CAT S22 Flip review
A real Android phone in a rugged clamshell. The original, and now the most expensive way to buy it.
The verdict
The S22 Flip does something nothing else does: it runs the full Play Store on a phone that is deliberately unpleasant to scroll on. Owners report screen time collapsing. The catch today is not the phone — it is that identical hardware sells under other brands for a fraction of what the CAT-badged listing asks.
Buy it if
- You want your screen time down but still need banking, maps and payment apps
- You work somewhere phones get dropped, rained on or covered in dust
- You want a removable battery and a memory card slot
- You specifically want the CAT badge and are willing to pay for it
Skip it if
- You want the same hardware for less — see the two alternatives below
- You need tap-to-pay or QR code scanning; neither works
- You are impatient: apps can take ten seconds to open
- You have large hands and small pockets — this is a brick
Prices change daily, so we don't list them here. The button opens the current listing.
Specifications
| Operating system | Android 11 (Go edition) |
|---|---|
| Software updates | Ended mid-2022 — see the section below |
| Display | 2.8 in touchscreen, 480 x 640 |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 215, 1.3 GHz quad-core |
| RAM | 2 GB |
| Storage | 16 GB — roughly 12 GB usable |
| Memory card | microSD up to 128 GB |
| Glass | Corning Gorilla Glass 5, inside and outside |
| Cameras | 5 MP rear, 2 MP front |
| Battery | 2000 mAh, user replaceable |
| Durability | IP68 |
| NFC | None — tap-to-pay does not work |
| Carriers | T-Mobile and MVNOs; owners also report Verizon working |
What it is
A clamshell running full Android with the Google Play Store, not a stripped feature-phone system. That single fact separates it from every other flip phone at this price bracket. You can install a banking app, a work app, Spotify, Maps and a payment app — and then be physically unable to doomscroll, because the screen is 2.8 inches and you have to open the phone to look at it.
Owners describe the effect in nearly identical words. One reports reaching for the phone at a red light out of habit and being cured of it, because switching apps takes long enough to kill the impulse. Another describes it plainly as the perfect balance between a smartphone and a dumbphone.
Three versions, one phone, very different prices
This matters more than any specification on this page. The same hardware — Snapdragon 215, 2 GB of memory, 16 GB of storage, Android 11, a 2.8-inch touchscreen, a 2000 mAh removable battery and IP68 — is sold under at least three brands.
The CAT-badged listing is the original and, at the time of writing, by far the most expensive of the three. Owner reviews from earlier years describe paying around sixty dollars for it; it now sells for many times that. The hardware has not changed.
If you want the badge and the CAT-embossed back, buy this one. If you want the phone, read our reviews of the Unifone and VAHVARNA versions first. We have written both up separately so you can compare the listings properly.
The keypad can type — here is how
The single most repeated complaint about this phone is that the physical keys only dial numbers. That is how it behaves out of the box, and it is why people return it. It is also fixable.
Two keyboards ship on the phone: Gboard, which is set as the default, and Kika, which is the driver for the physical keypad. Set Kika as the default keyboard, then go into settings and turn off the on-screen keyboard display. The physical keys now type, with a built-in dictionary that predicts words as you go.
One quirk to know: Kika dislikes the space bar. Press space and its suggestions reset. Space-less input, on the other hand, it handles extremely well — which, incidentally, makes it excellent for typing long passphrases.
On some units the # key also cycles between the on-screen keyboard and the numeric keypad, which frees up the screen. If neither works for you, the Play Store has three third-party T9 keyboards. The one most often recommended is also the most glitchy; the better-maintained alternative does not drive the physical keys. Voice input remains the fallback and most owners use it for longer messages.
What actually runs on it
More than you would expect, and the list is worth being specific about because it decides whether this phone can be your only phone.
Owners confirm working: Spotify, YouTube, Google Maps with turn-by-turn navigation, WhatsApp, Signal, Venmo, Discord, Duolingo, Libby, Letterboxd, MyChart, 1Password, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Firefox, and banking apps up to and including depositing a cheque. Home security apps — Ring, Kasa — work, including live camera feeds. Bluetooth pairs with cars and earbuds without trouble, and Maps plus Spotify run at the same time.
What does not work: tap-to-pay, because there is no NFC. QR code scanning, which owners report simply never succeeding. And video recording, which picks up a high-pitched whine on the audio track.
Speed is the price of admission. An app that opens in a second on a modern phone can take up to ten seconds here. One owner reports a single app taking five minutes to install over solid Wi-Fi. Several owners treat this as the feature rather than the flaw.
Storage, battery and the bloatware problem
Of the 16 GB, roughly 12 GB is usable, and one experienced owner advises staying under 10 GB — past that the system starts deleting things on its own. A microSD card up to 128 GB fixes this, and can be mounted either as removable storage or as encrypted internal storage. Most apps will not run from the card, but some will; the test is to install, log in, download, move it, and see whether it still opens after a restart.
Battery life is genuinely good for light use. Owners report three to four days on minimal usage, and a day and a half with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS running constantly. The battery is user replaceable, which almost nothing else offers.
The bloatware is unusual: it does not eat storage, but around twenty preinstalled apps have no battery optimisation setting at all. The workaround owners recommend is a firewall app to control which apps are allowed to talk to the network, which does more for battery life than any other single change.
The build, and the glass
IP68, and owners back it up — repeated drops in busy work environments with no damage, a phone rinsed clean of engine grease, one caked in dust and still running.
A detail worth noting: Gorilla Glass 5 on both the inside and the outside screen. That is the glass specification of considerably more expensive phones, and it is part of why owners who have broken flagship phones inside heavy-duty cases keep this one around.
The screen is an IPS panel with good viewing angles and, for its size, good pixel density. The camera has what one owner calls a retro digital look — well below a modern phone, fine in good light, and sharper than the budget phones many buyers are coming from. There is one oddity: the camera offers higher-resolution 16:9 options labelled as 4:3, which produces strangely proportioned pictures until you pick the right mode.
It is a chunky phone, roughly twice the thickness of a slab and a little narrower. Owners with small hands should be aware; owners buying it for a child report that small fingers get on with it very well.
Software updates ended in 2022
Be clear about this before buying. CAT supported its two main phone lines for about three years including the year of release. The S22 Flip was not one of those lines: it came out in 2021 and stopped receiving updates in the middle of 2022.
Warranty terms differ between the three listings for this hardware. Ask the seller what is covered and who handles a claim before you order.
One unexpected feature
The radio application carries frequency sets for a number of different countries and works without a SIM card. It is not a serious radio, but as a pocket FM receiver that needs no service and no data, it is a genuinely useful thing to have on a phone this rugged.
Who it competes with
Its real rivals are the Nokia 2780 and the Light Phone, and it beats both on one axis: it keeps the Play Store. If one specific app has to work for your daily life, this is the only rugged flip that will run it.
Its other rivals are its own twins, sold under different brands at a fraction of the price.
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