The Land Rover Explorer is a rugged and feature-packed smartphone designed for outdoor enthusiasts who want to stay connected and navigate their surroundings with ease. The device uses Android 7.1 operating system and relies on GPS signal, which can continue to function even without phone signal.

We removed the battery pack and observed how it works in action, relying solely on the GPS signal. This feature proved to be useful when we stopped having a signal, as the device continued to work and provided us with essential information such as our location and altitude. However, if we were truly out of range without a phone signal, the device would give up.

The processor is not the fastest, which can lead to slowdowns when using resource-intensive social media apps like Twitter. Despite this, the device excels in its intended use case – hiking and outdoor activities. The size of the device makes it easy to carry around on weekends or trips, but not suitable for daily use in urban environments.

The Land Rover Explorer comes with pre-installed apps, including View Ranger and Geocaching. While these features are nice, some may require additional payment for full functionality. A standout feature is the Explorer Hub, which allows users to set up customizable profiles depending on their activity. This hub provides essential information such as compass readings, altitude, humidity, and location sharing – all at a glance.

For those who use standalone GPS devices or rely on Ordnance Survey maps, the Land Rover Explorer's comprehensive features may be too much to handle. However, for outdoor enthusiasts who want one device to rule them all, this phone delivers. The Explorer is built to withstand harsh environments, with an IP68 rating that protects it from water and dust.

The phone itself has a sturdy design, with textured buttons that are easy to find even with gloved hands. The screen is designed to function well in wet conditions, making it perfect for outdoor use. Photography capabilities are modest, with a single 16-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. While the screen resolution is limited to HD definition, regular usage has not presented any issues.

The price of the Land Rover Explorer, including the Adventure Pack, may deter some buyers. The package includes the phone, GPS module, additional battery, and a massive case with a carabiner – all for £600 (approximately $800). This investment is aimed at those who are truly committed to outdoor activities and want a reliable device that can keep up.

During testing, we discovered the Explorer's utility in navigating through the wilderness. When we took a wrong turn, the GPS guided us back onto the correct path quickly. If we had been relying on Google Maps, it would have displayed a large area of green, indicating our location and helping us find our way again. Based on this experience, we recommend the Land Rover Explorer to outdoor enthusiasts who want a capable device for their weekend adventures or daily excursions.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is no ordinary smartphone it's made by Land Rover the same company that makes cars and there's a reason we're outside because Land Rover tells us this is an outdoor phone so there's absolutely no point of testing it indoors the reason it's an outdoor phone is because of this it's an external battery pack that has its own GPS antenna inside so when you're out in the wilderness like we are you don't need cell phone reception to still get accurate mapping we're going to give it a try as best we can we're going to get horribly lost in this beautiful place and safely Land Rover Explorer can get us back to our so we're halfway around our route and haven't got lost yet and it is thanks to the land rover Explorer well actually more specifically it's thanks to the GPS and the view ranger app that comes pre-installed on a land rover Explorer so let's have a closer look so as I mentioned earlier the GPS is hidden inside this external battery pack so there's quite a lot of phone to hold and it is quite heavy and it does get quite warm after a little bit of time certainly when it's acquiring the GPS signal but once it's done that it cools down and it operates normally we've been using this for probably about an hour or so and we've used two percent of battery so it's extremely power it does not use a lot of power with the external battery pack and the internal battery so this is going to last you easily for a weekend now in the wild and we're using the view ranger app here which uses Ordnance Survey maps in the UK they're actually pretty complicated if you look at Google Maps regularly then this is quite difficult to fathom certainly for for the first few minutes of using it but what's really handy is this little green arrow here this constantly tells you the direction that you need to travel so you don't really need to breathe this bit you just look at the green arrow down here what's interesting is when you take the external GPS off the arrow turns red and it's nowhere near as accurate it the antenna in here is similar to where you'd get in a standalone GPS unit it actually works extremely well and we can see it in action when we remove the battery pack and this just then relies on the GPS signal we haven't lost phone signal here but if we did then it would still continue working and you wouldn't have to worry if you're truly out in the wilds but this is gonna suddenly give up when you stop having signal that's for the rest of the phone this uses Android 7.1 we did a little bit out of dates at the moment and the processor is not the fastest you're okay when you're just using the GPS and when you're just using simple apps but we notice a bit of slowdown when using social networking apps like Twitter and things like that that coupled with the size of the device we just don't feel that this is something we want to carry around on a daily basis it truly is a weekend device you're gonna want to put it in your Land Rover when you're heading out with your family to do some camping for the weekend but you're not going to want to carry it on the tube or into the office every day it's a second device not a primary one it does come with some pre-installed apps as we explained we've got the view ranger application there's geocaching application as well which is quite nice both of those you do have to pay separately for the other feature we really like is this which is the Explorer hub and you can set up different profiles for depending on what you're doing and it gives you key information that you would want and these are all customizable so you can add different tools to the dashboard because we are hiking today well walking hiking whatever we've got a compass we've got altitude we've got humidity and we could share our location as well in case we got terribly into trouble and it's quite nice to have all of this at a glance if it's things you understand that's also another thing to consider here if you're not a big hiker and you're not into doing things with certain maps and understanding all of this stuff it's probably a little bit too much if however you use a standalone GPS you've got your Ordnance Survey maps all those different tools well the land rover Explorer does it all in one and you don't need to carry ten different things just need to carry this and we do quite like that it's just a little bit more about the land rover explorer itself this is a tough phone it's going to its stand sizeable drops 1.8 meters says land rover its ip68 rated so it's going to be happy taking a bath in a stream or getting caught in the rain or anything like that this is magnetically attached onto the rear so it's kind of like the moto mods and you just sort of slide it down into place and then slide it our place to take it off it's really nicely made Land Rover says they're going to make additional modules at the moment I don't think there are any available and you get this as a pack so this is called the adventure pack and you get the phone itself you get the GPS and additional battery that adds three thousand six hundred and twenty milliamps of battery to the four thousand milliamp hour battery inside the phone and you get this monstrous case as well with a carabiner attached so you can strap it to your backpack and presumably never lose it although I think you'd be hard pushed to lose something this size anyway you've got lovely textured buttons these are nice and easy to find even with gloves on the screen is designed to work with wet hands so it really is proper outdoor stuff in terms of photography you've got a single 16 megapixel camera on the rear there's an 8 megapixel self you can and the screen is 5 inches but it's only HD definition so you're not going to be watching much video and being impressed with the quality on here although for regular stuff that we're doing here it's fine and it's been good for the mapping too we've not had any issues with that in terms of looking at the screen in sunlight the phone's solidly built but it is quite expensive this is 600 pounds that's about $800 for the adventure pack itself so you're going to have to be pretty committed to go out and buy the adventure pack and the Land Rover phone and then use it for your weekends out and about that's it back to civilization using the land rover Explorer and it's actually been a great experience we've walked around we took a wrong turn because we weren't paying attention and this guided us very quickly back onto the right path and if we were using Google Maps it's a great big bit of green so we wouldn't have really done the same thing that means we do recommend this if you're an outdoorsy person and you can easy other weekend if you're in the office well this is a whole lot betterthis is no ordinary smartphone it's made by Land Rover the same company that makes cars and there's a reason we're outside because Land Rover tells us this is an outdoor phone so there's absolutely no point of testing it indoors the reason it's an outdoor phone is because of this it's an external battery pack that has its own GPS antenna inside so when you're out in the wilderness like we are you don't need cell phone reception to still get accurate mapping we're going to give it a try as best we can we're going to get horribly lost in this beautiful place and safely Land Rover Explorer can get us back to our so we're halfway around our route and haven't got lost yet and it is thanks to the land rover Explorer well actually more specifically it's thanks to the GPS and the view ranger app that comes pre-installed on a land rover Explorer so let's have a closer look so as I mentioned earlier the GPS is hidden inside this external battery pack so there's quite a lot of phone to hold and it is quite heavy and it does get quite warm after a little bit of time certainly when it's acquiring the GPS signal but once it's done that it cools down and it operates normally we've been using this for probably about an hour or so and we've used two percent of battery so it's extremely power it does not use a lot of power with the external battery pack and the internal battery so this is going to last you easily for a weekend now in the wild and we're using the view ranger app here which uses Ordnance Survey maps in the UK they're actually pretty complicated if you look at Google Maps regularly then this is quite difficult to fathom certainly for for the first few minutes of using it but what's really handy is this little green arrow here this constantly tells you the direction that you need to travel so you don't really need to breathe this bit you just look at the green arrow down here what's interesting is when you take the external GPS off the arrow turns red and it's nowhere near as accurate it the antenna in here is similar to where you'd get in a standalone GPS unit it actually works extremely well and we can see it in action when we remove the battery pack and this just then relies on the GPS signal we haven't lost phone signal here but if we did then it would still continue working and you wouldn't have to worry if you're truly out in the wilds but this is gonna suddenly give up when you stop having signal that's for the rest of the phone this uses Android 7.1 we did a little bit out of dates at the moment and the processor is not the fastest you're okay when you're just using the GPS and when you're just using simple apps but we notice a bit of slowdown when using social networking apps like Twitter and things like that that coupled with the size of the device we just don't feel that this is something we want to carry around on a daily basis it truly is a weekend device you're gonna want to put it in your Land Rover when you're heading out with your family to do some camping for the weekend but you're not going to want to carry it on the tube or into the office every day it's a second device not a primary one it does come with some pre-installed apps as we explained we've got the view ranger application there's geocaching application as well which is quite nice both of those you do have to pay separately for the other feature we really like is this which is the Explorer hub and you can set up different profiles for depending on what you're doing and it gives you key information that you would want and these are all customizable so you can add different tools to the dashboard because we are hiking today well walking hiking whatever we've got a compass we've got altitude we've got humidity and we could share our location as well in case we got terribly into trouble and it's quite nice to have all of this at a glance if it's things you understand that's also another thing to consider here if you're not a big hiker and you're not into doing things with certain maps and understanding all of this stuff it's probably a little bit too much if however you use a standalone GPS you've got your Ordnance Survey maps all those different tools well the land rover Explorer does it all in one and you don't need to carry ten different things just need to carry this and we do quite like that it's just a little bit more about the land rover explorer itself this is a tough phone it's going to its stand sizeable drops 1.8 meters says land rover its ip68 rated so it's going to be happy taking a bath in a stream or getting caught in the rain or anything like that this is magnetically attached onto the rear so it's kind of like the moto mods and you just sort of slide it down into place and then slide it our place to take it off it's really nicely made Land Rover says they're going to make additional modules at the moment I don't think there are any available and you get this as a pack so this is called the adventure pack and you get the phone itself you get the GPS and additional battery that adds three thousand six hundred and twenty milliamps of battery to the four thousand milliamp hour battery inside the phone and you get this monstrous case as well with a carabiner attached so you can strap it to your backpack and presumably never lose it although I think you'd be hard pushed to lose something this size anyway you've got lovely textured buttons these are nice and easy to find even with gloves on the screen is designed to work with wet hands so it really is proper outdoor stuff in terms of photography you've got a single 16 megapixel camera on the rear there's an 8 megapixel self you can and the screen is 5 inches but it's only HD definition so you're not going to be watching much video and being impressed with the quality on here although for regular stuff that we're doing here it's fine and it's been good for the mapping too we've not had any issues with that in terms of looking at the screen in sunlight the phone's solidly built but it is quite expensive this is 600 pounds that's about $800 for the adventure pack itself so you're going to have to be pretty committed to go out and buy the adventure pack and the Land Rover phone and then use it for your weekends out and about that's it back to civilization using the land rover Explorer and it's actually been a great experience we've walked around we took a wrong turn because we weren't paying attention and this guided us very quickly back onto the right path and if we were using Google Maps it's a great big bit of green so we wouldn't have really done the same thing that means we do recommend this if you're an outdoorsy person and you can easy other weekend if you're in the office well this is a whole lot better\n"