In fact, we'd quit our job in an instant and join the circus, travelling the world as the "Amazing Mutant Whose Head Can Stop Jet Engines." Jet engines would naturally be our specialty, but we might occasionally run with scissors for an encore.

Unfortunately, Techeye is not an indestructible circus mutant, and it's taken years of expensive therapy to accept that fact. But rather than dwell on our own shortcomings, we prefer to seek out new and increasingly Armageddon-proof technologies.

Take Sonim Technologies' Xtreme Performance I (XP1), for example. If this apparently sturdy little gadget were a person, it would probably be a cross between John Wayne and Johnny Knoxville - an emotionally distant, chaps-wearing adreneline junkie. Of course it's not - it's just a phone - but it still seems like the kind of phone that would wear chaps.

Sonim hosts a number of inspirational videos on its XP1 website, www.toughestphone.com, which demonstrate ways to test the phone's alleged mightiness. In these videos the XP1 survives being run over with cars, showering and sauna'ing with a dodgy-looking guy, as well as being put in a freezer and submerged in milk and beer (not at the same time, though). It can also be used as an impromptu soccer ball or junior-league hockey puck, struck with a baseball bat or a golf club, used to hammer a nail though a board or put through a cement mixer - it endures all of these things with the good cheer of a well-medicated New York socialite.

The XP1 is not totally indestructible, however. Were you to leave it to marinate in a public toilet and then drop it from a height of several storeys, for example, the phone would be left as useful as a one-legged pack mule. Also, as some gumptious Scandinavians went to great lengths to prove, shooting the XP1 with an airgun, a Rugar 10/22 semi-automatic rifle, a 9mm Glock 17 and, finally, a Remington 700 rifle, is guaranteed to end in telecom tragedy.

In more techy terms, the XP1 is an IP-54 certified GSM phone with Bluetooth. Its battery allows for five-hours of talking time in temperatures ranging from -20C to +60C. Feel free to test that for yourself, by the way, and if you survive please send some pictures our way.

Scandalously, there is no push-to-talk capability, but the XP1 does feature the irreverent-sounding "barge" call setting. The gadget costs around E309 (zł.1,112) and comes with an "unconditional three-year guarantee," though we're not sure if that really covers multiple gunshot wounds.