Samsung’s Galaxy XCover Pro brings back the removable battery

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  The Samsung XCover Pro. For a rugged phone, it's pretty good-looking. [credit: Samsung ]

Samsung's "Galaxy XCover Pro" seems to be bringing back the company's line of rugged smartphones, but this one is more than some extra protective plastic slapped onto an existing design. The phone has-get this-a removable battery, a feature that has all but disappeared from the market. There are a handful of very low-end smartphones that still have removable batteries, but as a mid-ranger, this would be the highest-end removable-battery phone on the market.

It's hard to say if the XCover Pro is currently official or not. Samsung's Nordic division posted a CES press release that detailed the never-before-seen XCover Pro, complete with specs and pictures, alongside several other previously announced phones. A later update scrubbed all mention of the XCover from the press release. The release said the phone would be for sale in Finland on January 31 for a499 ($554), but since the release was pulled, it's unclear if that is still accurate.

Samsung Nordic listed the phone with a Samsung Exynos 9611 SoC, an eight-core, 10nm chip with four Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. This would make it a mid-range phone on par with the "Galaxy A" series. The phone has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage that's expandable thanks to a microSD slot, and that sweet 4050mAh removable battery.

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