Sat Phone Rental
The company that I rented my Kyocera Sat Phone provided me with a spare battery and standard 110v charger. It wasn’t too expensive too, it was about $90 for a 2 week rental although it was only for emergencies cause if you do use it, it can be pricey. The Motorola phones are newer, lighter, connect faster, but also were more expensive to rent.
Jay
Solar Charger
I just got my Sunday newspaper and they listed 2 new solar chargers that may help you. These were listed in an outdoor feature that listed new products. I don’t know anything about solar chargers but you could look into it.
The 1st one is the Brunton SolarRoll. The description stated that it sells for around $300 and expeditions worldwide use it in place of heavy batteries. It comes in several sizes and outputs.
The 2nd item is the Soldius 1 solar panel. It looks like a minature (bigger than a cell phone) laptop computer. It has a hinge on it. It retails for around $100. Soldius claims to be able to charge a cell phone in 2 - 3 hours. It also works with other electronic devices such as iPods.
You could do an internet search and look at these 2 products. Maybe they can help you.
Sprint
I use Sprint and my new Sanyo 8300 does analog along with the other goodies. It costs me $10 a month for no roaming charges. I hike 2x a week in the local desert and I have not found anyplace I cant get a signal. I was having a lot of trouble getting a signal when I traveled but the no roaming analog fills the gap. Analog sucks down batteries.
Iridium
I have used an Iridium phone quite often over the past few years while in serving in the military and have never had trouble getting a good signal. If you were to get a spare battery along with setting up times you would be available for contact; I don’t think you would have any problems. If you are looking for a phone I’m sure we could work something out.
sat phone use
I had two sat phones on a solo- 6 month paddle trip. I talked DAILY to my family and media that was following my trip.
I used a global star phone with FOUR batteries.
I got about 3 1/2 hours of use out of each battery before they needed charging. So thats about 14 hours of chatting. Do you need that much? If you need more, get more batteries.
I also had an Iridium Sat Phone which works MUCH better than Global Star however I only used it to seed photos and emails never voice transmission. I think the batteries lasted a little less but not much.
I also had a solar panel to recharge but i think that is asking you too much when just buy a couple extra batteries.
nm
Thanks
I knew I’d get great information on Pnet.
Doc
sat phone
I am in a similar situation, love to go camping for the weekend, but concerned about leaving my solo medical practice without phone contact. I have considered sat phones but in the meantime what i do is stick to camping in areas that i know have good coverage with my cell phones and when I go to areas that do not, I have a colleague cover me.