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SMS = Satellite Message Service?
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- Lemon Quarter
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SMS = Satellite Message Service?
A potentially useful feature (assuming it would actually work in the UK) - https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06 ... -in-ios-18
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- Lemon Half
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Re: SMS = Satellite Message Service?
Clitheroekid wrote: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
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- The full Lemon
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Re: SMS = Satellite Message Service?
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!
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!
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- Lemon Half
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Re: SMS = Satellite Message Service?
UncleEbenezer wrote: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
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- Lemon Quarter
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Re: SMS = Satellite Message Service?
Spacex are developing something similar:
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-direct-to-cell-first-text-messages
RC
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
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