Caterpillar unveils the S60: the first smartphone with a built-in thermal camera

I rarely blog about smartphones nowadays, but this one truly caught my eye.

The Caterpillar brand is synonymous with its tractors and heavy machinery equipment, but now the company wants to strengthen its presence in the smartphone arena with the all-new Cat S60. The $599 Android device is built to survive drops from 1.8 meters – and it has thermal imaging sensors built into it. The good thing about it is that you can use the camera to see and measure heat from up to 100 feet away.

Putting a heat-vision cam into a smartphone might seem impractical, but I think it's pretty cool. If you're an electrician, thermal imaging can help reveal where circuitry is heating up, or if you're having a barbecue with some pals you could check the temperature of your lamb chops.

Along with the thermal camera, the Cat S60 also features a 13-megapixel snapper, water resistance up to five meters for up to an hour, 4.7-inch HD display, a Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity, expandable storage, Bluetooth, NFC and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The phone has a Gorilla Glass 4 screen, and the device will still work even if you have wet fingers, or are wearing gloves. Pretty impressive!

[h/t: Android Authority]