Iridium 9575 Extreme
The new Iridium EXTREME phone model was launched in late 2011. Outfitter Satellite initially purchased and tested 20 Iridium EXTREME phones.
The Iridium EXTREME was designed to survive in very bad weather — it can even stand up to jets of water sprayed at it (that is, it is IP65 rated). In order to achieve this rubberized material surrounds the seat where the battery is inserted. It is a very tight fit and unfortunately, in about 10% of the phones we tested, the battery did not seat on the phone correctly. The electrical contacts of the battery do not quite touch the corresponding contacts on the Iridium 9575 EXTREME phone. In several cases, even though the battery connected well enough to power up the phone, we found that you could simply touch the phone at certain places and cause the phone to turn off temporarily.
Iridium placed battery installation instructions with the phone and a sticker on the battery that recommends that you push the battery in with your thumbs. Our experience is that the battery sometimes never seats.
SOLUTION: Our solution was to try different batteries. After buying enough Iridium 9575 EXTREME phones, we found that swapping the batteries between phones eventually allowed us to find a working battery for every phone. Outfitter Satellite tests all the phones in this way before shipping them to our clients.
chan
/ February 20, 2012We have just bought 5 of these phones and only 1 works!!! 1 works normally, 1 works when you push the batterty in and the others don’t work at all! dissappointed
capstancapped
/ February 20, 2012Wow!
i have just been given three of these and only one works normally to. remaining two units work when ones thumb is pressed hard into the back of the battery. not usable at all.
outfittertech
/ February 20, 2012Try inserting the battery and then (with both of your thumbs) press the battery into the phone — starting at the base of the battery and then working up towards the middle. Be sure to NOT push on the battery so hard as to damage it, and use your thumbs but NEVER any kind of tool.
Even if the battery appears to seat there are still a few things to look for:
1) We have noticed that sometimes the battery simply “pops” back out. You may find for example that the phone can be used for several hours but then the next day it is not working without repeating the battery insertion process as discussed above.
2) Even when the battery appears to seat, we have noticed that some (not all) Iridium 9575 EXTREME phones can be (permanently or temporarily) powered off when the battery is touch in a particular place. So after you get the battery seated, verify that it doesn’t disengage when you gently squeeze the phone as if you were holding it to your ear, etc.
At Outfitter Satellite we are carefully testing the Iridium 9575 EXTREME with a given battery prior to shipping it to our end customers. If the above procedure does not work, we recommend that you RMA the phone to your provider and tell them the batteries do not stay engaged in the phone without external pressure.
outfittertech
/ February 20, 2012At Outfitter Satellite, we initially purchased a block of 20 of these phones. After some effort, we were able to make all but one of them work by taking the non-functional phones and swapping their batteries looking for a better fit. Even having done this, it can take some work to get one of the Iridium 9575 batteries into the phone sufficiently that it does not eventually disengage.
The solution is to return the phones to your provider and ask them to get batteries that are verified to work before returning them to you.