I’ve read lots of, shall we say, shallow reporting on this topic so far. Among other problems: Comparing Apple’s SOS and Find My satellite service available today, to a possible future Android service of unspecified form, while assuming Apple’s service doesn’t evolve. Apple invested $450 million in Globalstar for far, far more than free SOS service in a few regions. And that included launching more satellites, which solves only a few problems.
Still, I’m mostly glad that smartphone satellite messaging could be more widespread.
I doubt you’ll soon be sending friends a high-res filtered foto or viddy from the backcountry. Text-only is pushing today’s technology pretty far.
“Just point your phone at that moving satellite for 10 minutes – oops, it dropped below the horizon, start over.”
— Rex
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