Field Service Phones Can't Only Be Smart, They Need To Be Tough Too

By Roger Cresswell, Intermec

Service, delivery, and other businesses are turning to smartphones to make their mobile workers more responsive and efficient. Unfortunately, these goals often go unmet because failure rates of 50% to 90% are common when consumer-grade smartphones are deployed for mobile enterprise operations. There are also plenty of examples of businesses that have kept their smartphones in service three years or even longer with only minimal maintenance.

When smartphones will be used by new categories of users to support new business processes, there are new requirements for the phones themselves. Ruggedness is at the top of the list. It is not always easy to understand what makes a smartphone rugged and right for a particular work environment, but productivity and ROI depend on it.