Anyone working on a building envelope knows the value of a thermal-imaging camera as a diagnostic tool. Thankfully, the price for a good one has dropped over the years from thousands to hundreds of dollars, making infrared cameras a lot more accessible. But as far as I know, up until the introduction of the AGM Glory G1S in late spring of 2022, the only IR smartphone option was the FLIR One, an oversized dongle that plugs into the USB-C port on an Android phone or the Lightning port on an iPhone. On the AGM smartphone, the thermal-imaging capability is built in, and even though it’s controlled by an app on the phone, it functions just like a regular camera phone to take high-resolution 256x192 pixel stills (in comparison, the resolution of the FLIR One Pro is 160x120 pixels) and 25 FPS video in several different black-and-white and color palettes. Not only that, the phone’s built-in camera has an outstanding IR night-vision capability.
All of this is packaged in a rugged Android phone with an IP68 rating (that means that it’s resistant to dirt and dust and a 30-minute dunking in water up to about 5 feet deep). The company says it meets U.S. military specification MIL-STD-810H, where equipment is subjected to 29 tests for shock, vibration, freezing and thawing, and more. My test was to (accidentally) drop the phone on a concrete slab a couple of times, which it passed with flying colors.
The company says that the phone is 5G compatible on the T-Mobile network; I haven’t attempted to connect the phone to the network yet, because I’m a slow adopter and coverage is sparse in my area, so I can’t comment on how well the AGM works as a conventional phone. But for users of other Android phones, the interface will look familiar, and the form factor is nearly identical to my OnePlus 8 phone with a Spigen case, though the AGM’s housing adds a bit more bulk to the phone. $700. agmmobile.com
