Plus Emergency Mobile Phone

It has everything you would want. On the other hand, I would take with a grain of salt the manufacturer's claim that the battery will last 10 years (it is a non-rechargeable lithium size AA battery). I especially like the fact that if something goes wrong with the normal cell connection (like the prepayment to your service provider runs out) it will still work to call emergency 911. Some people might not like the fact that the phone talks to you, which can be intrusive when you are around other people. I personally like the talking feature, have gotten used to it, and have come to rely on it. (I believe you can control the volume of the talking, to some extent.) Caution: Don't take the micro SIM card out of its adapter. When you install the SIM card, the cut corner should be at the bottom right, just as indicated by the diagonal ridge on the surface of the phone. The only small defect of Spare One that I can think of is that if you don't buy a bag for it and you try to insert it naked into a handbag, duffel, or any other place where it might be subjected to pressure, there is a good chance that it will get turned on. The wireless technology used is CDMA, which is widely used by inexpensive cellphone networks. I don't know if GSM is faster, more reliable, or otherwise better, but I am happy with my CDMA service provider so far. If you like to associate telephone keys with letters you will have to adjust to the fact that it doesn't have letters on its keys. If you can't memorize the letter pattern you will have to carry around an independent diagram.

Gave it a try and found it did not work as advertised. Its a great concept, if it worked. I expect it may work well in the EU and other countries that have the GSM mobile phone standard and use 112 as the emergency number. But I'm in the USA and use 911. The big + key dials 112. Apparently it can not be reprogrammed to diall 911 (how simple that would be), country specific. So the call goes no where. Simply nothing happens. Also for something that cost $59, I was expecting something like cell phone quality, rather than a piece of plastic junk with some LED's and a dollar's worth of cheap electronics, less than $5 in manufacturing costs.

Gave this as a Christmas present to our elderly neighbor who has a "habit" of falling down all the time and not being able to get up. This has helped her twice already in a month and she broke down crying when she told me it saved her life. Can't get better than that!

the instuctions were tough to figure out. "pull tab" - there was NO tab. You had to figure out how to remove a piece of paper off the top of the battery.The sound is very low.

http://www.spareone.com/manuals/so/SO_INFO-EN.pdf

Work great. Keep it in the car just in case. It has come in handy a couple of times now and no issues.

I decided against this phone for emergency use in my northern California earthquake kit.UpsidesUses a long storage life AA lithium battery. A package of AA batters in an emergency kit will keep for many years.DownsidesIn the US, the 2G GSM network this phone uses is expected to be shut down by January 1, 2017, sooner in some areas (Google "2G GSM sunset"). Just like analog TV stations shut down in 2009, older technology 2G GSM cell service is shutting down in the near future.During an emergency, the cellular networks generally get overloaded. Txt messages often get through much better than voice calls when this happens, because the phone can delay sending them until the network is free for a moment. This phone doesn't support txt messages.During an emergency, you might want other smartphone functions like GPS navigation (with maps already downloaded), or a variety of emergency information apps like emergency medical reference (i.e. Kindle/PDF reader)

Exactly what I needed for my husband. He doesn't have a cell phone but goes out jeeping. I worry about what would happen if he got into an accident. With this, I know he will have emergency contact and not have to worry about keeping a phone charged.