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Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

New iPhones include satellite SOS and location features. The monthly cost has not been announced yet, all phones with this feature are still in the 2-year free trial period.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/send-your-location-vi...

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There's a recent article about a climber who had to use this iPhone SOS feature. Turns out that actually getting in contact with emergency services is not easy - even though the satellite communications worked perfectly.

There was a lot of back and forth over the system, but it did not help at all. The thing that saved her was one 40 character message to a friend. Because apparently you get one of those, and no replies...

https://www.climbing.com/news/iphone-sos-button-saves-injure...

Sounds like the phone SOS service doesn't really have its act together yet based on that sample size of one.

My wife and I and our two kids do a fair amount of back-country white water rafting. After arriving at a very remote take-out with no car and no cell service after a five day float (and running low on food and water), we went ahead and bought an actual satellite phone. It’s a game changer. Cost about $400 used and we have it refreshing quarterly on BlueCosmo for $99. It’s awesome, and cheap insurance relative to the risk.

$99 quarterly sounds like a good deal - was this with Iridium? That's unfortunately the only network that works well for my use-case.

I currently pay for an inReach Messenger, and use it on a weekly basis. The $12/mo base cost is peanuts for what it actually provides me.

No, it's Inmarsat (IsatPhone 2).

Ah, that’s too bad. I think (please correct if I’m wrong) those have some trouble in canyons at higher latitudes. The nice thing about Iridium is if you wait a few minutes, a bird will usually show up overhead. It’s nice for SAR missions we help with in the mountains.

I suspect you're right about the advantages of Iridium. All I can say is that we live in Oregon and I've been able to get out of canyons pretty well. I've used it on the John Day, Deschutes and Grande Ronde, mostly to coordinate with shuttles or check in back home. I cannot speak to other geographies. The profound advantages of two-way instant communication in an emergency would justify hiking uphill a ways too. I'm rarely surrounded by sheer cliffs. But I'm sure there are circumstances where Iridium -- or Starlink! -- would work better. We bought a v2 standard Starlink setup for tailgating and camping and it's truly awesome. That technology in phones is a game changer. In truth, my wife and I have iPhone 14 Pro and 15 Pro, respectively. If the Inmarsat sat phone doesn't work, you can be sure we'd hit the button on the iPhones, which makes for a nice backup as I believe they use the Globalstar LEO satellites.

We are much in the same boat :) Satellite has been a game changer for us as outdoor-oriented people.

There was another story where the SOS feature kicked in automatically and Apple was able to dispatch emergency services:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-14-emergency-sos-fac...

I don't understand why Apple is adding satellite SOS to iphones but providing dangerously poor support for people in emergencies. There's a lot of situations in the backcountry where an injured person will survive 6 hours, but freeze to death after 10. Thank goodness for the emergency contact feature and that these climbers had a friend with enough skill to dispatch SAR. If Apple isn't careful they're going to have a front page story detailing how someone died an avoidable death because they dispatched an ambulance instead of search and rescue.

My understanding is that most[1] other satellite devices use a centralized dispatch center who have experience with backcountry emergencies.

Speculating obviously, but that article makes it sound like Apple might have tried do something else and that whatever they came up with is more equipped to deal with frontcountry issues.

Sounds like I should keep packing my inReach.

[1] https://www.iercc.com/en-US/supported-devices/

2 is 1, 1 is none.

If it were my life on the line, I'd carry 2 different PLBs: probably a Garmin and an inReach.

Disclaimer: Ex Trimble Nav Ltd. radio group here. :]

Don't expect it to work anytime soon or to supplant EPIRBs.

Even E911 locating in the US just doesn't work at all with nonzero and unknown combinations of phones, carriers, and jurisdictions. US LEOs have almost universal, real-time locating ability from N km to sub 1 m accuracy if it's in range of a single tower of any phone without a warrant. If a phone can send an SOS to a comm satellite, while there's a recent good fix from 3+ GNSS satellites, then that's useful.

The risk to avoid will be over-reliance on a consumer grade cell phone as a substitute for the ruggedized and proven EPIRB system.

Can probably expect Android devices to follow soon

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/news-events/news/samsung-e...

It seems like from a purely technical point of view, Qualcomm got the best deal in this space (i.e. one with Iridium, which is currently the only provider with 100% global coverage): https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2023/01/qualcomm-intr...

SOS only being a key point I missed in my first post. Yes, thankfully they are launching it, but SOS only is a drag.

It’s not SOS only. You can also update your location in the Find My app, so your friends/family can keep track of you on a backpacking trip.

With iPhone 15, they also introduced the ability to call for roadside assistance from AAA via satellite too. (I’m not sure if this is also available on 14 now or not.)

Are you sure Find My uses satellite connectivity? I don't think so. Apple says this https://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my/

> If your missing device can’t connect to the internet or has little to no battery life, the Find My app can still help you track it down using the Find My network — hundreds of millions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices around the world.

So this isn't going to help you in the wilderness.

It does, you can update it via Satellite. I've done it... (it's a manually triggered operation)

Yes, you can update your Find My location via satellite https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/send-your-location-vi...

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/send-your-location-vi...

The passage you quoted is talking about the iDevice-to-iDevice communication that can happen behind the scenes allowing you to find a lost phone in the wilderness if someone else so happens to walk by the phone.

14s got it too. Neat! https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213886

Yeah, they are slowly rolling out new features like this year they added roadside assistance requests.

Having a limited number of plain text message requests would be nice as well, maybe there will be more options once they add paid tiers.

Whenever I hear of this feature on an iPhone I think of the stellar iPhone battery life while it has probably generously been used for photos and location services etc.

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