CAT-branded phones aren’t a brand-new thing. We formerly covered great deals of these Catapillar branded handsets, most just recently the exceptional S62 Pro.
The S75 is a considerable action up from the S62 Pro, having a larger screen, much better electronic cameras, a bigger battery and a a lot more effective SoC.
However, it still features the exact same 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as its predecessor, which appears less than modern-day rugged styles now normally come.
Two functions make the S75 excellent, and the very first of those is how rugged CAT made this gadget.
Where rugged phones can generally deal with being dropped a metre onto a difficult surface area, this one can make it through a 1.8m drop onto steel plate. We likewise frequently see waterproofing that enables submersion to a metre’s depth for as much as an hour, and the S75 just lasts 35 minutes, however it can deal with 5m without having a rubber plug covering the USB-C port.
Those functions make it really robust, however the 2nd unique function is almost distinct for mainstream phones; satellite messaging. Being able to send out a message from any remote area, regardless of cell protection, is incredibly helpful for anybody on an experience vacation , ocean cruising or who is far from civilisation.
The asking cost doesn’t rather match the spec, as Chinese phone makers provide more effective platforms with double the memory and storage for half the $599 asking cost. But those phones can’t send out a message by means of a satellite, and if you aren’t near a cell tower and require to interact, it may be low-cost at this cost.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
CAT S75 cost and accessibility
How much does it cost? $599/£549/€599
When is it out? It is available now in Europe
Where can you get it? You can get it in many areas direct from CAT
The CAT S75 can be purchased from many outlets and straight from CAT in many areas. From what we comprehend, the phone will be offered in the U.S.A. as the Motorola Defy 2 and ought to be available on Amazon by the end of June 2023. The rates of around $600 is really near to what the Defy 2 will be offering, however the CAT-branded variation may be partially more pricey.
There are extra expenses connected with the satellite messaging service that we’ll talk about in the future in this evaluation.
As with any gadget with distinct performance, the cost is the cost.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
CAT S75 style
Great rugged style
Odd button design
No audio jack
Specs
The CAT S75 that was sent to us for evaluation included the following hardware:
CPU: MediaTek Dimensity 930CPU Spec : Octa-core (2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A78 & 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55)GPU: IMG BXM-8-256RAM: 6 GBStorage: 128GB (expandable to 2TB with MicroSDXC)Screen: 6.6″ IPS LCD, 120HzResolution: 1080 x 2408 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~400 ppi density)SIM: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid SIM (Nano-SIM, double stand-by)Weight: 268gDimensions: 171 x 80 x 11.9 mmRugged Spec: IP68, IP69K and MIL-STD-810H (water resistant as much as 5m for 35 minutes)Rear electronic cameras: 50 MP f/1.8 broad, PDAF 8 MP, f/2.2 ultrawide, 2 MP f/2.4 macroFront cam: 8 MP, f/2.0 broadNetworking: WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.1OS: Android 12Battery: 5000mAh
From a toughness point of view, the S75 ticks all packages without opting for theatrical military styling or a sci-fi theme. All sides of the phone, with the exception of the screen, are covered in a thick impact-resistant surface area that is simple to grip.
There is a rubber plug safeguarding the SIM slot, however the USB-C charging port is open to the aspects. We’ve seen waterproof ports on other phones, however the submersion score of this one recommends that this USB-C inlet is on an entire various level.
Whereas rugged phones are normally ranked for 1.5m for possibly an hour, this one is water resistant as much as 5m for 35 minutes. That’s appropriate submersion to a good depth, enabling phones that get dropped into water of 5m or less to be recovered if the owner pursues them within a brief time.
It’s likewise been drop checked 1.8m (6ft) onto steel, showing it can deal with considerable abuse.
We’ve grumbled a little about other rugged phone makers utilizing really comparable button designs, however if anything, the S75 reveals why this may not be a bad thing after all.
On the right side are the volume rocker and power button. But unlike almost every other design we’ve seen for the past few years, the power button isn’t in the middle underneath the rocker but at the top, above it.
That’s a bit odd, and there are two additional special buttons, the one on the left is programmable, and another on the top is designated as an ‘SOS’ key.
In the advent that button is pressed, a special SOS message is sent out utilizing the inbuilt satellite messaging chip to FocusPoint International that can get you assistance if you have signed up for that service. Its placement is both easy to access and possibly too easy to accidentally trigger.
On the right side, where you might expect it is the SIM tray. Its one that allows you to mix Nano SIMs and a MicroSDXC chip. However, for the satellite messaging to work requires a specific SIM provided with the S75 to be installed, so you can only use the MicroSD if you don’t use a phone SIM. And, you can only have dual phone numbers if you don’t use satellite messaging.
If ever a design needed eSIM technology, then it was this phone, but alas, CAT didn’t see those possibilities in the S75 design.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
The underside of the S75 is smooth and flat, making it suitable for wireless charging that is in the phone. The camera cluster isn’t central, being shifted to the left-hand side. It couldn’t be put in the middle because the fingerprint sensor occupies that location. That sensor is disturbingly small, having an active area of just 9mm round. That makes it both difficult to find and also not entirely suitable for adult hands.
As with many rugged designs, there is no audio jack on the S75, and CAT doesn’t provide a USB-C-to-audio adapter. You can obviously use Bluetooth-connected headphones, but passive headphones will need an adapter to be purchased separately.
The screen appears to be the same as we saw on the Doogee V30T, and indoors it’s fine, but the lack of any anti-reflection coating makes it less than ideal in bright sunlight.
As you need to be outside to use the satellite service, that’s not ideal.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
Design score: 4/5
CAT S75 hardware
New Dimensity 930
Satellite Messaging
MediaTek has had great success with the Dimensity 900, and the CAT S75 uses a new variant of that silicon, the Dimensity 930.
On paper, they’re remarkably comparable. Both are fabricated at 6nm, consisting of some 10 Billion transistors and have a 10W TPD. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.
The Dimensity 930 doesn’t have the same Turbo frequency clocks as the 900, limiting to 2.2GHz, whereas the older chip offered 2.4GHz.
However, it does have a better ARMv8.2-A instruction set and manages to be faster in single and multi-thread operations by around 10-15%.
Probably the biggest change here is the GPU, as the 900 used the tried-and-tested Mali-G68 MC4, and in the 930, that was replaced by a PowerVR B-Series IMG BXM-8-256.
In performance terms, the new PowerVR has some advantages and a few disadvantages, however it’s hardly a dramatic difference.
Overall, the Dimensity 930 is a better SoC, but it isn’t like a user would be able to tell them apart unless they ran detailed benchmarks.
Ignoring the cameras till later, the truly interesting aspect of this phone is satellite communications.
In November 2022, a UK company Bullitt announced that it would be partnering with MediaTek to use that company’s 3GPP NTN (Non-Terrestrial Network) chipset, and we think that’s the chipset in the CAT S75.
This technology can interact with orbiting satellites for two-way communications without any cell tower service or WiFi services. Therefore, you can send and receive a text message from anywhere within the coverage areas of the satellite systems.
At this time, the whole of Europe, including Scandinavia, is operational, and shortly the whole of the USA and Canada will be added. A final rollout is planned for later in the year across South America, Africa, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. At this time, the Middle East, Russia, India and China aren’t covered, and there are no plans to change that limitation in the future.
How does it work? The CAT S75 comes with a special Nano SIM that connects to the service and must be placed in SIM Slot 2 for it to work. Actually, this service works even if the other SIM slot is unoccupied and the phone isn’t registered with a service provider.
It needs to be configured where you’ve got cell service or WiFi connection to the internet, but once this is done, it will work without either of those connections.
To send a message via satellite, the phone needs to be outside, where it can see the sky, and a special messaging application provided by Bullitt is used to establish a connection. The app provides a moving graphic to help you point the chip in the direction of the satellite, and once it is near enough, you can connect and send or receive a message. This is translated into an SMS message by the service and sent to the phone number of a contact you specify.
With the message is a link that allows the recipient to download Bullitt Messenger, and then reply to the S75.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
It would have been nice to see this all integrated with Android messaging services, but it works, and amazingly with a round trip of at least 44,000 miles, it only takes a few seconds for the message to arrive at its recipient.
The app provides three communication options, including a messaging service, the other two are an SOS service and a ‘Check in’ mechanism, where the position of the phone is sent at regular intervals to a previously agreed recipient.
Bullitt has promised that a new tracking feature which will provide a map for others to see with pins in it where the service linked to the phone will be available soon.
That any of this works at all is incredible considering the power of the phone and the 22,000 miles (35786km) to the orbiting satellite, but it does.
The cost of messaging it dependent on which plan you choose when you register to the Bullitt service, with prices ranging from $4.99/£4.99/€4.99 a month for 30 messages up to $29.99/£29.99/€29.99 for 300 messages. Or alternatively, a one-off payment of $59.99/£59.99/€59.99 gives you 250 messages spread over a year, which may be ideal for a specific trip. All subscriptions include a 12 months trial of unlimited SOS assistance.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
CAT S75 cameras
50MP sensor on the rear
Wide-angle and macro
Four cameras in total
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
The CAT S75 has four cameras:
Rear cameras: 50MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1, 8MP GalaxyCore GC08A3 and 2MP SmartSens SC202CS.
Front camera: 8MP Samsung ISOCELL 4H7
We are a little bemused by the main camera because the Dimensity 930 SoC was designed to work best with the Samsung 108MP sensor, yet it’s connected to an older Samsung ISOCELL JN1 50MP sensor on this phone.
That’s still a good sensor, but the best image quality it can capture, due to its pixel binning, is 12.5MP. The quality of the still images is excellent, but some might want more resolution than 4080 x 3072. There is a raw 50MP capture, but it lacks the quality of the default 12.5MP mode.
The supporting 8MP GalaxyCore GC08A3 is for super-wide shots, and the final 2MP is for focus effects. The front-facing camera is another Samsung sensor, the 8MP ISOCELL 4H7 8MP. Again, the quality of the images is fine, but many phones are coming with 16 or even 32MP front sensors these days.
What the primary sensor offers is a reasonable selection of special modes that include a super-macro and underwater shooting. In addition, video can be captured in slow motion and timelapse.
It doesn’t offer panoramic curiously, but it has a Pro mode with ISO and shutter speed controls.
Where this camera configuration is most disappointing is that the maximum video resolution is 1080p from a sensor that can capture 4K video.
That choice might have been driven by the 128GB storage of the phone, but it doesn’t begin to properly exploit what the Samsung ISOCELL JN1 is capable of.
When good hardware isn’t fully explored by software, it hints that those developing this device were working to a schedule that didn’t allow for that to happen, sadly.
Given these limits, it is odd that one feature we didn’t expect made it into the S75, and that’s full Widevine L1 encryption.
Widevine is the video technology that Netflix and Amazon use to stream its contents to mobile devices, and many phones only support L3 mode, limiting stream quality to 480p resolution. With L1 compliance, the S75 can get at least 1080p streams if you have the connection quality to handle that data flow and subscribe to these services.
We suspect that the lack of L1 on other phones is mostly about licensing costs, but whatever the reason, CAT did give this phone something most Chinese rugged phones don’t offer.
CAT S75 Camera samples
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(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
CAT S75 performance
All-round performer
GPU lacks features
Benchmarks
This is how the CAT S75 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
Geekbench: 644 (single-core); 1935 (multi-core); N/A(OpenCL)PCMark (Work 3.0): 11188Passmark: 10324Passmark CPU: 49453DMark Slingshot: 3221(OGL)3DMark Slingshot Extreme: 2320 (OGL); 2695(Vulkan)3DMark Wild Life: N/A
The performance of this phone is all over the place, ranging from excellent to failing to run.
Of the tests it would execute it delivered an excellent PCMark Work result eclipsed only by some Snapdragon 782G, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and one Dimensity 900 phone style.
The Passmark numbers are also good, but it had issues with the GeekBench suite and 3DMark.
In both of these benchmarks, we suspect that the IMG BXM-8-256 is the issue. Specifically, the features it supports for OpenGL, OpenCL and Vulkan. On the GeekBench OpenCL test, it would crash if you selected OpenGL. Choosing Vulkan instead, it would run but not complete all the tests.
On 3DMark, it refused to run Wildlife, stating that the GPU didn’t have the features needed for this test to be done.
In the graphics tests it did perform, the numbers didn’t match what a Dimensity 900 and its Mali-G68 MC4 GPU can achieve. It looks like the choice of a different GPU for the Dimensity 930 was a poor one, or the software interfacing of that GPU isn’t good enough under Android 12.
While performance isn’t as good as some Dimensity 900 based phones we’ve seen, this might also be a reflection of the 6GB of RAM that CAT installed, as most of those we’ve tested come with 8GB or 12GB.
The user experience is still a good one, and the phone is smooth to use, but there are faster platforms out there.
CAT S75 battery
Modest battery size
15W charging
5000mAh for a rugged phone is a relatively small battery capacity. Being the lowest capacity we’ve tested in the last twenty rugged phones, this reviewer has covered. The only other design with a battery this small was the lightweight Motorola ThinkPhone, which also had 5000mAh.
The upside of this choice is that it charges quickly, or it would if it could consume power rapidly enough.
Oddly, this is one of the only phones we’ve seen where the wireless charging rate is identical to the wired, with both being 15W. While technically faster than USB 2.0 standards, calling 15W charging ‘Fast’ is something of a stretch, especially when you consider that some rugged phones support 66W charging on wire and some 33W on wireless.
With only 5000mAh to play with, the operating life of this phone is limited, and in our tests, it ran a streaming video with the screen active for around 15 hours. That’s a long working day, but not substantially more.
When you consider that this phone, due to the Satellite comms capability, is likely to be away from mains power, that could be an issue. The obvious solution is to turn the phone off when you don’t want to communicate, but that would negate the tracking function when it becomes available.
Because of the battery size, it might be advisable to carry some means to recharge the S75, such as a power pack or solar charger, especially if you intend to keep using it for long periods away from civilisation.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
There are things about this phone we loved and others we hugged, like that distant Aunt we only saw occasionally as a child.
The overall design, robustness, and functionality of the S75 are good, and it borders on excellent in a couple of places. The Bullitt Messaging solution works as advertised, even if it can be awkward to register and configure in the first place. It could be an absolute lifesaver in an emergency, away from cell service.
The downsides of this phone are a screen that isn’t easy to read in bright conditions, an SoC that could be viewed as a misstep from its predecessor and a battery capacity that won’t keep the phone alive for more than a few days out in the wilds.
Some of these issues can be coped with, however as more phones appear with satellite messaging, ones with more battery are likely to steal the thunder of the CAT S75.
For those that like to go off the beaten track, the S75 provides a viable way to keep in touch and prove that you’ve not been eaten by Wildlife or got lost. For them, and the peace of mind always being able to communicate brings, it is undoubtedly worth the cost and the service subscription. But that feature aside, for the other hardware in this phone, it does seem expensive.
CAT S75 score card
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Value
Expensive, but it has a unique feature.
4/5
Design
Very robust, no USB-C rubber plug and simple to handle.
4/5
Hardware
Decent SoC, but just 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. But it has Satellite messaging, at least.
4/5
Performance
The GPU doesn’t deliver the performance and features of the previous Dimensity 900 design.
3/5
Camera
Good quality still images but just 1080p video
3/5
Battery
5000mAh is small for a rugged phone
3/5
Overall
An interesting style aimed at those who require interactions where cell towers aren’t near.
4/5
Should I buy a CAT S75?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
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