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You Can Send Texts via Satellite in iOS 18
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I have an iPhone 15 Pro and I just bought a Garmin Inreach Mini 2 last week. I purposely went somewhere to test it to see how it compared to the emergency SOS satellite on the iPhone. I found a really bad flaw in the Apple Satellite feature. Where I was, my iPhone said I had one bar of signal, but the signal was so weak, I was not able to make any calls or send any iMessages/SMS. I tried to send my location via satellite (to test the satellite without actually setting off an emergency) and the iPhone said that satellite was not available because I had cellular signal (even thought the cellular signal was too weak to use). The Garmin worked with no issue. Worth the money for me for the Garmin, but the Apple satellite is good to have as a back up solution, I would not rely on it. Had that been a real emergency I would have been screwed if not for the Garmin.
You may not have been paying attention.
T-Mobile is partnering with SpaceX to do exactly this: offer satellite-to-LTE service on vanilla, non-special phones.
Announcement:
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-ca...kthrough-direct-to-cell-service-with-t-mobile
Demo:
Feels like it will
1) Be free to start
2) Some small percentage of users will send a massive number of SMS - like 1% sending 85% of satelitte SMS
3) AS a result, Apple either (a) limits everyone to x free per month or (b) [more likely] uses this to justify charging everyone a fee, or various plans with x messages included.
Emergency SOS may ALWAYS be free.. either via some minimal charge or device purchase… or it will work, but there is going to be some charge..
I really doubt that anyone with an iPhone 14 or later is going to DIE or not be rescued because their device couldnt/wouldn’t connect to Satellies because there wasn’t a paid sub. It’s just not going to happen.
I highly recommend a proper PLB if you are hiking in areas with no signal. I carry an ACR PLB myself. These are designed for life and death situations with a much more robust communications infrastructure and process. Those feature on the iPhone are nice but always want to have a secondary more failsafe comms in the event something serious happens.
AST Spacemobile offering this to all devices later this year and next, if you want to be a millionaire in the next 3 years I would suggest you buy the ticker symbol ASTS.
Thank you! We don't go quite that extreme, but we do run into spotty, or nonexistent service. However — T-Mobile has promised to help with that
Why? It's not available everywhere by everybody right now. Is it someone's fault now if it happened? Why would that be Apple's fault in some speculative future?
Which is why they should permit a “pay later” option. A warning should pop up stating that you may be charged but still permit the messages to go through. I (and I’m sure anyone) would gladly pay for a lifesaving feature after the fact.
Someone will have to pay for the uplinks/downlinks for the satellites that Apple uses, but does not own.
Just put it as part of iCloud + basic. I mean, they are eating the cost for two years so I hardly doubt it is that expensive to use.
No. If you add it as a part of iCloud + without raising the prices then you don’t charge for it in the consumer eyes
They thought it was dead and forgotten.
But Capitalism always finds a way.
Coming soon to a phone near you:
But Capitalism always finds a way.
Coming soon to a phone near you:
The Return of the Per-Character Messaging Fees... FROM SPAAAAACE!
This gets into the tricky balance of bundled services via subscription. I don't intend/have a need to use satellite text messaging, and may not have a supported device anyhow. Why should I pay for this feature that I don't want/can't use just so I can store more photos in the cloud, which is all I use iCloud for at a dollar a month.
I’m sure there’s been situations this year where people haven’t been able to contact emergency services via their phones because they failed to pay their cellular phone bill. I don’t think there’s been any impact to those companies.
Phone calls from a flying Jet? Forget it - not possible. There are many reasons why... Distance to earth stations (regular 4G / 5G) is more or less the same as up to satellites; about 30K ft / 10km. If you can't reach down, you can't reach up as well (we talk about regular smartphones). Of course - with some tech in / on the plane it works - but just for the plane and his tech, not for costumers.
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Sats have to have the same tech as the regular earth stations. I think it works just with 4G. 5G doesn't offer that distances (frequency plus internal antenna of the phone).
Calling emergency services works even without an active phone plan (at least in the US).I’m sure there’s been situations this year where people haven’t been able to contact emergency services via their phones because they failed to pay their cellular phone bill. I don’t think there’s been any impact to those companies.