As I watched the continuing catastrophe in Japan today I imagined how important rugged technology is in these tough conditions and I thought back to a device I had seen at CeBIT. I searched through my YouTube videos and realised that I hadn’t even posted the video yet.

The prototype ruggedized Android Tablet from Mobile Tout Terrain shown in the video below and in the gallery here is not certified for the sort of environment we’re seeing in north-east Japan right now but it’s certainly more rugged than your average tablet or ultra-mobile PC (UMPC.)  Think about hiking, traveling, the beach, your bike and even extreme situations like baby drool or even, and this is one I’m interested in, the bath!

Mobile Tout Terrain, a French company, are aiming to get this IP67-spec tablet ready for Q3 2011 at a price that sounded wrong. €350 sounds way too low for a splash-proofm dust-proof device.

Specifications and pricing are subject to change but we’re looking at a 1.2Ghz CPU (of unknown type) and an 800×480 multi-touch capacitive screen. There’s no telling what version of Android will be on it in 6 months time but we heard that 2.2 is being worked on.  GPS is included, micro SD, 512M RAM and Web Cam.

Styling work is planned for the connector/holding block but as it is, I found it incredibly easy to hold in landscape mode.

Extremely important for this, even critical, will be that it has a full Google suite of applications. Without Google Maps, Talk, Latitude, SkyMap and all the other great applications available through the market this will only be interesting for companies wanting to develop their own applications. Mobile Tout Terrain may just be aiming for such a niche of tour-guides, meter-readers and surveyors but I really hope not because there’s so much more this device could do. I’m sure you can think of a huge list of applications here.

Here’s the video.

Here’s MobileToutTerrain.