Another company has been getting all the attention when it comes to smartphones with sapphire glass, but it looks like it’ll be Kyocera first to market with an actual device. The company, along with Verizon, has just announced the Brigadier, with its “Sapphire Shield” display.

On July 31, Verizon and Kyocera officially launched the ruggedized Brigadier, a smartphone that’s designed to take a beating and keep on ticking. With a 4.5-inch “Sapphire Shield” display, the handset is dust proof, waterproof and shock proof, thanks to the IP68 certification. Moreover, if you need to use the device with some gloves wrapped around those digits, the Glove and Wet Touchscreen Operation feature will make that happen.

Under the hood, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor, clocked at 1.4GHz. It boasts 16GB of built-in storage, but you can increase that with a microSD card up to 32GB. On the back, you’ll find an 8-megapixel camera, and a 2MP front-facing shooter on the other side. The battery is measured at 3100mAh. It also features Qi wireless charging. The Brigadier is running Android 4.4 KitKat right out of the box.

As far as pricing goes, anyone looking to pick up the newest rugged smart hone on Verizon’s network will have to spend $99.99 on a new, two-year agreement. Or, if they opt for Verizon’s Edge monthly installment plan, you can expect to fork over $19.99 per month. If you want to avoid all of that and just buy the device outright, it’ll run you $399.99.

In the middle of July, Kyocera teased that they’d have a smartphone with a “Sapphire Shield,” but there wasn’t much to go on back then. Turns out, the company already had something in the works, and here’s the result.

http://youtu.be/xCs7UE7dtxA

Does the Kyocera Brigadier sound like a phone you’d pick up?