Splash away with the Kyocera Hydro XTRM (pictures)

Currently available for $29.99 with a two-year contract, the Kyocera Hyro XTRM is a dustproof, waterproof, and shock resistant phone from U.S. Cellular -- so you can take it to the beach shore with some peace of mind.

The XTRM is a shock resistant, dustproof handset that can also survive being underwater for up to a meter, for 30 minutes. Our unit survived multiple dunkings, 30 minutes completely submerged in a shallow bowl, and sitting inside a running shower for 20 minutes.

Because the device fulfills certain military spec standards for shockproof capabilities, it has a thicker build than that of most smartphones. It measures 4.88-inches tall, 2.52-inches wide, 0.42-inches thick, and it weighs 4.9 ounces.

The top edge features a sleep/power button and a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the bottom edge houses a Micro-USB port for charging. Both ports aren't covered by any plug or small door.

The phone sports a 4-inch IPS WVGA display with a 800x480-pixel resolution. It runs Android 4.1 and features 4GB of internal memory, Bluetooth 4.0, and a handful of apps aimed specifically at U.S. Cellular customers.

You'll notice that there is no in-ear speaker above the display. That's because the XTRM features Smart Sonic Receiver technology. This means that it uses a ceramic transducer inside to transmit audio via the hard tissue inside your ear.

The 5-megapixel camera has six photo sizes (ranging from 640x480 to 2,592x1,944), digital zoom, a flash, three focuses, six scene modes, geo-tagging, three image qualities, three auto exposures, five ISO levels, five white balances, and four color effects.

The device is powered by a dual-core Snapdragon 1.2GHz processor. Its 2,000mAh removable battery has a reported talk-time of up to 12 hours.