Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite feature will finally arrive on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro later this month (November 2022) – if you live in the US or Canada.
Every iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro model (including the larger iPhone 14 Plus and iPhone 14 Pro Max) already has all the internal technology needed to communicate via satellite – they were just waiting for Apple to flip the switch.
And it’s coming soon, with Revealing apple (opens in a new tab) that he and his satellite partner Globalstar are finally ready to launch the feature in November 2022.
Thanks to the Emergency SOS function via satellite, iPhone 14 users will be able to communicate with emergency services without a Wi-Fi or cellular network connection. if you have an iPhone 14, you don’t have to worry as much as call for help if you are in need.
However, you won’t be able to use this feature to contact whoever you want, at least for now, which unfortunately means you’re not allowed to post your adventures on Instagram from remote locations. Emergency SOS via satellite, as the name suggests, is only for contacting emergency services.
After launching Emergency SOS via satellite, it will join another new safety feature of the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models: crash detection. This feature (also found on the Apple Watch 8, Apple Watch SE 2, and Apple Watch Ultra) relies on various data collected by your Apple device to determine if you’ve been involved in a collision.
If it detects you’ve been involved in an accident, the device can automatically contact emergency services – although you have a few seconds to cancel the automatic connection if the device makes a mistake.
For now, Emergency SOS via Satellite is only available in the US (including Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands) and Canada. Given that it has reportedly cost Apple $450 million to implement this feature in these regions (based on the amount Apple says it has invested in infrastructure in the US), we imagine it may be a while before it decides to expand it further – Apple probably won’t want to spend more on satellite connectivity, unless it is certain that this feature will be popular.
If you have an Android phone, it may not be long before you can use a similar satellite SOS feature – it has been reported that Android 14 will bring satellite communication support to many of the best Android phones in 2023.