iPhone Emergency SOS Via Satellite Offers A Wild Lifeline

A feature on the new iPhone 14 could save lives. At today's release event, the tech giant announced an emergency response function that relies not on cell towers to connect users to critical support agencies, but Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite services. The Emergency SOS via Satellite feature will reportedly allow users in distress — whether they're stranded in an ultra-rural backcountry or crashed on a mountain ridge road — to request emergency assistance by answering a series of simple questions that describe the emergency's nature and who is injured or needs rescue.

The satellite feature is a scaled-back version of ambitious early concepts that theorized a system where users could talk on the phone or text even without cellular network coverage. Today Apple stated that the service will be free for two years to iPhone 14 users, and will launch across the United States and Canada in November. The "groundbreaking new service" utilizes Apple-built software and components to make connectivity to satellites possible, including a feature that guides users in pointing their phone upward to establish a connection with the overhead satellites flying miles above our planet.

As with any satellite-reliant communications, usability will rely on the presence of cloud and tree coverage, among other conditions, which Apple said was a driving force in making the system as quickly as possible through a pre-determined questionnaire rather than texting or phone communications. Staff at relay centers, Apple reported, will then inform emergency specialists of the request for assistance.

"Bandwidth is so limited [with satellite communication] that even sending a text message is a technical challenge," Apple states. "Typically the only way to tap into such a network is with an expensive device that uses a bulky external antenna." The built-in questions — a "custom short-text compression algorithm to reduce the average size of messages by a factor of three" — that users will see in the feature, Apple said, are meant to make communicating via satellite quicker and easier when every passing minute or hour is critical.