Pharos 565 Rugged PDA Revealed [Rugged PDA Sports 654MHz Processor, 256MB RAM, 3.5-inch Screen]

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Many of us have jobs where we don’t have a use for the various rugged gadgets that are out there, but for those who do, the folks at Pharos have introduced a new rugged PDA. Pharos makes a small line of smartphones, GPS personal nav units and PDAs, so the rugged “565 PDA” is coming from people with experience.

Under the hood, it’s got a Marvell 624MHz processor, along with 256MB of RAM and 512MB of flash memory for hard storage. It’s running Windows Mobile 6.5, which, unfortunately is about to be outdated by Windows ‘Phone’ 7 at MWC next week. The screen comes in at a meek 3.5-inches, but I don’t imagine anybody will be watching videos for fun on this thing.

A TFTS reader once commented that a lot of rugged gadgets have Windows Mobile, so it would have been nice to see Pharos try something out of the box with Android or some other flavor of Linux. However, all of Pharos’ other smartphones and PDAs were running Windows Mobile, so they were sticking to what they knew.

For connectivity, it has WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as a GPS receiver for navigation. While Pharos isn’t shipping the device with any of these accessories, it has a ton of enterprise ports for add-ons like barcode and RFID readers, which opens it up for a lot of solutions. It’s also meets IP54 standards for drop protection, which ensures it can withstand a four to five foot drop.

The rugged Pharos 565 PDA is now shipping from Pharos’ website for $530.