Rugged Device vs PDA

Posted on 09 April 2010

“94 percent of executives are currently using PDA/smart phones, 72 percent are using cell phones, and 23 percent are using ruggedized handhelds.”*

One of the pre-conceptions I encounter most frequently in the mobile data capture industry is the belief that rugged devices aren’t worth the additional cost over consumer devices. To try and address this, let’s look at exactly why there are so many rugged devices in use?

Obviously some applications demand rugged devices, for example; reading water meters, laying down pest control poisons and oil rig plant inspections to name but a few. Let’s start with what we mean by ‘rugged’. The industry standard for measuring ‘ruggedness’ is the IP rating and is shown along with 2 additional numbers such as IP54. IP stands for Ingress Protection, the first number (5 in IP54) refers to dust or solid particle protection, the second digit (4 in IP54) refers to water or other liquid protection.

As an example, an IP54 rating offers protection against dust as follows:

5: Protected against dust – limited ingress (no harmful deposit)
4: Protected against sprays from all directions – limited ingress permitted

These numbers are on a scale and range from “0 – No Protection”, to “6 – Total Particle Protection” and “8 – Fully Submersible”, each catering for a different vertical or set of mobile applications.

Your application and environment will determine which type of device is best suited to your workforce. If their everyday tasks can be broadly defined as ‘white collar’ (predominantly office based), then the PDA may be best suited. For your employees classified as ‘blue collar’ (working outside or in a less sympathetic environment), then rugged devices will often be more appropriate.

In my experience, the biggest mistake made in selecting mobile devices is underestimating the cost of dealing with a broken device in the field. This includes all manner of potential situations such as the cost of getting a replacement to the field worker, reproducing any lost data, revisiting customers/sites/equipment/assets, tracking which serial number device is with which worker and tracking devices through the repair chain. All of this becomes far more time consuming and costly than ever perceived upon implementation of the mobile computers if the wrong decision is made. Clearly reducing the likelihood of breakages is critical here and as logic would suggest, PDA’s are far more likely to suffer damage in harsh environments!

What does it cost you when your workers simply can’t work?

Should devices be rendered inoperable, then replacements need to be in the hands of field workers as quickly as possible. This could involve ensuring all back office systems are synchronized and devices correctly configured for the task in hand. Rugged mobile computer architectures and platforms are specifically designed for the software setup process on a regular basis, with compatibility being at the very core of the hardware. Consumer oriented devices are often more ‘buggy’ and less aligned to this process, often encountering problems and delays and in the long run – costing more money. With consumer devices subject to being damaged more frequently, this configuration process is something which would need doing far more regularly, and require a much larger stock of devices for potential replacement needs.

One of our biggest customers adamantly stated he would not purchase “so called rugged devices…” for his workforce because of cost. He purchased twenty-one consumer biased smart phone units and asked us to port Codegate’s software over to them, which we did. Before his trial finished, the manufacturer of the chosen device decided to discontinue the product line, making it ‘end-of-life’ and almost completely redundant in the long-term. This left our customer high and dry; twenty-one devices purchased, plus software porting, training and support setup costs, and our estimated additional cost to the customer…£18,000. While this example is extreme, consumer biased devices have a very short production life, some as little as six months, making a five-year mobile solution strategy very difficult to plan and often impossible to implement when the time arises due to discontinuation in the interim period. This customer now uses rugged devices from Motorola and has hundreds installed in two divisions, with a third planned.

“67 percent [of executives] are interested in replacing their consumer PDAs, mobile phones and Smartphones with ruggedised handheld devices”*

By utilising ‘shiny’ or consumer oriented devices like ‘smart phones’ or PDAs the take up cost is low but these devices are much more likely to break regularly, leaving the workforce and the board of investors very much disillusioned with the system, which could ultimately render the investment worthless.

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*Press Release, April 2010, “Survey of Fortune 1000 Finds Smartphones Losing Ground to Ruggedized Handhelds“