For years my old phone was a Motorola Moto G3. Less than £200 and IP67 waterproof. I broke the charging port this year and it was time to replace it.
I was sorry to see Motorola have taken waterproofing off of all their new phones - apparently the required gaskets made the phones chunkier then they'd like.
I considered going over to a cheap Chinese rugged like the Blackview, but I've read things suggesting that they come with malware pre-installed. There's also suggestions of hardware back doors built-in. UK government employees are forbidden from using Chinese brand smartphones for security reasons, or so I'm told.
I'd have liked a Cat S61, but I'm not made of money. Eventually something occurred to me: zip-loc baggies are cheap and waterproof. After a quick bit of experimentation I found that you can indeed still operate the touchscreen through one.
So I just bought the very entry level Moto E5, and will place it in a baggy if I think there's a risk of it getting wet. It's faster than my old G3 so I'm happy.
One word of caution: I bought my wife one too and she quickly managed to drop it screen down onto concrete. She managed to open the flap on the wallet style case before doing this and accordingly smashed the screen, so they're maybe not the toughest in the world. To be fair a lot of high end phones break if you do that. The breakage pattern looks an awful lot like there was a small pebble on the concrete that acted as a centre punch.
She's had to go back to her old knackered phone till payday. I plan on buying her a Moto G6 Play this time, and putting it in an Otterbox style case with built in tempered glass screen protector. Let's see her break that
