Any Thermal Rugged Phone Recommendations? How to choose it?

[thermalengineer]

Any Thermal Rugged Phone Recommendations? How to choose it?

I find thermal cameras endlessly useful. I can use them for diverse applications, such as finding electrical faults to finding where the heat escapes from my home. Now I need a ruggedized Android smartphone with a built-in thermal camera. Could you please give me some suggestions about latest rugged phone?  Just looked through some information on facebook about infiray PX1 and CATs62, which one is better?

[NiHaoMike]

Naomi Wu reviewed a few of those.

[Fraser]

Thermal camera + integrated + mobile phone = compromises

https://www.catphones.com/en-gb/features/integrated-thermal-imaging/

A mobile phone needs to be of excellent performance if you are to rely upon it. A thermal camera needs to be a capable thermal scene capture tool if you rely upon such for serious work. Trying to combine those two requirements into a mobile phone has proven challenging to mobile phone manufacturers. It remains a niche requirement and so is only attempted by a very few mobile phone OEM’s. The result is very little choice of phone or thermal camera quality. Not a good buying position as I have yet to be impressed with any of the current offerings. They are are all too heavily compromised in terms of their phone, thermal camera or both !

IMHO, better to buy a high quality mobile phone and attach a good quality thermal camera dongle when needed. The integrated solutions are too heavily compromised to be a good investment for any kind of serious thermography. CAT made a good effort, but still, IMHO, failed.

China is producing some impressive thermal imaging cores now but it remains highly unlikely that you will see one in an Apple or Samsung product any time soon/ever. It does not fit into their marketing strategy.

As a side note, operating a small thermal camera dongle on a decent mobile phone or tablet using an umbilical cable greatly increases the cameras usefulness…… almost a thermal borescope in some cases.

Finally, if you want a thermal camera for serious thermography, walk away from anything containing a FLIR Lepton or Seek Thermal core. They just are not in that realm of Radiometric performance. Great for hobbyist or non demanding roles though. China may be able to come up with far better performing miniature cores as their current offerings are impressive.

[Fraser]

Regarding mobile rugged phones…… users of such need to look at the Pro’s and Cons of buying a dedicated, potentially less advanced, rugged phone versus buying a top end high performance standard phone plus a high quality armoured skin for that phone. Gorilla Glass is common on high end phones and modern armour skins for standard mobile phones have always served me well, with no phones damaged through dropping them etc. Submersion in fluids is always a challenge though…. Check the small print of ‘rugged’ phones to see whether they are truly fluid submersion proof (at least 1m depth) or just weatherproof….. there is a significant difference ! There are many levels of ruggedness when it comes to mobile devices. Some rugged phones are built for purely knocks and drops whereas some is the complete package with submersion to several metres depth of fluid (there are often caveats associated with even those designs, however).

[Rambo Sonny]

My colleague is using CAT S62, I bought a PX1 a few days ago, I feel that PX1 has a clearer picture than S62, especially the infrared camera. We look at the temperature of the natural gas compressor, the faster the equipment moves, the higher the temperature, so it is easy to tell by the infrared camera. Also the PX1's screen is so big, it's nice to look at.

[Vipitis]

Relevant thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/want-to-get-a-rugged-smartphone-with-thermal-imaging-any-recommendation/msg3969659/#new

I have been happy with my S62 so far, however mostly as a phone not really as a thermal camera. Even the 160x120 Lepton isn't fun to use because FLIR has a really shitty app and third party options don't work. The framerate also makes it unusable for my needs.

There are phones now with the iRay modules which offer higher framerates and they are probably more fun. It depends on your specific usecase but focus will be horrible as usual.

[svgurus]

https://www.infiray.com/products/px1-thermal-rugged-phone.html
This newly announced Infiray smartphone looks kinda cool) they wrote that 20mp camera is monochrome, that is intriguing too. Anyone saw actual review on it?
Rambo Sonny, add some more pictures please, 20mp ones too. Your thermal is way better than one from Infiray - https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/U11a23dc364474a4b9339771421eaa2825.jpg(took  it from aliexpress page)