I grew up reading National Geographic magazine. Later, I watched the NatGeo channel on TV, then became addicted to their website. NatGeo, in their quest to encourage world travel, offers a travel phone to make communication easy for globetrotters. Now they’ve taken that idea one step further in collaboration with Cellular Abroad.

Introducing the new National Geographic Duet Travel Phone model D888. It features a pay-as-you-go SIM card that allows you to make calls from 185 countries and receive free calls in around 80 countries. It will also handle a secondary SIM card if you have one, which will allow you to receive calls to your normal phone number. Then there’s bluetooth, TV, FM radio, a camera, and preloaded content from National Geographic. I would assume that includes maps and travel guides. The phone costs $199.
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What’s the downside? One review so far at Amazon says The NatGeo Duet Travel Phone is “the worst cell phone ever created” and lists various problems. It only has tri-band GSM connectivity and it lacks 3G. If you don’t want to take your chances, you can buy the National Geographic SIM card without the phone, or you can rent a different model of travel phone for $18 a week. Or you can get a prepaid local phone when you get to your destination.