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The United States and Canada are really, really big. There are big swaths of those countries (especially Canada) where people regularly live / drive / recreate, but are several hours driving away from cell phone service.
Emergency SOS via satellite
41–50 of 479 posts
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#42As someone who grew up in the era before mobile phones, it truly is strange to see devices that do roughly everything Captain Kirk's communicator could do. But in my lifetime, and available to average people.
and Dick Tracy.
We haven't arrived at full tricorder yet though.
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#43Quoted post unavailable.
A lot of people go hiking and few of them buy sat phones or epirbs. It's nice to have. We're well past the point of diminishing returns for smartphone features, yes.
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#44This is really going to eat into Garmin's Inreach market (ditto for Spot, Zoleo, etc). It says free for the first 2 years. I'm curious what the yearly cost will be after that, and how it will compare to an Inreach plan. On an ongoing basis, it's the subscription fees that really add up.
I’m not sure it will eat into those markets. Those are device for people who know they are going off-grid and may need both emergency comms and who (typically) also want to be able to let people at home know where they are and how things are going.
My take is the Apple SOS is for people who are unprepared and surprised, and who wouldn’t have bought a satellite comm device and paid for the subscription because they weren’t expecting the emergency.
I’m a happy iPhone 14 user who will get this nice feature, but I’m not planning to cancel my InReach subscription ($20/month, pause/resume any time), which I have never used to call for a rescue but have used a lot to let family know where I am and that things are fine when overlanding. And Inreach works right from the dashboard while driving, no need to get situated perfectly.
Maybe this is a harbinger and future enhancements will kill Inreach, but at least for now it feels like a very different application.
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#45As someone who grew up in the era before mobile phones, it truly is strange to see devices that do roughly everything Captain Kirk's communicator could do. But in my lifetime, and available to average people.
As dystopian as the keynote for these new emergency features felt, they are real-life helpful features. 99.99% of people will never need it but for the small fraction who do it's amazing.
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#46As someone who grew up in the era before mobile phones, it truly is strange to see devices that do roughly everything Captain Kirk's communicator could do. But in my lifetime, and available to average people.
I bet Kirk's communicator couldn't even play games, so it's wilder. :)
No, it was just corporate MDM managed to prevent it. :)
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t it going to make calls using this feature much easier, if there’s a 10m-accuracy GPS pin around the subject?
Well that’s the GPS point. Make this more casually available and folks are likely to more casually use it. The problem for the teams isn’t necessarily finding the party, we’ve had these beacons for years. Rather they have to climb into the mountains in the first place to solve what could have, ostensibly, been readily prevented. Thus taxing a limited resource even further. What should temper that is now there perhaps…
You can be given a bill in some places under a limited set of circumstances but you mostly won't get charged as I understand it (at least until you get into the regular medical system per usual). I would assume if this started to become a real problem, you might see more charging--although I assume S&R teams wouldn't, for the most part, want people in trouble to hold off on calling for help because they might get a $10K bill.
Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#48Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#49Quoted post unavailable.
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Re: Emergency SOS via satellite
#50Quoted post unavailable.
I spend the majority of my time in the mountains here in Estes Park, Colorado where I carry the following in the winter - for both climbing and skiing:
- Probe
- Shovel
- Beacon
- InReach Mini
I also work SAR and my partner has worked dispatch for the National Park Service here and it's not uncommon for someone to be trying to climb something akin to Longs Peak late fall in a tshirt and shorts - having absolutely no idea what they are doing but hiking it because they saw it on All Trails.