I can only assume that you have never been to the western U. S. or anywhere at all in Canada much north of the 49th parallel. It can be quite barren, and even if one had a need to stick a cell tower in the North Cascades mountains, it won't cover everything. Hell, I go trail running on local mountains (Cougar/Squak/Tiger, for Seattle locals) that are within visual distance of a decent-sized city, and there are still spots where I don't get cell coverage (and all of those mountains have cell towers on top). Snap a bone or otherwise become immobile in the wrong spot, and you won't be calling anyone despite the fact that it's a ten minute drive to town. And those trails are full of day hikers on the weekends, many of which I'd guess aren't prepared to spend the night if they had to.

If you go hiking or heli-skiing...

I'd bet a paycheck that Apple's use cases did not include those that jump out of a helicopter to go skiing. Those folks, if they have any sense, have a dedicated device, as you state. I'm picturing this being for those like above, who just wanted a casual Saturday hike and something went wrong.

That moment when a European finally begins to understand just how big North America is. I'm surprised it still happens on HN, but it's so fundamental to many of the discussions here. There's always someone saying "why does America suck so much" while thinking themselves so smart, as if there aren't good engineers across the globe. There's usually a good reason things are the way they are, and it's not that you're the only smart person in the world.

The United States and Canada are really, really big. There are big swaths of those countries (especially Canada) where people regularly live / drive / recreate, but are several hours driving away from cell phone service.

This isn't meant for heli-skiers who go out with a few thousand bucks of equipment. None of the average hikers I know own a satellite phone, plenty of them like to hike alone, and an hour of walking into the woods (hardly a strenuous hike) will frequently land you somewhere with patchy service (and this is in a country with perfectly well-functioning infrastructure, not the middle of the Rocky Mountains.)

I'm sure this is going to lead to a few spectacular, high-profile rescues, but I'd bet the average use case is going to be "saved me three hours of crawling through the woods on a broken ankle to get back to the last place I had cell service."

I spend the majority of my time in the mountains here in Estes Park, Colorado where I carry the following in the winter - for both climbing and skiing:

- Probe

- Shovel

- Beacon

- InReach Mini

I also work SAR and my partner has worked dispatch for the National Park Service here and it's not uncommon for someone to be trying to climb something akin to Longs Peak late fall in a tshirt and shorts - having absolutely no idea what they are doing but hiking it because they saw it on All Trails.

Turn on and off individual providers on this map.

https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=...

Then remember this map is being extremely generous at the fringes of the coverage areas. Some areas will make a huge difference which side of a hill you're on, but this coverage map will show it as covered.

You'd be surprised. There are plenty of places where LTE isn't robust enough.

A lot of people go hiking and few of them buy sat phones or epirbs. It's nice to have. We're well past the point of diminishing returns for smartphone features, yes.

I go on tons of casual-mid level hikes near a major Canadian city. It’s incredibly frequent to have areas with clear sky visibility and no cell service.

The range of a cell tower is like 5 miles. That's how far you need to go to lose service...

You don’t need it until you do.

Here in Alaska, once you get outside the Anchorage bowl, you might get reception in each small town or village, and maybe a km or two outside. That's it.

From your name I suspect you may be German (if you are Austrian or Swiss, the following still applies, only more so).

Alaska alone is nearly 5 times the size of Germany, with less than 1% of the population.