Isatphone 2 Satellite Phone With SIM Card (No Airtime Included)

The product arrived with a carry case that the phone did not fit into , after spending £600 amazon offered me £10 compensation , WOW

Good +++++

Just what it said on the tin.

I bought one of these for my Daughter to take on a round the world trip with her. I was originally considering a DeLorme Reach SE but was persuaded that this was a better option. I actually bought mine through Charles at Ashbury Satellite communications for a very similar price here.I am very happy with the purchase, I can now talk to her rather than merely receiving texts and the overall cost taking in to account airtime etc is not much more.The phone is very Robust and is water and dust proof to IP65 ruggedness (so can withstand water jets.) It also has an emergency assistance button, like the much more expensive Iridium 9575 Extreme which costs over £300 more. This can be programmed to alert GEOS for search and rescue and medivac purposes, and if you have a Postpaid device this monitoring is free, much like the Iridium phone where it is preprogrammed.This phone also has a tracking button on the side which can be programmed to leave a breadcrumb type trail and alert people of your current GPS location. The benefits of this phone is the standby time which is quoted as unto 160 hours and 8 hours talk time whilst the Iridium is quoted at 30 hrs standby and 4hrs talk time. I have purchased extra search and rescue and medivac from GEOS at the cost of $24.95 and $120.95 respectively, which seems remarkable value.The phone works well, obviously Inmarsat doesn't work at the Poles because it is reliant on geostationary satellites above the equator. Having said that I managed to get the phone to work indoors be it upstairs in a bedroom and with optimal conditions. Once you have acquired a satellite which is generally very quickly (less than 45 secs) the call tends to be stable and doesn't drop, the Iridium network relies on 66 low earth orbiting satellites orbiting over the poles, so whilst you get true global coverage there can be issues in the handover from one satellite to another.This phone benefits from an inbuilt compass that makes finding the satellites easier as it'll display a picture and advise you where to point the aerial, this and quicker satellite acquisition are the main benefits over the iSatphone Pro which is Inmarsat's older model which I have not actually had a chance to use, another advantage over the older model is that this phone can receive alerts when the aerial is stowed the older iSat Phone Pro has to have the aerial deployed to receive alerts.Running costs appear to be less than an Iridium and I have opted for a prepaid SIM card these are time limited so only last a specific length of time, having said that if you purchase a top up before the expiry date any existing credit is rolled in to the new expiry date. If you fail to do this you lose the remaining credit. They come in 30, 90, 180, and 365 day packages starting at about £18 for 25 units for 30 days and going up to around £698 for 1000 units for 365 days. a one minute call is 1.3 units and a text or email is around 0.5 of a unit. I purchased an initial 180 day plan with 100 units and topped it up with another plan before the period expired and carried over my credit.All in all I am very happy with my buy and feel reassured that should my daughter need assistance in an emergency it is only a buttons press away. The phone is much better than the old Globalstar Ericsson which I had previously. I certainly recommend the phone and Ashbury SatCom who provide mine.