THE JCB Tough Phone kills 90% of all known rats.

Every time we touch upon the frenetic world of mobile telephony, it seems to have taken a fresh leap forward. As if being able to chatter into the ears of your beloved while walking up a mountain wasn't enough, our handy little communication devices now perform an array of functions diverse enough to bewilder all but the most modern of minds. We'd list some of them here, but frankly we don't understand a single one. As a matter of fact, we lost touch with all our friends five years ago and now we just use the handsets for throwing at rats.

Hurling a phone at rodents inside a small shed might strike some of you as backward, but we disagree. On the contrary, it provides a rare insight into a quality oft overlooked on the features list of new mobiles: durability. The headline grabbers of the last few years - LG Chocolate, Motorola RAZR V3, iPhone, to name a handful - might make you look attractive and posh as you whip them out of your pocket on the bus, but they can't stand up to being flung across the room. One second they're a delicious hunk of futuristic gadgetry, the next they're a useless collection of plastic shards and circuit board. It's almost enough to make us give up the fight and submit to the rats.

Almost, but not quite. Because we've just got a JCB phone. Yes, it sounds wrong, and yes, this may well be the first time a digger manufacturer has had a mid life crisis, started dating a teenager and designed a mobile phone in an attempt to look cool, but good god this thing works wonders on small mammals. It's resistant to shocks, dust and drops and it can handle temperatures between -20ºC and 60ºC, which also makes it good against dragons and Mr Freeze from Batman. It's got a three year money back guarantee - we won't be telling them how we broke ours - and boasts Bluetooth and built in speakers.

Normally they'd be clutching at straws by listing things like speakers and Bluetooth as standout features, but when your phone's as hard as this you really have no choice but to sit there and listen. Cause if you didn't it would probably thump you.