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Apple Reportedly Shelves 'Walkie-Talkie' Feature Allowing iPhone-to-iPhone Messaging Without Wi-Fi or Cellular

aidanh010 said:
The antennas would already be in the phone because 900MHz is used for cellular in Europe. The issue would be the European counterpart to unlicensed 900MHz, which for them is 868MHz, that has more limitations including a maximum airtime percent iirc.
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I think iPhone has tuned for 850Mhz as well as it was used for 3G in a few places. The problem is there are no equivalent of unlicensed 900Mhz in China, Japan, South Korea, and basically most part of the world apart from EU and US.

I really do wish they have this features available just for the supported countries, it would at least give pressure to regulators around the world.
 
rs0212 said:
This would've been great. I remember on our old Nextel phones we used to be able to Direct Connect even when we had no service, up to two or three miles if I recall. Only some phones supported it, so we always bought those ones. Forget what they branded that feature as.

Anyway, especially in America where cell coverage isn't available everywhere, I think this would be a great feature.
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Same. If only Apple could harness the technology of 2005 Sprint/Nextel...

"Can't innovate, my ass."
 
No loss as there's still Zello that was proven by Cajun Navy first responder volunteer citizens in previous hurricane disaster efforts. Last thing the public needs is a half baked unproven Apple app/service that's also not cross platform.
 
ksec said:
I think iPhone has tuned for 850Mhz as well as it was used for 3G in a few places. The problem is there are no equivalent of unlicensed 900Mhz in China, Japan, South Korea, and basically most part of the world apart from EU and US.
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Even the EU has nothing like the US' 900 Mhz. We have 446Mhz PMR but we get a meager 8 channels of 12.5kHz at 500mW. And get stuck with double the antenna length as needed for 900Mhz. There's also a digital variant (DPMR) that's similarly encumbered.

In the US you have much more bandwidth and 1W of power available. With that and the increased efficiency of small antennas it makes the difference between acceptable performance in a device the size of an iPhone and a toy, IMO.
 
GekkePrutser said:
Even the EU has nothing like the US' 900 Mhz. We have 446Mhz PMR but we get a meager 8 channels of 12.5kHz at 500mW. And get stuck with double the antenna length as needed for 900Mhz. There's also a digital variant (DPMR) that's similarly encumbered.
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EU has had 863-870 MHz, for about 10 years now. I think it was ignored because of 446 MHz availability.

EU harmonized 915-921 MHz last year, pending countries dealing with incumbent users. A number of countries, like the UK, already have access.
 
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Guess everyone has to go back to relying on Ham Radio...
 
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konqerror said:
EU has had 863-870 MHz, for about 10 years now. I think it was ignored because of 446 MHz availability.

EU harmonized 915-921 MHz last year, pending countries dealing with incumbent users. A number of countries, like the UK, already have access.
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863-870 is an ISM band for data only, not usable for voice and enforces a 1% duty cycle. It's only useful for super short messages. I use it myself for LoRa (The Things Network) and SigFox but it couldn't be used for voice. It's way too restrictive and low-bandwidth.

I didn't know about 915-921, but this seems to be mainly targeted at RFID for containers etc? If it becomes really free it might indeed be interesting as I see power up to 4W allowed in some documents. It would indeed be great to have something like the 900Mhz band in the US. But it'll take a good few years for GSM-R to disappear though.
 
GekkePrutser said:
863-870 is an ISM band for data only, not usable for voice and enforces a 1% duty cycle.
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Depending on countries and regulations, digital voice is not considered voice, which is 100% duty cycle fixed-frequency FM. For example, this license-free radio gives 10 kbps in SRD860, which is 4 digital voice channels. It looks like the duty cycle requirements are only if you don't do listen-before-talk and automatic frequency adaptation.
 
trekkie604 said:
Interesting idea but I would wonder how useful it would've been anyways due to range limitations. Those rugged GMRS radios with their external antennas running on the 400Mhz band would probably be far more useful in the outdoors.
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Would be very handy in situations we've been in having local power outages and the cell phone towers go down. Don't know what range would be, but they seem to reach the cell phone towers on the other side of the city, and it'd be a big comfort to be able to keep in touch with family during black out, often in situations where you can't just go and get your rugged GMRS radio out of your backpack. :)
 
Communication without a carrier charging for it? I'm surprised that was even considered. Reminds me of the FM radio on iPhone stuff from a few years back.
 
Would've loved this while we were on vacation. There were several areas with no cell service at all. This would have made communicating with my family much easier.
 
Translation: The project would now reduce the net worth of the CEO and his senior V.P.’s so it’s been scrapped.
 
izyreal said:
That's annoying. Lately it seems the innovation news coming out of Apple is the death of innovative projects. :/
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Innovative?

Are you too young to remember the old Boost mobile walkie talkie commercials?

"YO WHERE YOU AT?!"
 
klunernet said:
It’s also reasonable to expect that the feature would be illegal in some (perhaps all) parts of the world (like Europe) where the use of such bands are heavily regulated and not for general use.
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Actually, there are unlicensed bands in Region 2 (the Americas) and in ETSI territory (most of Region 1), 900 MHz ISM band here, and 863 MHz to 870 MHz there, that are available for unlicensed use.
 
klunernet said:
It’s also reasonable to expect that the feature would be illegal in some (perhaps all) parts of the world (like Europe) where the use of such bands are heavily regulated and not for general use.
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I would assume Apple is aware of any restrictions.
 
MacRumors said:
The project is said to have been suspended in part because the Apple executive heading it, Rubén Caballero, left the company earlier this year.
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I’d think/hope that Apple wouldn’t shelf a project just because the project exec took off. i.e. I’d think/hope an Apple project like this could survive a leadership change. This doesn’t smell like the truth. Always be wary when a journalist writes uses the passive voice (e.g. “is said”) without saying who.
 
klunernet said:
It’s also reasonable to expect that the feature would be illegal in some (perhaps all) parts of the world (like Europe) where the use of such bands are heavily regulated and not for general use.
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900Mhz has been set aside in many countries and is deliberately unregulated - similar the frequencies used by WiFi and bluetooth.

I'm not sure if Europe allows 900Mhz specifically, but if not there would be an alternative available. Apple already uses 2.4Ghz for AirDrop which is global, although the range isn't good enough for this use case.

With a well designed antenna, 900Mhz works reliably at up to 150 kilometres under ideal circumstances, and at least half a kilometre as a worse case scenario (for example, with several concrete buildings in the way).

Worst case scenario, there might be some countries where the range isn't as good as others. Oh well.
 
brinary001 said:
This one tho is more likely because of comms regulations and each country having different variations of them
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Well this just means they did not do research on what was allowed and what not before pouring resources in such product...
 
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