SMS = Satellite Message Service?

[Clitheroekid]

A potentially useful feature (assuming it would actually work in the UK) - https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06 ... -in-ios-18

[servodude]

A potentially useful feature (assuming it would actually work in the UK) - https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06 ... -in-ios-18

Ooh! That will be fun

It appears that they're using Globalstar and it's US only to start

In principle it should work just about anywhere on the globe - but Globalstar run a Low Earth Orbit cluster (LEO) which can be a bit funky

These are wee ones that whiz by so you have to throw your message up at just the right time and it drops them the next time it passes over one of their ground stations; this could be somewhere between seconds or hours after.
There is a way to use then where they will only accept stuff where a ground station is in sight (so they're more like traditional live relays) which means the message gets out quickly, but I'm not sure how much of the earth that covers (my experience of this stuff was for places that didn't)

Still it's a pretty impressive bit of technical wrangling to get the necessary sciency bit in to a phone along with all the other gubbins it needs to do

-sd

[UncleEbenezer]

Not something you'd want in a regular phone.

Satellite phones are big and clunky for a good reason. It takes a lot more power to communicate directly with a satellite than with a nearby phone mast or wifi. You need a big battery!

[servodude]

Not something you'd want in a regular phone.

Satellite phones are big and clunky for a good reason. It takes a lot more power to communicate directly with a satellite than with a nearby phone mast or wifi. You need a big battery!

but it seems that's the thing they've managed to get around (unless it's a very niche iPhone variant )
- which is quite the feat given there are still modems on the market for which you needed a proper antenna ground plane and 5W of transmit power

[ReformedCharacter]

Spacex are developing something similar:

SpaceX's new direct-to-cell Starlink satellites relay their 1st text messages

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-direct-to-cell-first-text-messages

RC