, Realme GT Master Edition, Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G and the recently released Realme 9 Speed Edition. Hence the performance of the XCover 2 Pro could be somewhat similar to these phones.

Nokia XR20 competitor? 

While the market for rugged phones is fairly limited, there is still a demand for phones that aren’t as fragile as most mainstream devices. Phones in this category are far and few and are launched without much fanfare. 

One such phone that was recently launched in this category was the Nokia XR20 from HMD. However, owing to its price and niche-specific looks, it wasn't a runaway success.

While the Nokia XR20 has all the right ingredients for a worthy rugged phone, the Galaxy XCover Pro 2 might come with a slightly better hardware specification. If Samsung’s promise of 5 years of Android updates might be applicable on this phone as well, then it could be the icing on the cake.

• Upcoming phone launches in India for March 2022: Specs, launch date, and price