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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/6/23339717/huawei-mate-50-pr...
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.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-picks-globalstar-sa...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou
Which will more likely be used as a tool to allow the supreme leaders to invade your privacy even more.
Or get a fancy holder and hold in place for an hour to get X minutes of video updates.
Or overnight for the latest AppleTV banger.
Basically a mini-direcTV.
If they ever try to offer Starlink-level speed it'll be a different story. That will require a Starlink-sized external antenna.
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
A lot of ethical problems in my opinion.
And that seems about right compared to SPOT monthly pricing, considering it's intended for much greater usage than one time every 3 years.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHydPCYHmLE
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”
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.
Your phone can still call emergency services, even without a SIM card.
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.
Deleted Comment
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)
But given the era of recurring subscription revenue above all else, I think we know how Apple will handle this.
If someone makes this choice in a legitimate emergency, I would refer to it as a shot of chlorine in the gene pool.
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https://www.satellitetoday.com/telecom/2022/09/07/apple-to-d...
Globalstar is probably preparing for an influx of new users to their service who would otherwise not own a satellite-capable device.
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 wonder if Apple expects the government to institute similar requirements soon for satellite (if that’s possible) and this won’t cost anything.
In the meanwhile, Apple is using it as a differentiated feature.
(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.
Mandatory 911 sat service on phones that support will save a lot of lives!!
Deleted Comment
In the rest of the world too.
Your emergency subscription expired yesterday, should I renew it the next time you have wifi?
1. This feature is relatively expensive for Apple. Satellite communication isn't free, and Apple don't have their own infrastructure for this.
2. They've signed a 2 year contract with whichever provider they're using.
3. They want to see if this feature is even popular before committing to supporting it for longer at all.
But they also don’t want to commit to a price until they have a couple years of experience under their belts.
Whatever the terms of the deal is, hitting certain benchmarks is part of it.
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.
As a garmin inReach user, I hope this supports location report to closed friends like how Garmin did. But it's not. It is only for emergency.
They'll then not cancel it, and they've successfully raised their annual/monthly recurring revenue for a fair % of their users.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V6CWS26/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C6RCRIW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
I believe they showed location reporting through FindMy to friends, so not only for emergency scenarios.
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.
“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.