Mobile Phone Review: Casio G’zOne Rock

As the name suggests, the sturdy Casio G’zOne Rock is aimed at the rugged outdoor type, someone who needs his cell phone to withstand extremes of temperature and the knocks associated with an active lifestyle. In deference to this, the $150 Casio G’zOne Rock comprises in-built compass, tide calculator, and push-to-talk services.

At 4.4-ounces, features such as internal and external shock absorbers and a rubberized backing ensure that the Casio G’zOne Rock has a built-to-last feel about it. Designed to appeal to a more mature generation, both keypad and screen of this cell phone are easy to see, and easy to operate. The Casio G’zOne Rock additionally has a headset jack, volume rocker switch, charging contacts, a mini-USB port and a red push-to-talk button, though this last requires a compatible service plan.

The Casio G’zOne Rock is built to military specifications, hence its ability to resist dust, humidity, temperature excesses and falls, making it the ideal cell phone for hikers and anglers.

Unsurprisingly if you think about its intended market, the Casio G’zOne Rock has no difficulty generating volume; in fact, so good is its quality that it sounds more like a home phone than a cell phone. Though volume is plentiful, the presence of sidetone (a touch of your own voice transmitted to you through the earpiece) discourages you from shouting.

The Casio G’zOne Rock is not merely a cell phone. Email and Verizon’s VZ Navigator turn-by -turn navigation enhance this device, introduced to you by means of a slideshow with voice track on the phone. Menu layouts and ringer defaults have a wizard to help you to set them up.

If you want a phone primarily for browsing the web, buy an iPhone or Android set instead. Whilst the Casio G’zOne Rock has a 2.1-inch, 240 x 320 pixel screen adequate for such functions, that is not what it is designed for, and the quality reflects this.

Images taken on the Casio G’zOne Rock are very much what you would expect from a cell phone, but I would venture to suggest that this is a pity, as I’m sure outdoor types love to dazzle the rest of us with pictures of the great places they have been. A microSD memory card will enhance the 64MB of internal memory that the Casio G’zOne Rock has been assigned.

The Casio G’zOne Rock is certainly a niche phone. It’s robust enough to reside in the back pocket of a climber or withstand the damp experienced by an angler. It’s also good-looking enough not to look out of place in the city. It’s durability makes it useful to some but those who want an array of features should look elsewhere.