I’d love to learn more about the RF side of this. In their marketing demo they showed that in order to avoid needing a traditional antenna, the user will be guided to point the phone at a satellite during the few minutes required for transmission.
I’d love to know what the antenna arrangement is. I’d have guessed something like a log periodic laid out on the inside of the rear case.
Would be also interesting to see how this solution compares to the Chinese BeiDou based network that Huawei is using. Is this similar a standard? Meaning that iPhone at one point would support BeiDou or is it completely different?
The first phone maker to add satellite texting to its devices is... Huawei
Huawei has announced the Mate 50 series, a day ahead of Apple’s September event and with a feature that the iPhone 14 is expected to offer: the ability to send texts via satellite communication. The Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro will be able to send short texts and utilize navigation thanks to China’s global BeiDou satellite network, allowing for communication in areas without cellular signal.
It seems Apple uses the GlobalStar LEO satllites for these communication.[0]
Huawei is using BeiDou[1], which is the navigation satellite system. BeiDou is something just like GPS, but has the capability to send short text message. Huawei is using that function for SOS meesage.
Basically you can expect wherever you can receive navigation signals, you can send your SOS message.
They could do some cool 1-way Forward Error Correctioned broadcasts with that. “Point your phone in the sky here for your daily news updates” kinda thing. Could be localized with spot beams in a future iteration.
Or get a fancy holder and hold in place for an hour to get X minutes of video updates.
Friend of a friend works the satellite trucks for onsite broadcasting at sports events. He told me once that he phones the satellite operators and they coordinate to make sure the beams are aligned as tightly as possible to reduce the power loading on the satellite. I’m guessing there’s probably a similar constraint here — I don’t think (pure conjecture) it’s feasible to have a tonne of iPhones (and let’s be honest, they’re everywhere) hanging off satellites.
After 2 years: I hope they offer a "pay later" option (does not mean it has to be cheap). You never know when you are in emergency situations and you maybe need this kind of new technology.
Imagine people could be saved in theory (and die) but not in practice because they did not paid their emergency subscription.
And even worse: Imagine you could pay later but you don't use that option because you want to save money oO
You have to look at the business side of things, too. Apple has to pay a lot of money to whoever is managing and maintaining the satellites behind this and if you only ever pay when you need it you might not never pay at all. The correct mindset to have about this is that it's like insurance — you can't pick up insurance only after the fact when you need it, otherwise all insurance providers would be broke.
It’s a bit different from insurance, in that the benefit to the user of contacting police/rescue could be nearly infinite, while the marginal cost to Apple is small. So as long as the after-the-fact charge is high enough, Apple can amortize their costs. The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains, many of whom wouldn’t be able to pay anyway.
> The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains
Is it any better PR if there are stories out there of bodies found starved to death in the wilderness equipped with an iPhone that has the hardware capabilities to contact emergency services, but couldn't because the person didn't pay Apple life insurance
> The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains, many of whom wouldn’t be able to pay anyway.
Not just the satellites, but they also said that, due to the slow speeds involved in the satellites, Apple will employ people who will be able to step in the middle of you and EMS, to help get information to them faster and answer relevant questions, without having to rely on you receiving/answering them using your device. The cost of this team alone will be huge.
This is probably an expansion of the same Globalstar team that services SOS messages from their own SPOT satellite messengers, which also use the same satellite network.
The SPOT plans and the competing Garmin inReach plans are not cheap:
And if you make a SPOT call nobody may be out there for a while. I looked into getting one just in case. Where I like to camp, in BLM land, SPOT calls the "local" 911 responder which is 2.5 hours away and run by CHP. Back then they said it can take up to 72 hours for someone to get a team together to look for you. The owners of the backpacking store I went to, whom I know, said it wouldn't be worth my money.
I imagine there's better coverage in a national park though.
Even in a national park, it will take time to respond to a satellite call.
Contrary to popular belief, search and rescue doesn't always send a helicopter. It's still common to send a ranger on foot and help walk somebody out on the trail. Or if that's not possible, to take a team of humans and carry someone out on a litter.
More generally... From what I was trained, ~12 hours is considered a fast rescue. The average time (according to the FAA's pilot survival training) is 31 hours, even with a known good location fix. 72 hours is very possible if there's inclement weather or difficulty locating someone.
It seems like this is a big advantage of the inreach in that you can text with EMS to convey if it is an urgent situation. You can also text friends/family to make alternate arrangements if the regular rescue people aren’t going to be fast enough.
Sounds like the Apple version lets you send some info also. And I would generally expect search and rescue to be able to get to you faster than friends.
That's true, it apparently has some multiple choice questions you can answer, which is definitely better than just hitting the big red button and letting rescuers guess what the nature of the situation is based on you position.
Being two-way, the other advantage of the inreach is that rescuers can ask you questions and tell you when they expect to arrive etc.
That said, the delta in functionality between what the iphone will offer and what an inreach offers in an emergency situation is probably not enough for the vast majority of people to want to purchase an inreach and a subscription, unless they also have a use for non-emergency communication outside of cell coverage.
At that point I wonder when quadcopters or fixed-wing UAVs will be feasible to at least establish visual contact with the sender of an emergency signal and/or drop off a sat-phone for bidirectional contact - there have been model aircraft capable of crossing the Atlantic [1] after all, and modern quadcopters like the DJI Matrice have something like an hour of flight time and 80 km/h speed so these could carry emergency supplies as well, no matter the terrain.
It’s already being done in a few places. But think bigger- the Royal Navy has done sea trails where they use drones to drop life rafts to sailors overboard. These aren’t little DJIs - look at the Malloy T150 and 400. The latter can also carry people and cargo up to 180kg (65kg for the former). These are in military service today with the Royal Marines and in Ukraine.
UK Border Force also uses a Tekever AR5 UAS over the English Channel to look for people crossing. It could be pretty useful in a SAR-situation though; 20 hour endurance carrying 50KG.
Think bigger also automatically means "think way more expensive". I was more thinking about something that can be placed in a small charging pod around the entrances of popular but dangerous areas.
In the backcountry help is farther away than it is in the city. That applies no matter how you call for help. I've got an inReach but I would expect it to be hours from pushing the button to help showing up unless it was something very urgent and there happened to be a chopper around that could reach where I was. On top of the highest peak in the area I wouldn't be surprised at help taking 8 hours to arrive.
As for whether it's worth it--it depends on what you're doing. As a backcountry hiker that often goes solo I consider it essential insurance. If something happens that's likely the only way I would get help rather than ending up like the guy on our local mountains that disappeared a couple of weeks ago--certainly dead by now (there's no water to be had) but his body hasn't been found.
imho with an inreach its mostly that i can message friends and family if something happens from deadly serious to "my truck broke down 100km down a FSR, please send a tow truck!" to "we are running late but OK". inreach has proven to be worth every penny and them some.
What you would hope is that there is a small monthly fee (say a few bucks) to have the service and then a "usage fee" for the random unlikely time you use the service. So imagine paying $2 a month to have the service on and then $75 each time you use it. Use it once every 3 years (which seems like a lot for the intended user base) and it's only ~$4 a month.
And that seems about right compared to SPOT monthly pricing, considering it's intended for much greater usage than one time every 3 years.
I don't think that comparison holds. What Apple is doing is making a crucial rescue tool, the distress beacon, near-ubiquitous. In a few years, any major-ish emergency involving people rich enough to own iPhones will have a working distress beacon around. This isn't like an InReach that you get and subscribe because you expect you might end up in an emergency, this is something that'll be around without even an awareness of danger and the optics of letting that potential go to waste carry a cost as well. Imagine a plane goes down in a remote area, a dozen iPhones on board but no one got the subscription. They might even end up eating the costs for genuine distress calls just for the marketing value of the iPhone saving hundreds of lives a year, or they might just charge a large sum for non-subscription distress calls and eat the cost in case the bear got there first.
Besides, if they included a few tweet-sized non-emergency text messages and location updates a day in a reasonably priced subscription, I bet that would sell like hotcakes in outdoorsy circles. People bring their phone anyway, so 2-3 iPhones on your party might make the InReach redundant. I'd love that.
I wouldn't say it would make the inReach redundant, although it's going to take a substantial bite out of the low end of the market. I pay extra for unlimited pings on a 10 minute interval--even if I can't call for help when I'm reported overdue they'll know where I am.
I also think my inReach can take a lot more abuse than an iPhone.
I also think it will drive the satellite guys to offer a different service--SOS only, you pre-pay a fixed price that doesn't expire. (Actually, we already have a limited version of this--personal locator beacons have no monthly cost but have to be sent in for refurbishment if used. They are highly reliable but carry nothing but ID and GPS, you can't alter the message.)
I'm assuming this will be the same – a monthly subscription that you can pause whenever and turn on for months when you are hiking in the wilderness, on your boat etc.
Gov should subsidise it for everyone, not just Apple and Globestar. Emergency beacons should be given for free at every park. Thats a massive cost saving in terms of search and lost lives.
It might lead to _more_ search costs; people head off into sketchy situations safe in the knowledge that if they press a little button a SAR helicopter will be scrambled.
Which it almost certainly won’t be. A SAR team will probably be dispatched when it is safe to do so. Which may take a day or more. It’s a limitation of a personal locator beacon. It had better be a real emergency and even then you have to wait. Location fixes may also not always be reliable.
Haha no, they would call the literally space-age thing that saved their lives "price gouging" and point as Apple's profits as evidence that every human is entitled to this service for free.
The birds aren't cheap, the rescue coordination centers (they know who to talk to, they have no ability to actually go into the field--although that's not always needed. Garmin recently mentioned one--SOS comes in "found lost child". 25 minutes later, SOS comes in "lost child"; all they had to do is direct them to where the other was) have to be staffed--and both are private.
Yeah, but the government can collect money via taxes, which allows it to solve coordination problems that would be more difficult for private companies to solve.
T-Mobile and Starlink announced a partnership to offer call/texting/data usage when outside of cell coverage. They mentioned this would be free for premium plans and paid for lower cost plans.
Apple uses high orbit satellites for SOS and "Find My" limited to iPhones; Starlink/T-Mobile would use low orbit satellites not limited to for SOS/calling/texting/data ("Find My") for any brand/model phone.
Yup, the big difference is that Apple's high orbit sats are currently already there via Globalstar, with service starting in November. Whereas T-Mobile + Starlink is "sometime" and we're not sure exactly when as far as I can see. It'll be cool when it is available though!
That’s already the case with most types of insurance. It ran out? You haven’t paid bills? and your house was hit by a tornado right after it ran out? Tough luck.
That said it may have a “using this feature binds you to a new agreement where you pay for all the time you discontinued our service”
I don’t think insurance is a good analog because insurance has very high payouts.
Not sure the cost for this feature but the marginal cost is likely really low. So a day of coverage would maybe cost a few cents or dollars since they are already including 2 years free without raising the price.
This is very different from a day of homeowners insurance where the payout is hundreds of thousands or millions. The marginal cost on insurance is very high.
Insurance is to make you whole financially after the fact not to response to a life and death emergency in the moment. This theory has been tried in at least one location wherein you were expected to pay annually for fire service or the fire department wouldn't put out your house and would instead insure that the fire didn't spread to the paying customers while they watched your home burn.
It's abhorrent. We ensure cell phones can always call 911 even without a plan for instance which unlike insurance is a nearly identical situation. The logical thing to do is just take it out of the hands of service providers by always requiring carriage of such a call in all circumstances and expecting OEMs/service providers to make back that money on device or service wherein such a device includes that function.
I would accept your argument if all handsets had this functionality built in. As it is now, only forthcoming devices from one MFG is availing this as an additional paid service with free introductory period.
If I had an Iridium handset and the sub ran out and I was adrift, would I still be able to make an emergency call?
i doubt they'll start charging in two years. they're just avoiding making the promise of "free forever" if it turns out nobody cares about this feature and they decide to drop it from future iPhones.
in two years, it'll either continue to be free, or it will be discontinued (or transitioned to an "if you want it, go pay money to globalstar" model)
Even a “pre-pay for a day of help” would be great. You could spend $100 in January, and keep that credit on file; then, if you need help in September, you can start up your 24-hour window.
But given the era of recurring subscription revenue above all else, I think we know how Apple will handle this.
I agree that insurance is maybe not the best analogy. You need satellite capacity to send one text message. When your house burns down, you need potentially hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.
The satellites are expensive, of course, but most traffic is not cell phone users needing to be rescued.
Once it's viable because people are paying for other sat services, we can legislate that emergency sat calls be free no matter what, just like 911 / 111 / etc are now. (which is possible because people pay for other cell services, and don't solely use 911)
That issue already exists--without a subscription my inReach becomes nothing but an inferior GPS. When it powers up it even warns you that the SOS capability does not work without a subscription.
"Globalstar said it is allocating 85% of its current and future network capacity to support the services and has agreed to prioritize the services on its network."
Lots of people get into trouble all the time and don't have a PLB or satellite messenger on them. It's not just on boats – hikers and climbers in the mountains get themselves into dangerous situations frequently.
Globalstar is probably preparing for an influx of new users to their service who would otherwise not own a satellite-capable device.
Boats? Denver to California is basically only covered if you can see a paved road… and their aren’t a ton of paved roads. Let’s not get into Canada, even on the main highway there are plenty of dead spots.
Also, don’t overestimate their bandwidth. I rented a sat-phone once for weather updates mid Atlantic. Text only emails could take a minute to ul/dl with full reception.
I think the UL/DL is more due to the design of the network (I’m talking about Iridium data packets). The connection isn’t persistent like a computer in many cases. For example, a handset does both passive and active checks at some interval rather than the satellites pushing messages down as they’re available.
edit: It’s also worth mentioning that the bandwidth is very limited, but I thought it worth calling out the above
It looks like Globalstar currently has around 700,000 subscribers including Commercial IoT. Apple sells what, 200 million iPhones a year? Most of those won’t be Pros or sold in the US but it’s still going to be massive numbers.
Unlike something 3gpp (LTE) based, each existing low earth orbit satellite network is made from mutually incompatible proprietary tech. It's a very different thing than just having a random GSM band cellular phone with no SIM card in it.
This is a good insight. As Smartphones satellite connectivity becomes more widespread, it's definitely expected that government will regulate it similar to cellular connectivity and require a free access to emergency services.
In the meanwhile, Apple is using it as a differentiated feature.
The challenge here is that these satellite networks get a significant amount of their operating revenue from charging for emergency-only communication. Unlike 911, the satellite company itself is also responsible for hiring the dispatchers on the other end. It's not clear how the satellite networks could give it away for free under the current business model.
(Assuming free meaning "any device can connect, regardless of subscription status". In this case, Apple is essentially subsidizing the service costs for their users, and only for a limited time - there is still a paid subscription on the backend.)
It's worth noting that the government already offers free distress alerting via the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system - though it's one-way communication only. It would be interesting if a future iteration of the system allowed for smaller antennas and two-way communication with the rescue coordination center dispatchers.
No, as you mentioned, 406link is a commercial hack that detects a PLB's "test" message and uses that to trigger a pre-programmed "I'm ok" message. But that's not what I'm referring to.
By one-way communication, I was referring to the default "I'm in distress, here's my coordinates, send help" message, which is the only message the system can officially transmit. There's no way to carry on a two-way conversation to collect further details, or even a mechanism to acknowledge the message - though due to a very robust system design, it's very unlikely the message wouldn't get received.
> Mandatory 911 sat service on phones that support will save a lot of lives!!
How many people have died in the US because they were in distress but did not have cell phone coverage and were in a position where they could send a transmission to a satellite (e.g. clear view of the sky, etc.)?
Exactly. Search and rescue missions based on the itineraries, last known position reports etc. of missing hikers alone are incredibly resource intensive. It‘s not unlikely for members of the SAR team to get injured or even killed during such an operation.
I've seen a lot of studies that model human life with a dollar amount. It's depressingly low. I think I was reading a traffic study (can't find it) that modeled pedestrian deaths at $1M, in a city where many people walking around have a higher net worth than that (because of housing prices).
Honestly that sounds like a better use case than some being described. It was clearly an emergency situation and someone could have presumably reached them relatively quickly. Maybe car breakdowns or getting stranded are the bigger deal.
Off the top of my head (local news or cases I have heard of from fellow hikers):
One keeled over dead, on the trail and part of a group.
Two diabetics, alone but not lost.
One found dead on the trail, apparently an insta-kill medical issue.
One lost, never found, but I suspect he was actually a suicide. If not, he was trying for a Darwin.
One near the road going for help after a vehicle breakdown.
One got cliffed out trying to go for help after a vehicle breakdown. Not really lost, but unable to proceed.
One disappeared, his body hasn't been found where he was expected to be but given his experience level lost is unlikely. Personally, I suspect he went off trail for something and keeled over.
There have also been two skeletons pulled out of the desert, probably lost but it's unlikely we will ever know.
Admittedly, a small sample but note that only 20% of those appear to be lost.
I've also talked to a woman who just about became one of those statistics--new to the area and didn't respect the heat. Not lost.
Most wilderness deaths are medical or accident, not lost, and a lot of national park deaths are traffic accidents.
And that's in total. I don't know if we can get an accurate number of the number of legitimate uses of this service/year-- even by an order of magnitude.
I'm pretty sure apple will advertise it in next year's iPhone event though
It's not universally true though, in Japan the equivalent of the FCC requires an active contract in order to be licensed to broadcast so emergency calls are not available without a valid SIM card
This idea is totally from left field, but perhaps Apple hopes to show how successful this program is with search and rescue operations to receive government subsidy? I can’t imagine a company as image-conscious as Apple being okay with the optics of a headline describing a hiker’s death after not paying for Emergency SOS.
I imagine this has to be a loss leader/marketing feature, where the hope is very few will use it but those who do will result in "iPhone saves 12 year old Boy Scout lost in the woods!"
Loss leader isn't the proper term in this case. Think of this akin to the health-scare clips they've been showing in the past few years when talking about the Apple Watch (like today).
The number of Afib/high heart rate detections are miniscule, but serves as great marketing. Good enough for me to order one today.
The Apple Watch doesn't currently check for heart attacks, though, and makes a point of telling you that every time you use any of the heart-related functions.
It can detect atrial fibrillation, but that's a different thing from a regular heart attack.
I suspect two years from now, the SOS feature will either be free or rolled into a service bundle like Apple One or News+.
By then, there could other satellite-based services that would be subscription-based.
Apple certainly doesn’t need a subsidy; if anything, they may end up subsidizing future satellite launches with the $200 billion—-give or take—-they’re sitting on.
Note that in the US SAR services are not always free and if you have an inReach or similar device you probably also need supplementary SAR insurance. It's cheap, but you still need it.
Do you have such insurance? Any company you've had good experiences with? I had a close call or two hiking in the Cascades and wasn't aware this was a thing so I'd appreciate any tips.
InReach offers it as a optional paid add-on ($30) when you sign up for an account.
While not always true internationally, at least in the US most jurisdictions won't charge for rescue as long unless you weren't careless and reckless. Even where state law allows for recovering rescue costs, it's a high bar before they'll actually send out a bill... they normally don't want to discourage people from calling from help until it's too late, if it's truly needed. (Keep in mind that rescue in the wilderness can easily take 12-48 hours.)
That said, laws allowing the state to recoup rescue costs are becoming more common as satellite messengers have become more prevalent, leading to more non-emergency nuisance calls.
Cost of rescue really depends where you're at though. In a national park like Mt. Rainier you aren't actually charged even if they have to helicopter you off the top of the mountain--rescues are paid for by the cost of a climbing permit that everyone pays to go above 10k feet. In other places SAR teams operate like volunteer fire departments and get funding from the county. But yeah, in some places a helicopter rescue is going to cost you directly and it is not cheap--at Mt. Shasta the rangers were telling me it was about $14k per incident.
GEOS (a Garmin subsidiary) offers this for most devices on the Iridium network, including Zoleo and Garmin's own inReach communicators: https://my-geos.com/products
I have a Zoleo device and pay for the $40/yr coverage. You just register your device's IMEI with them.
Its state by state. SAR rescue is free in California as long as its not do to excessive negligence on the party. Prob cost $ in the muh freedom type of states :/
I don't know why this would even be a subscription. I'm not hiking into the wilderness on a regular basis. I'd be happy to pay $20 to activate the feature for 30 days ahead of any adventuring I have planned.
By only offering you it as a longer-term subscription, they can likely capture that recurring revenue from more people as a "just to be safe" type offering, perhaps off the back of something existing like another level of iCloud+.
They'll then not cancel it, and they've successfully raised their annual/monthly recurring revenue for a fair % of their users.
Not only that a PLB let you send a distress signal to low orbit network of satellite, it sends its 406MHz signal to three types of networks: low earth orbit (LEO) , geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO) and medium earth orbit (MEO), as well as 121.5MHz signal which is monitored by private aircrafts and can help to home SAR responders.
Garmin InReach on the other hand uses Iridum (LEO only as far as I know) which is used to report to IERCC (a private emergency response coordinator).
The reason you might want GEO and MEO are:
1. While LEO (unlike GEO) cover the poles as well due to their North-South orbit, they have 60-90 min orbit period, which means more latency, where as GEO covers 70% of earth at all time.
2. Even if there multiple overlapping LEO around you which shorten the orbit period and hence the max latency, you might have limited view of the sky (especially if you happen to be in a North-South canyon) in which case it's good to have an increased chance of delivering that distress signal.
LEO satellite strength, as far as I know is in their ability to receive signal even in severe weather.
The first downside of LEO applies only to COSPAS-SARSAT, but not e.g. Iridium.
Iridium has inter-satellite links and the satellites accordingly don‘t need to store a message until they are in view of a ground station again – message delivery is effectively instant, globally.
Unlike PLBs, Iridium devices require a paid subscription, though.
It is my understanding that inter-satellite links makes communication effectively instant, not ground to satellite delivery in challenging environment, such as deep canyons (especially north to south ones) with narrow view of the sky. GEO might fail under these conditions too, but when it suceeds, delivery is immediate.
Moreover, GPS can be flaky under such conditions too, in which case MEO satellites might be able to provide fast Doppler detection to approximate the device location to few miles area and responders can further reduce the search area.
On the other hand, satellite tracker (such as Garmin InReach) advantage would be that it can be configured to try and send its location every 10 minutes, therefore, even if at the current location there's no signal, your last tracked location might be not far away.
Yes they do. These are 406 MHz Emergency Distress Signal devices: "Distress alerts transmitted from ELTs, EPIRBs, SSAS, and PLBs are received and processed by the International Cospas-Sarsat Programme, the international satellite system for search and rescue (SAR). These beacons transmit a 406 MHz distress signal every 50 seconds, varying over a span of 2.5 seconds to avoid multiple beacons always transmitting at the same time." [0]
It doesn't let you send a message but it does communicate (one-way only) by satellite. They're the hiker version of the emergency locator transmitters on airplanes.
My read of the marketing materials is that it supports the "Find My" feature which you can use to share locations with friends/family?
This is really a killer feature for me as an outdoor enthusiast who hangs out in places with no reception every other weekend. I'm also a weight weenie and really care about how heavy the stuff I carry is. I'm going to keep an eye on how well this works in the field for sure.
I've been considering a Garmin InReach Mini, its roughly $350 for the device and $300 for a satellite subscription for 2 years.
If the satellite messing works well, this phone just added $650 worth of value for me on top of a regular iPhone. Basically, it doesn't matter how much a continued subscription will cost after year two. I'd be completely happy to buy a new phone in two years just for this one feature.
Assuming your use case is very light? An inreach is significantly more durable than any phone, has better battery life, and is very battle tested. I'd not be putting my life at risk by relying on an iPhone.
“Let friends know how remote you go.
If you’re on an adventure without cell service, you can now use Find My to share your location via satellite so friends and family know where you are.“
1. Whatever fees the satellite network charges them.
2. The cost to maintain the call centers they're routing your contact with the nearby emergency services through. (They say they'll put you in direct text contact if the emergency department supports it, but otherwise they'll be intermediaries.)
This suggests to me that how much this costs in an ongoing way is going to be heavily dependent on how much it's used, such that locking themselves in to a pricing structure before they have any idea how much use it'll see is a bad idea for them.
> I hope this supports location report to closed friends like how Garmin did
They mentioned in the presentation that you can make a non-emergency use of this system to ping your location to their Find My network. So it's at least a way to keep your Apple-ecosystem friends updated on where you are when you're out of cell range.
I expect that within 2 years the Starlink cellular coverage will be good enough to replace this. Will be interesting to see how the take rate holds up in that environment after the free period expired.
It's an unfortunate fact of human nature that once you get used to something existing you expect it to exist*. Something one could easily forget to pay (say you overspent and denied the charge) could end up killing you.
I sincerely hope in two years the SOS feature is free and a limited data plan for $$$ exists. This could also explain the 85% of sat service usage. But we shouldn't have to hope such a thing exists...
* We can hate people all we want for this "feature" but the fact of the matter its how we're built.
I think a person who is going out into the wilderness, who has prepared food and water and a tent and told their family where they are going, is probably going to remember to renew the subscription. Apple might even let you do it via satellite.
This feature is not targeted towards day trip hikers, whose low level of preparedness in other areas along with lack of experience means they probably won’t venture further than where they would be found by other hikers.
It's easy to lose the trail in some terrain and the people you're talking about likely wouldn't know what to do about it. Just last week I saved one of those guys from at best a rather unpleasant experience, at worst being stranded in the wilderness--and he didn't even lose the trail.
We had met on a local summit although we had approached it via different routes. We were on a spur off a longer trail--and he took the wrong direction when coming back to the main trail. I encountered him probably an hour later and realized his mistake and got him headed back to his car. Had he continued there was one junction ahead--if he took the left branch he would end up where I was parked which was miles from his car. If he took the right branch he would have failed to end up at a slightly more distant parking lot as by the trail it was about 16 miles away, going over a summit just below 12k' (we were a bit above 9k' at the time) in the process. His phone battery was dead, it was near the new moon and that route goes near cliffs.
I mean, yeah, that’s the model that Garmin, Spot (which is under the same network that Apple is now on), and others are already using. It’s essentially insurance.
It's worth noting that you can use a PLB (which runs on the COSPAS-SARSAT network) to summon help for free. No subscription required. On the other hand, the devices themselves cost $300 and aren't usable for anything else outside a life-or-death emergency.
The big reason InReach/Spot subscription devices are so popular is that they include non-emergency messaging to family as part of the service.
I genuinely think this feature is going to save lives. I've had friends before who have been in the exact target situation (got lost after nightfall in a remote location with no way to communicate) and only were found and rescued through absolute sheer dumb luck.
Meanwhile in order to get remote unlock on my RAM truck (via phone) it's like $900 for 5 years. That was one thing I liked about Ford, their tech stuff is (currently) free forever.
FordPass (previously known as myfordmobile or something?) may not have a recurring charge, but my vehicle is on its second obsolete modem. They replaced the 2g modem with a 3g modem for free before I had the car, and some people were offered a 4g modem installation with free labor (but not me), but the hardware is about $300-$400 iirc. My car knows how to be a wifi client for reasons I can't fathom, but FordPass won't work with that. The modem is hidden under trim that's a pain to remove, and the new modem doesn't fit the old modem's mounting pattern, so they use tape on velcro to hold the new one.
You buy it, you never pay anything else, it works all over the planet, in extreme conditions, you never need to charge its battery (good for 7+ years), and most importantly, it communicates with an exclusive satellite constellation dedicated to search and rescue, operated by national governments. Your emergency call is handled directly by local government agencies, the military in many parts of the world, who have a duty to respond to the emergency - in accordance with international treaties.
For the US, it's on a state-by-state basis but rescue is usually free as long as it's a true emergency and you weren't blatantly reckless to begin with.
For other parts of the world, you might get a bill to recover the cost of rescue. But in most cases it's still usually free.
(Medical care once you get back to civilization is a different story.)
Undefined. But at zero cost in every case I know of, in a multitude of countries. Be it a simple policeman driving into the middle of the desert to help a cyclist, to a complex joint, multinational, civil-military operation in the middle of the ocean, with aircraft and the rerouting of container ships.
This isn't true everywhere. E.g. in the alps you might be billed for rescue, particularly if you're not injured or in a medical emergency. That said, SAR insurance is cheap. Many alpinist associations and the likes offer it as part of their membership, which is often less than 100€/yr. There's no reason not to have it if you're going out into the mountains.
I'd highly recommend the garmin inreach mini. I do a bit of hiking and traveling in remote places and it's a good peace of mind. It's dedicated to saving your life, the battery can last a lot longer than a cell phone, and it has texting if you need to reach out in a non-emergency.
It costs about 50$ or so to register for the year and you just pay for a month when you need it. Well worth the secuirty. It also has a dedicated SOS button under a cap that you can press during an emergency. It will send your location to an international monitoring center that will dispatch someone local to your location for rescue. You can opt in for insurance that I believe covers an air lift.
It also can double as a location tracker or rudimentary GPS if you need directions to civilization or lake.
I also want to add my enthusiastic recommendation for the Garmin InReach mini. I purchased one to keep as an emergency communications device. It’s small, lightweight, keeps a charge for months when powered off, and (in a pinch) can be used without pairing to a phone. I keep mine in my backpack.
I test out my InReach every time I go out of cell service and it Just Works.
With garmin gps phones you can text any number, not just emergency services. Did anyone catch if this would be possible with the new iphone's emergency satellite plan?
I've also seen them discounted as low as $250 at REI. I plan to purchase one before my next cross country drive, a lot of places without cellular reception and many of those are sufficiently isolated I wouldn't want to have to wait for assistance to happen by.
https://www.findmespot.com/ is a popular brand of satellite emergency beacons I know of (I've never used one, though). You don't need a full satellite phone
If you're only looking for search and rescue, you can get a personal locator beacon for around $300 with no subscription fees. they last around 7 years before you'll want a new one in case of battery failure. They operate on the same NOAA systems that ships use to send SOS signals.
I wear one a lot since I live alone in the woods without cell or internet service for several months out of the year.
I've been considering a Garmin InReach Mini, its roughly $350 for the device and roughly $300 for a satellite subscription for 2 years. This iPhone ... is quite compelling in the face of that.
Assuming you use case is to press an emergency button which shares your location with a dispatcher and nothing else which this seems to be for now. You apparently can’t text family to say you’re running late etc.
I suspect their plan is to introduce satellite calling by the time 2 years is up, but we'll see if the phone has the hardware for that already, or just the bare minimum for emergency texting.
My guess is that including it free for two years is because they aren’t confident the UX will be any good. They don’t dare charge for an emergency-relays service that might be a mess. So it’s basically an open beta.
I think the weakest link, by far, is texting 911 or routing through a call centre.
That doesn't seem likely. Offering something for free doesn't mean you're legally off the hook for what it does. That's especially true when the "free" thing you're offering is part of a package deal that you're selling to the public. If they're rolling out an emergency relay, they'd better be confident that it'll work the vast, vast majority of the time.
This feature seems to have a few limitations: You have to point the phone, perhaps for a minute or two, which means you have to be able enough to point the phone at a particular part of the sky dictated by the phone. If you are injured this may not be possible. So not as simple as just pressing a "rescue me" button. You need both satellite and GPS coverage wherever you are. GPS is not 100% available everywhere, sometimes tree cover or tall buildings can block it. Same with satellite coverage. So there are likely situations where it will not work, or it may get a message through but may not be able to send your GPS location.
True, but terrain limitations apply the same to the systems it's competing with. I do agree it's stricter about pointing, but the manual on my inReach advises that it be in a vertical position for maximum reliability--people typically hang such devices from their packs to provide vertical orientation and minimum obstruction. For a lightweight implementation of a satellite rescue system this sounds very good.
Cringey called it, kind of, although he thought it would be for all iPhones and for more than just emergency calls. Typical for him to overcook something, and for Apple to come in with a stripped down but high value service.
Not sure why he would think that - previous iPhones don't have satellite receiver. Apple was however previously rumoured to be working with Qualcomm on a modified X60 modem, for satellite connectivity.
Carriers in the US are basically required to route 911 calls, even for devices not on their network - I wonder if that’ll include T-Mobile’s/Starlink announcement (since they’re going to be using existing 5G spectrum, I would presume so) - if I’m out in the wilderness and I experience an emergency, in theory, 911 should just work for me, piggybacking off a Starlink satellite, even if I’m a Verizon or AT&T or whatever subscriber - if that’s the case, I don’t see the need for all of these competing Emergency SOS via Satellite offerings.
First thought when seeing this was this is their first step into satellite technology, whats the odds they will own a satellite constellation in the next 5-8 years
I never understood why Apple hasn't moved much earlier and much faster to own the entire telecommunication stack and infrastructure, including carriers, home internet, satellite internet, etc. Seems like an obvious move from the outside. Buy an iPhone, log in with your Apple id, it works everywhere on the planet.
>International travelers who visit the U.S. and Canada can use Emergency SOS via satellite
So the international versions do have the hardware. That's good to know.
>except if they bought their phone in China mainland, Hong Kong, or Macao. Emergency SOS via satellite isn't offered on iPhone models purchased in China mainland, Hong Kong, or Macao.
2027: Protect against new SarS-Cov28 with new iPhone 19 for 29 USD/month subscription.
2035: Extra two years of life with our new iChip for 49 USD/month.
2065: No pain ever. With our brand new iWater.
...
I guess there will be decade for advertising tech based primary on health benefits.
My sense is 2-year covers the original owners phone for the average length of time an iphone owner keeps theirs, and for those who purchase phones 2nd hand, they would have to re-up for this coverage.
I would assume when you buy the iphone15 it would come with another 2-years of coverage.
I live in a small city in what is rural America. There are a lot of places that I travel that I don't get cell service in. This could literally be a life-saver for me.
While I don't know how large this group is, skiers, hikers, boaters, campers, off-roaders would all likely get use out of this functionality.
Most people in the groups you mention probably already own a dedicated emergency locator device. AAPL may very well take a lot of their business, but maybe not. An inReach is going to survive a much bigger fall than an iPhone.
> Most people in the groups you mention probably already own a dedicated emergency locator device
Hahahahahahaha! Not a chance. Maybe the over landing crowd, and hardcore hikers, but most casual enjoyers of the outdoors definitely do NOT have a Spot or InReach. Next time you’re on a ski hill, ask around - you’ll be shocked how few people have them.
iPhone has shown that people don't want dedicated devices. iPhone has replaced: watch, compass, digital camera, calculator, ebook reader, portable DVD player, flashlight, Garmin GPS, etc. etc. etc.
As someone who hikes (well, it's NZ, so, tramps) a fair bit, we'll continue taking our PLB with us (we opted for a 406MHz PLB rather than the Garmin solutions because we didn't want to find out in a life-threatening situation that our credit cards had expired a month ago and we couldn't call for help!). You're right, a dedicated device is pretty mandatory for true life threatening situations, and we always have a bevy of safety equipment on harder tramps.
With that said, the iPhone (Pro?) is becoming somewhat of a swiss army knife for casual tramping: offline maps with GPS and a compass, an excellent set of cameras, an ereader, excellent battery life to back all that up _and_ it can now communicate with the rest of the world in non-life threatening -- but marginal -- situations. As an example, we leave intentions with people whenever we leave ("here is our route, if we're not back by midday on the third, contact SAR"); being able to message people and say "hey, I've rolled my ankle, we're safe but will be late because we're limping out, don't worry" is a pretty excellent feature.
We're probably a niche market, but several friends in that community are pretty excited about this feature. For 2-3 day trips, this makes the outdoors much more accessible.
The biggest issue is probably battery life though... an InReach lasts 4 days in its default mode and 30 days in a lower-power mode. An iPhone lasts... less than that.
Most people would much rather spend $20-$50 on decent external batteries and keep their all-in-one device than spend hundreds of dollars + monthly fees for dedicated satellite communicators or rescue beacons.
Sure. Garmin is still $5B in sales annually. Which is peanuts next to the iPhone, so you wonder why they even bother going after it. AirPods are a bigger business than that.
The more serious of that crowd likely will, but not the more casual people. I'd say I see them hanging from a few percent of packs--but the deeper into the backcountry one goes the higher the percentage becomes.
It's Apple's stock symbol. People sometimes refer to companies by their stock symbols (on this site and others), though usually more in a financial discussion context.
A lot of serious hikers use dedicated devices for this kind of functionality. It's expensive-ish, and the chance of needing it is small. But if you do need it then it could be an actual life-or-death situation, so it's worth it if you're out in the middle of nowhere regularly.
The demand is enough that the govn't could pay Apple the whole cost of this program and save money on search and rescue just because "head to the location of the phone" is a lot easier than "carefully comb this entire mountain range".
I've never tried to total them up but I don't find that at all surprising. Tourists head out into the wilderness with no respect for what they're facing. They aren't carrying enough water, they have a breakdown, they're in deep trouble.
Here in Las Vegas we have a ring of mountains around the city--and virtually no cell coverage beyond that ring. Even within the ring the outlying areas are often shadowed out.
For the first 10 months in 2020, the Adirondacks had 245 search and rescue events[1] and it's a fairly small park nationally. This could save a huge amount of park service resources if they could be given the GPS cords to go directly to rather then spend hours searching. Expand that nation wide, it's a huge public win, and a great safety benefit to the individuals to be able to get help as soon as possible if something happens.
I was unable to find nation wide stats on search and rescue events.
Honestly, yes. I'm from Kentucky, and if I go back home, there's very little cell coverage. Too mountainous, too few people. You can usually get signal if you climb the biggest hill, or go into town, but if you've injured yourself and need to call 911, those aren't ideal requirements.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of midwest areas that have a similar problem.
I agree this is a good feature, however it's 2022 and maybe the government should start forcing companies like Verizon to take some of the $50 billion in profits they make per year and build cell towers in remote areas even if it means they won't make a 1,000% profit from doing so?
US national parks alone had 297 million visitors last year, and it's not hard to find areas without coverage in many of them. Many state parks also have tens of millions of visitors each year.
I have never not lost cell coverage when going on a hike in the mountains, and I only go on casual day hikes.
Yes. It's long (I think since the early days in the 80s) been a tenet in mobile phone industry that emergency calls always need to be free. You route them best to your technical ability - anything else is unethical.
With any cellular phone it's possible to dial the local emergency number.
Doesn't matter if your current operator has coverage, the phone will find the network that has the best coverage. There's still explicit validation of this capability for new phone devices.
Would it be more ethical if they could but never did release this feature? Because that is essentially what you are advocating for, considering no public company could foot the bill in perpetuity.
The way this probably plays out is by the time the 2 years is up or shortly thereafter this will be subsidized by the gov.
Apple is leaving quite a bit of money on the table here, while simultaneously spending quite a bit. Wipe the entitlement from your eyes and recognize this for what it is.
The body of the missing person had been found after 4 days of search. She still held her Phone in her hand displaying the Message: "Please update your credit card information to purchase this subscription. The free usage ended 6 days ago".
That is true and this may set a new precedent, but connectivity requirements in the past were always placed on carriers before, and never phone manufacturers.
Despicable? This is a huge investment for Apple (look at Globalstar’s SEC filing for details), it’s free for 2 years, and we don’t even know what (if anything) it will cost after that. But you’re confident it’s “despicable”.
I hate apple because of vendor lock in and nonsense with their walled garden. But seriously, GP is deluded.
Satellite emergency services has never been free, even if you buy an garmin device for this, they don't operate if you're not paying your monthly bill.
I spend a decent amount of time in the backcountry--and more likely than not I have no reception. In general, if I can't see buildings my phone probably doesn't work. (Note that "see" should be interpreted broadly--looking down from a mountain you can rarely resolve individual buildings, but you can see it's developed land.) Major roads will generally have service even if you can't see buildings, but secondary roads rarely do.
20 minutes from San Francisco there are dead spots. I go hiking all around the Bay Area, and while it’s gotten much better in the last 10 years, there are so many national, regional, and local parks with huge dead zones.
Most rural areas in the US that aren’t near a town center or major highways are pretty spotty.
Quite a bit actually. Even highways out of populated areas won’t have any network coverage. Also the same reason satellite radio is still popular and sold here.
I wonder how much bandwidth it would need to be able to load directions? It’s worst when I’m done hiking and can’t reception to load directions to Red Robin. I have to drive aimlessly until I get some cell service.
Having used these types of satellite messenger devices, it can take 1-2 minutes just to send an SMS. Loading graphical maps is out of the question, unless you use a different satellite network.
I ask myself that about nearly every popular consumer item the past few years.
Companies are extraordinarily anti-consumer now, but in ways that indulge the customer such that they don't realize it.
I don't know what to say about it other than the anecdotal observance; companies won't stop the behavior -- it's extraordinarily profitable ; and it generally seems as if the public doesn't care. It nudges the perceived quality up a bit and the consumer doesn't bother reading the 75 page EULA, so they're generally unaware that they own very little of the product they paid so much for.
I find myself pining for the days when a consumer transaction was , generally, a simple A-B money-for-product type transfer rather than this constantly connected service industry that everything has slowly evolved into.
Sorry for the rant, I offer no solutions , only hope that there may be a solution somewhere that will give the rights back to the consumer while remaining competitive enough that the company that supports the people will flourish; i'm not holding my breath -- but thinks like the framework laptop and so on are a step in the right direction and a sign of hope for me personally that i'm not the only one with consumer rights on their mind.
No one is as anti-consumer as apple. It's a walled garden without the ability to side-load apps and byzantine restrictions like no 3rd party web rendering (aka, Firefox).
The solution is not buying their products or services, and buying the most open and least bad thing that meets your needs. When consumers prioritize openness, right to repair, and actual privacy the market will eventually follow in that direction. Apple feels they can play the privacy angle, but it's just privacy to keep you in the garden and away from 3rd party ad tech and to completely capture the revenue stream.
iPhone SE, Check it out. Also I have no idea how you can consider this a gimmick. It’s a free service than can and will save lives. There are plenty of things to critique apple for, this is not one of them.
It's almost gimmick for me because I never go to area out of cellular service. Still it could be helpful when I got serious disaster and every communication method is dead. I'd like to know how much it costs. Anyway most recent features like great camera is gimmick for me, I gave up not to pay for gimmicks.
Aren't a lot of features a gimmick by your standards? Some of the radio equipment in the iPhone is only to support countries that you don't live in, for example. You're paying for it even though you'll never use it.
It could be said. But for band example, many band support isn't work for attracting people (though it's useful for travelers but I don't see advertising this great pros on iPhone), and it could reduce final cost by merging SKUs. It's less gimmicky IMO.
If you really were stranded on a mountaintop, you would probably have been hiking all day, which means your iPhone’s battery might very well be dead and the satellite feature would therefore be unusable. :)
"your subscription to emergency services has ended, have a nice day.". We are going to have to make laws to wrangle this kind of rent seeking that preys upon people. Apple should not be creating this network, it should be public infrastructure, same as GPS.
I don't disagree that it should be a public service available to all, but I don't see how Apple is to blame for that, or is "preying" on people any more than any other safety-oriented product.
The way I see this going is this becoming an increasingly popular/common private service until yeah eventually lawmakers take note and make a nationalized equivalent available to all.
So basically if you have an iphone you can be tracked anywhere on the planet unless you make sure the battery is drained? This is too funny. I still like the iphone but man, if I ever do anything shady I will burn my iphone first with thermite and throw it in the ocean.
Honestly, right now Uber is the only reason I have to use a smartphone. I have been able to move every other use case to a laptop. Or flip phone with removable battery.
I’d love to know what the antenna arrangement is. I’d have guessed something like a log periodic laid out on the inside of the rear case.