Is your iPhone about to stop working when you’re off the grid?
Broomberg’s Apple reporter Mark Gurman just wrote his entry into his newsletter about the dream of a satellite-powered iPhone. To be clear, no, the iPhone is not going to be a fully functional satellite phone like the one eaten by the dinosaur. Jurassic Park 3 (I can’t be the only one who remembers this). But Gurman points to other new features that could make the iPhone a low-key win in the race to put communication in dead spots.
Specifically, it is said that an API is coming that will allow third-party developers to build with Apple’s satellite functions in mind.
Apple is taking a very different approach from, say, T-satellite T-Mobile’s partnership with StarLink. With T-Mobile, you’re weird for more than $10 extra per month, and you get effective coverage of the dead areas, bet on you with a large collection of spacex satellites that destroy the stars.
On the other hand, apple seems to be doing things the hard way. It has an in-house division called StetLite Concation Group (SCG), which will have a small satellite supplier called Globalstar Inc., a limited, back-end collection of outdated satellites that were first launched when Bill Clinton was president. Apple’s SCG “works closely with the company’s wireless software, hardware technology, business development and regulatory affairs units,” Gurman wrote.
The permission to send small amounts of data around for free (for now) with these rinky-dink satellites has never been a marquee feature of the iPhone, and using these functions has never been all that. But the iPhone 14 received an emergency SOS via satellite in 2022, followed by roadside assistance, followed by some dead messages via satellite – if you managed to grab a single iPhone like He-man and aim for the open sky.
The future, Gurman wrote, can include miracles such as not having this bad sky anymore, not smoking in the pictures when using the information of the tower when using apple maps elsewhere on the grid.
But an API that allows developers to try and do whatever they want with satellite functions is perhaps the most powerful. One day, neophyte iPhone users could be as profitable as signing up for services like Garmin Inreach to navigate routes. And users who happen to be pressured by Amazon Flex drivers working in the middle can stop tracking maps or their productivity is thrown into a loss.
Apple keeps changing its story about when it plans to actually start charging for satellite features – if it happens – and this makes iPhone satellites more widely available than something like T-Mobile Service. Starting in 2022, we were supposed to get two years of free service with new iPhones, but that term was extended the following year, and in September of this year we get another one year. This is probably because Apple plans to charge for satellite features only when they’re ready for prime time, and Apple’s streaming features, while neat, certainly don’t justify the money yet.
