If you could add any feature to your smartphone, what would it be? For me, it would probably be for a battery that could last a week on a phone that was truly unbreakable. Now what about a thermal camera? That may not have crossed our minds right away but it sounds pretty cool right? Well a thermal camera is exactly what Caterpillar (commonly referred to as CAT) is pitching with their latest handset, the S60.

Thermal imaging can be useful for many professionals. Electricians can use the live heat map to see if a fuse box is overloaded or a plumber can use it to find where the hot water is getting blocked in a complex set of pipes. Even if you aren’t a professional in those trades, there are plenty of mundane applications for the thermal imaging too. For instance, if you’re having a barbeque, you could check the temperature of your burgers to make sure they’re cooking to perfection.

On the back of the S60 lies two cameras. The first one is a Lepton thermal imaging sensor which has been developed by an industry specialist called FLIR. The second camera is a traditional 13 megapixel camera which takes the heat map and enhances it with the outlines of nearby objects. Now in terms of the rest of the S60, it packs some reasonably high specifications which are worth noting. The 4.7 inch 720 pixel display is surrounded by a smooth metal rail and a back plate with a carbon fiber finish which sounds technically but it’s basically saying that the device sports a metal build. Large, clickable buttons are visible from almost every angle on the device and there is a small bump at the top of the phone which supports FLIR’s logo. While it won’t beat the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge when it comes to design, the S60 looks a bit more normal than other Cat smartphones at least.

The S60 is available for $599 (equivalent to roughly 649 euros) which is a standard flagship price with slightly less flagship performance. The phone runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 process, 3 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of internal storage. What makes this device unique is the thermal imaging, the fact that it is waterproof for up to an hour at a depth of five meters, dustproof, and can be dropped onto concrete from about 1.8 meters up (the average height of someone talking on the phone). So for those who are in need of a durable phone and want something new, this may be a phone worth looking into as it seems like it will revolutionize the future of cameras. 

Continue Reading: Meet the first smartphone equipped with a thermal camera