The battery life for spot connect seems kind of pathetic…

First off, you do realize that you won't be turning on your Spot Connect to check your messages because you can only send messages, you won't be receiving any.

Secondly, since a set of AA Lithiums only weigh one ounce for a set, I'm not sure why you would worry about running out of batteries? Your Smart Phone battery will likely die long before the Spot Connect.

My experience is that if I send a check-in message once a day, that I never run down the battery, even after 3 months. I use lithium batteries, and then put in new ones at that point, using the old ones for another purpose. I periodically will also use the track progress feature, and don't notice any adverse impact on battery life, even using it for several days. 180 messages is a lot of messages to send for me using this device. The reason I put in fresh batteries every three months is so that, in an emergency, I am not adversely impacted by an almost depleted battery. I want to make sure the batteries don't age too much from infrequent use before I really need them to perform their primary function: keeping me safe.
Jim

Hmmm….

The Spot won't keep you safe. Only you can keep yourself safe. If you get yourself into a situation requiring rescue, then it might help; assuming the batteries aren't dead, there is no electrical malfunction, signals can be sent, you don't break it, you don't lose it, or you don't have stray electrons bouncing around inside of it.

:)

I think the best thing about communication device is to let people know you're okay so they don't worry about you

And if you get into trouble, SAR will have a good idea where to look

Chance of requiring SAR is small, but always possible to slip and break leg or something, or get hit by meteor