Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPhone 14 Pro for 2 years

Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by reaperducer on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:37PM (#32756471)

How large is the demand for something like this? Are tons of people really going that far out of range of cell signals?

When I lived in the desert, the local newspaper regularly published stories about tourists getting lost/stuck/stranded and then dying.

Going by the newspaper accounts, I'd estimate at least a dozen people died in the desert each year, and that was just in my area.

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by bombcar on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:59PM (#32756777)

The demand is enough that the govn't could pay Apple the whole cost of this program and save money on search and rescue just because "head to the location of the phone" is a lot easier than "carefully comb this entire mountain range".

And that's not even counting the lives saved.

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by LorenPechtel on Thursday September 08, 2022 @02:36PM (#32769978)

I've never tried to total them up but I don't find that at all surprising. Tourists head out into the wilderness with no respect for what they're facing. They aren't carrying enough water, they have a breakdown, they're in deep trouble.

Here in Las Vegas we have a ring of mountains around the city--and virtually no cell coverage beyond that ring. Even within the ring the outlying areas are often shadowed out.

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