I recently put together a working demo for a client showing how you might use HTML5 localStorage as a fallback for form data submission when a mobile device is offline without signal. I've published the full source code over on GitHub together with a demo for anyone who is interested.
The demo uses window.navigator.onLine to listen for a boolean value of true or false, determining whether the device is online or offline. When online, the app makes a regular XmlHttpRequest and sends data to a server. If the device loses signal and goes offline, the app queues up and saves submitted data to localStorage as a JSON string. When online connection is next restored, the app then re-sends the queued data to the server automatically. Once the data has been sent successfully, the item is then removed from localStorage.
I won't go through all the code line by line as it's reasonably straight forward, but feel free to take a closer look on GitHub. Many Webkit based smart phones now support window.navigator.onLine, as does desktop Safari or Firefox. To test, try enabling flight mode on your phone, or disable wifi on your laptop once the app is open.