My experience sharing my location via satellite in the wilderness with the iPhone 14 Pro

Submitted by TevaHiker t3_123eue1 in iphone

A few weeks ago, I went backpacking solo in the Angeles National Forest, I had just picked up the 14 Pro so I was excited at the new feature which is an Emergency SOS via satellite or sending your location to family members using satellite without the need for cell coverage. As an avid hiker and outdoor lover, this was one of the reasons that I went out to buy the 14 Pro.

After driving 30 miles into the mountains and hiking 4 miles in and setting up my camp, I had zero cell coverage so I tested it out. I found a somewhat clear view of the sky away from a lot of trees (as my iPhone instructed) and pointed my iPhone to the sky. It took about a good 3-5 minutes of holding my phone to the sky to link to a satellite and send my current location to my mom. She said that on her iPhone that she received a notification stating that I shared my location. She said it pinned my location to a small area of about 100 feet, which isn't too great but isn't bad. Later that evening, I tried sending out another location ping, after a few failed attempts, it showed that it was sent, however, when speaking with my mom, after I got home, she said that she never received a second location ping.

All in all, it's a cool feature, could it save my life? Potentially. I feel like it's more as a fail safe for a day hiker, as someone who likes to wilderness backpack, I would lean towards relying on a Garmin InReach or similar product.

I will be doing another backpacking trip in a couple of months, and I will provide an update and screenshots of both sharing my location and how it shows up on the recipients iPhone.

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Comments

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fs454 t1_jdummmx wrote

The bummer is they didn't implement a non-emergency messaging system in their implementation of it. That's the primary reason I pay for an Inreach for my remote 4x4 trips. Being able to text the rest of the group joining you the next day that our planned camp spot was taken and proving the actual coords of where we set up. Or letting people know we're okay/safe for the night/in need of minor assistance/are staying longer than originally planned etc.

I find the gap between "passively share your location" and "call a coast guard helicopter" to be a bit too big with apple's current implementation and I hope they add this after year 1, but I'm glad they're going this direction in general.

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RollBama420 t1_jdxazay wrote

I don’t think whoever owns the satellite network is ready for Apple to do to them the same thing they did to AT&T’s 3G network

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TehFalcon t1_jdxbf7t wrote

They aren’t. But they will be eventually since apple threw a ton of money at them, Apples officially in the satellite business to complete with StarLink.

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denislemire t1_jdxc4iz wrote

No they aren’t. This satellite feature is extremely low bandwidth. Starlink is measured in hundreds of megabits. Both use satellites, that’s where the similarity ends.

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TehFalcon t1_jdxcjne wrote

StarLink has the same service through t-mobile as apples emergency Sat feature.

They are competing. Apple absolutely will build out GlobalStar to compete with StarLink in more ways. Like it or not they are competitors.

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denislemire t1_jdxcxk6 wrote

No. They won’t. Starlink can do what GlobalStar can do. GlobalStar can’t do what Starlink can.

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TehFalcon t1_jdxd54l wrote

You have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes 😂. More than one company can do the same thing buddy

GlobalStars current network is low speed, but they absolutely are gearing up to create a high speed network. This is good news, StarLink doesn’t need to be a monopoly.

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denislemire t1_jdxf1cx wrote

I’ll wait here while you slowly wait for GlobalStar to orbit more than their existing 25 satellites. Space X puts up about two GlobalStars per Falcon launch. 😆

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TehFalcon t1_jdxhl3h wrote

🙄 another elon hypebeast

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denislemire t1_jdxjizx wrote

If you think the $450 million Apple invested to use Globalstar's 25 satelite network will directly compete with the $80 billion invested to build Starlink 3300+ satelite network, I don't know what more to say to you.

At best, the low bitrate emergency messaging/location feature Apple's investment gave the Globalstar network a post-Starlink reason to exist.

Globalstar's market cap is under 2 billion dollars. Investors can thank Apple its still worth anything at all.

You're right about one thing though. Someone on this thread has no idea what they're talking about.

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TehFalcon t1_jdxjqcf wrote

And that someone is you. That’s only apple’s first round of investment. Things don’t happen overnight. Keep being a shill for elons company though. StarLink was best to market by other Sat companies too :)

Apples Market Cap dwarfs spaceX’s ;)

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denislemire t1_jdxl682 wrote

I love Apple too... but they're going to need to spend a lot more than $450 million to get a Starlink competitor. If they doubled their initial investment every year starting now it'd take 8 years for them to surpass where Starlink is today... IF Space X decided to launch their birds at cost (why would they do that?)...

Apple has the capital to buy Space X outright, with their loose change but that's not what we're talking about here, is it?

As it sits today and the foreseeable future there is zero comparability between the two offerings.

Amazon wants to build a comparable network but I'll reserve judgement until they get their first bird in the sky.

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dickey1331 t1_jduxyd0 wrote

A PLB would be the best as it has dedicated satellites and folks who’s job it is to monitor and respond.

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paulr85mi t1_jduqcde wrote

I would investigate this in deep, last thing you want is an emergency system which doesn’t work.

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