In-Depth Iridium 9575 Extreme Satellite Phone Review

The Iridium 9575 Extreme satellite phone will be Iridium’s 5th generation handheld satellite phone. It is 10% thinner and 7% lighter than the Iridium 9555 satellite phone. Iridium is the only satellite phone provider that offers truly global coverage including the oceans and poles. Iridium uses a satellite constellation of sixty six satellites. The Iridium Extreme is the only satellite phone offering fully integrates services of customizable GPS online tracking with true global coverage. The Iridium Extreme is the only satellite phone offering a programmable GPS enabled one touch emergency SOS button. This service will alert your programmed contact of your location and will create a two way connection to assist with the call. The Iridium Extreme maybe small, but it is built to military grade (MIL-STD-810F) durability making it the most rugged handheld phone manufactured to this date. It is the first satellite phone with an Ingress Protection rating of IP65. It is shock resistant, dust proof, and jet-water resistant. We believe the Iridium extreme is the most advanced satellite phone manufactured to date.

Design - 5 out of 5 Stars
The Iridium Extreme has a diamond tread tapered grip giving it one of the best in hand ergonomics of any satellite phone on the market. The Iridium 9575 Extreme is 140 x 60 x 27mm and only 247g making it one of the smallest satellite phones in current production. It has a 200 character illuminated display and an Illuminated weather resistant keypad. The battery life is 30 hours standby and 3.5 hours talk time. The Iridium Extreme includes a speakerphone and wind resistant microphone. This satellite phone does not feel like other satellite phones, which seem more like holding a brick. That is why we are giving the Iridium Extreme five stars for design!

Quality - 5 out of 5 Stars
The Iridium Extreme is the only satellite phone built with the Military-Grade Durability of 810F and has the highest Ingress protection of any satellite phone currently built. The Iridium Extreme has the most rugged antenna of all the Iridium phones ever built. Older generation satellite phones had durability issues with their antennas which have been addressed with the Iridium Extreme. We believe this is the most durable satellite phone ever built and that is why we are giving it five stars!

Service Clarity - 4 out of 5 Stars
The Iridium satellites communicate with each other using Ka-band intersatellite links. Each satellite has four intersatellite links, two to the fore and aft satellites in the same orbital plane and two to the satellites in orbital plane to either side. These intersatellite links allow calls to be routed among the Iridium satellites before being transferred to a ground station. While this gives truly global coverage it may cause some echo and time delay at times if the transmission must go through multiple satellites. The call clarity is not as sharp and the Globalstar CDMA technology but the Iridium service is reliable. We feel the call clarity is better than the Inmarsat IsatPhone which has more noticeable echo and time delay at times, but it does not have the call clarity of the Globalstar GSP-1700 that is why we are giving the Iridium Extreme only four stars.

For more information on how the Iridium network works go to this link
https://satphoneusa.com/iridium/network.html

Coverage - 5 out of 5 Stars
The Iridium service provides best coverage of any satellite phone provider. One of the reasons Iridium has the best coverage is their system has more satellites than any other satellite provider, giving coverage to every part of the planet including the poles and oceans. Each Iridium satellite uses four intersatellite links, two to the fore and aft satellites in the same orbital plan and two to the satellites in orbital plane to either side. These intersatellite links allow calls to be switched and routed across the satellites in the constellation before being transferred to a gateway. The intersatellite links allow Iridium satellite phone to Iridium satellite phone calls to be handled totally by the constellation. Calls of this type are not sent through the gateway. The Iridium constellation has intelligence built in the network where an outbound Iridium satellite call from Iridium satellite phone goes to one of the satellites then the call is either sent directly down to the receiving satellite phone. If the receiving satellite phone is not in the spots beam of the satellite receiving the call, then the call is switched from satellite to satellite till it reaches the satellite in area of the receiving phone where it is then sent down to the call destination.

With no service gaps, Iridium users can place and receive calls from virtually every part of the planet as long as they have line-of-site to one of the satellites. With no service gap anywhere on the planet we give Iridium five stars!

For more information on the Iridium coverage map go to this link: https://satphoneusa.com/iridium/coverage_map.html