Apple and Globalstar Rumored to Announce Satellite Connectivity for iPhone 14

Re:Apple and Globalstar Rumored to Announce Satellite Connec... by blantonl on Saturday August 27, 2022 @11:35AM (#32620141)

Iridium and Inmarsat have transponders that are much higher power and have much higher RF bandwidth that supports devices at very low speed data rates.

It's very conceivable that with an L-band or similar patch antenna some kind of low speed connectivity can be accomplished with line of sight to the sky via a mobile device. There are already devices sold for hikers etc that operate like this (simple SOS text messaging etc) and sat tracking of vehicles and trucks. A lot of it is store and forward type stuff.

As for full voice and high speed data - yeah, that ain't happening yet at the consumer level mobile device.

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Re:Apple and Globalstar Rumored to Announce Satellite Connec... by jsjohnst on Sunday August 28, 2022 @07:48AM (#32627622)

> There are already devices sold for hikers etc that operate like this (simple SOS text messaging etc) and sat tracking of vehicles and trucks.

Yep, I’ve owned a ton of them over the years. My first was the FollowMeSpot device coming up on two decades ago. They’ve of course gotten a lot smaller, but are still definitely “thick fugly bricks” in comparison to Apple’s designs. Looking at tear downs of them, I see absolutely no way you’ll fit the important bits of one inside an iPhone case.

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