You can definitely buy more rugged phones. Often they lag behind in specs compared to popular flagship models, but they're not bad. For instance, I currently use a CAT S60 phone: http://www.catphones.com/en-gb/phones/s60-smartphone

After a normal day of use I'll still have 60% of battery life. It's normally water resistant down to 6 feet for 30 minutes, flipping two switches makes it water resistant down to 15 feet for 30 minutes (and it even comes with a "drying" app that helps it to dry faster by, I think, vibrating the speakers.)

This particular phone comes with FLIR imaging, which probably isn't useful to the general population...