I'm quite interested in this too, thinking of using it on the CDT next year. I've never been interested in Spot before, but I reckon cell coverage will be lousy on the CDT regardless of carrier (if anyone has any contrary info I'd be very interested ...). And I reckon on taking a standalone GPS on this trip rather than trying to keep sufficient battery power in my cell phone (which has a true built-in GPS).

I think I read somewhere that you actually pay on a per message basis for the (I think it's 40-character limited) messages you can send (one-way) on this unit; figuring out the true cost of purchase plus use is one thing I'm interested. To include the cost of putting decent (1:25,000) maps on it, assuming that's even possible?

Hopefully there will be more detailed and complete reviews coming out that include these details. Just figuring out the combined weight (with batteries) of both units takes a bit of sleuth work though I think this is find-able.