Along with a slew of other new devices like the Droid Eris, Verizon Wireless on Thursday debuted the Casio G'zOne Brigade--a waterproof flip phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2-megapixel camera.

Verizon claims the phone is "water, shock, dust, vibration, humidity, salt fog, altitude, high temperature storage, low temperature storage, and solar radiation resistant." Basically it's the sort of phone a wilderness explorer, geologist, or Navy SEAL would love to carry around.

The phone is trying to target some of the office crowd as well by including a document viewer for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF support. It will also include standard Verizon software such as V CAST Music with Rhapsody and V CAST Video, along with support for VZ Navigator.

This new phone is the first of the G'zOne line with a QWERTY keyboard. We liked that the last unit of this family--the G'zOne Boulder--was seemingly indestructible, but it had muddy voice quality. Hopefully all the kinks have been worked out for sleek-looking Brigade.

Price and availability of the G'zOne Brigade will be announced closer to launch.