The first phone with a thermal camera tells you how hot you are

BARCELONA -- Remember the FLIR One thermal camera that attached to your phone, giving it thermal vision capabilities? A new rugged phone from Cat has a similar camera built in. 

The company showed off a prototype of the device a day ahead of Mobile World Congress on Sunday, and though it appeared to have some serious battery issues, it was one of the most interesting phones we've seen in Barcelona so far. 

You can take the Cat S60 phone up to 5 meters below water surface and keep it there for an hour. Credit: wil sands/mashable

It's called the Cat S60 and has two cameras that work together: a regular one provides an outline of objects as seen in visible light, and a thermal camera shows thermal footprints, normally invisible to the naked eye. The two cameras work together. 

The company rep showcased the thermal camera mode at Mobile World Congress by covering the regular camera with his finger; you could still see the thermal vision on the phone's screen. Thermal cameras allow you to see infrared light, electromagnetic radiation that you normally cannot.

The thermal camera can measure surface temperatures from a distance of up to 100 feet. According to the company, it can primarily be used during construction for detecting gas or water leaks, but some other use cases -- firefighting, rescue missions and police work -- come to mind, too. It would be able to see warm pipes behind thin walls, for example.

The Cat S60 features some other tricks. It can survive submerged in water up to 16.4 feet of depth for one hour and has a huge 3,800mAh battery.

The Cat S60 is a bit bulky, but it can survive a lot of wear-and-tear and has a huge battery. Credit: Wil Sands/Mashable

Other specs include a 4.7-inch HD screen (it supports wet finger and gloved operation), a Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

While the phone seems best suited for professionals rather than regular users, the $599 price point isn't too bad; those with a bit of disposable income could pick it up for the fun of checking out objects' thermal footprints (yes, you can do the trick where you place your hand on a surface and remove it, and the phone will still see the heat signature). 

One bug that will hopefully be ironed out: The phone was constantly at a very low battery percentage, despite being plugged into an outlet. We suspect the thermal imaging drains the battery life, but Cat says this should be optimized before the phone hits the market, which should be sometime this summer.

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