When Caterpillar launched its first Android smartphone, the B15, back in 2013, it was unclear just what the company expected out of a product so foreign to its traditional yellow iron segments.
Was it simply a stab at a licensing success (such as Cat boots and apparel), meant to gauge demand for that CAT logo on the back of a phone? Or was it a commitment to a product category the company thought was being under-designed for in the construction and trades markets, where a phone can die a thousand different deaths?
Just three years later, and with a
now company-wide focus on becoming a technology and heavy equipment provider, it’s clear Cat’s intentions were more in line with the latter. After launching an update to the
B15 in the
B15Q in 2014, Cat has built a full-on rugged smartphone lineup with the launch of the
S50, S40 and S50c in the last year alone, scoring an exclusive carrier deal with Verizon on the S50c.
And now, just more than a month after
the launch of the push-to-talk-enabled S50c, Cat has announced its latest smartphone in the lead up to the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain. And beyond being the best looking, and most premium phone Cat has produced to date, it has a feature no other smartphone on the market can boast; one that is sure to endear it to even more of those working in the trades.
The only FLIR-embedded smartphone
The new Cat S60 is the first smartphone with built-in thermal imaging thanks to an embedded FLIR camera.
While FLIR currently offers a dongle for the iPhone and certain Android models (and a case for older models of those phones), the S60 is the first device to benefit from an embedded FLIR system.
The FLIR system highlights temperature contrasts, and displays a visualization of heat invisible to the naked eye on the S60 display. Cat says the camera can detect heat and measure surface temperatures from a distance of 50 to 100 feet. It can also detect these temperature differences through obscurants such as smoke.
Cat says the FLIR camera on the S60 can be used for jobsite applications such as “detecting heat loss around windows and doors; spotting moisture and missing insulation; identifying over-heating electrical appliances and circuitry; and seeing in complete darkness.”
There are undoubtedly many more, and with the growing popularity of jobsite collaboration apps such as FieldLens and Procore, which encourage an almost social-media-like sharing of photos and jobsite updates throughout the day, having FLIR built into the phone could prove incredibly useful.
Still images, panoramas and videos can be taken with the FLIR camera. The system also feature changeable heat palettes, a temperature spot meter and minimum, maximum and average temperature data.
When Caterpillar launched its first Android smartphone, the B15, back in 2013, it was unclear just what the company expected out of a product so foreign to its traditional yellow iron segments.
Was it simply a stab at a licensing success (such as Cat boots and apparel), meant to gauge demand for that CAT logo on the back of a phone? Or was it a commitment to a product category the company thought was being under-designed for in the construction and trades markets, where a phone can die a thousand different deaths?
Just three years later, and with a now company-wide focus on becoming a technology and heavy equipment provider, it’s clear Cat’s intentions were more in line with the latter. After launching an update to the B15 in the B15Q in 2014, Cat has built a full-on rugged smartphone lineup with the launch of the S50, S40 and S50c in the last year alone, scoring an exclusive carrier deal with Verizon on the S50c.
And now, just more than a month after the launch of the push-to-talk-enabled S50c, Cat has announced its latest smartphone in the lead up to the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain. And beyond being the best looking, and most premium phone Cat has produced to date, it has a feature no other smartphone on the market can boast; one that is sure to endear it to even more of those working in the trades.