I’d love to learn more about the RF side of this. In their marketing demo they showed that in order to avoid needing a traditional antenna, the user will be guided to point the phone at a satellite during the few minutes required for transmission.
I’d love to know what the antenna arrangement is. I’d have guessed something like a log periodic laid out on the inside of the rear case.
Would be also interesting to see how this solution compares to the Chinese BeiDou based network that Huawei is using. Is this similar a standard? Meaning that iPhone at one point would support BeiDou or is it completely different?
The first phone maker to add satellite texting to its devices is... Huawei
Huawei has announced the Mate 50 series, a day ahead of Apple’s September event and with a feature that the iPhone 14 is expected to offer: the ability to send texts via satellite communication. The Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro will be able to send short texts and utilize navigation thanks to China’s global BeiDou satellite network, allowing for communication in areas without cellular signal.
It seems Apple uses the GlobalStar LEO satllites for these communication.[0]
Huawei is using BeiDou[1], which is the navigation satellite system. BeiDou is something just like GPS, but has the capability to send short text message. Huawei is using that function for SOS meesage.
Basically you can expect wherever you can receive navigation signals, you can send your SOS message.
They could do some cool 1-way Forward Error Correctioned broadcasts with that. “Point your phone in the sky here for your daily news updates” kinda thing. Could be localized with spot beams in a future iteration.
Or get a fancy holder and hold in place for an hour to get X minutes of video updates.
Friend of a friend works the satellite trucks for onsite broadcasting at sports events. He told me once that he phones the satellite operators and they coordinate to make sure the beams are aligned as tightly as possible to reduce the power loading on the satellite. I’m guessing there’s probably a similar constraint here — I don’t think (pure conjecture) it’s feasible to have a tonne of iPhones (and let’s be honest, they’re everywhere) hanging off satellites.
I’d love to know what the antenna arrangement is. I’d have guessed something like a log periodic laid out on the inside of the rear case.