As soon as Land Rover announced the all-new Defender, here at TG we bet our houses on it coming with some pretty gnarly off-road accessories to help invoke the adventurous spirit of its forefather. We now own many more houses. 

Still, one optional extra we didn’t bank on being available was this – the Land Rover Explore R smartphone. Of course, you don’t actually need to buy a Defender to grab the phone, but Land Rover and its partner Bullitt Group claim that its design is inspired by the reborn 4x4.

It’s supposed to be just as rugged too and has apparently been drop-tested from 1.8 metres onto steel. It runs on the Android operating system, has a Gorilla glass screen that works with gloves and is also fully waterproof at depths of up to 1.5 metres for 35 minutes. Perfect for when you drop the thing into a muddy green lane puddle. It also has a battery life of a day and a half.

There are a few features that we don’t fully understand but should probably tell you about – including the Night Mode that uses a red filter to reduce screen glare, the premium grade off-road topographical mapping and the 4GB of RAM and 64GB of ROM.

STORY Greg Potts