Android one-ups Apple’s satellite SOS

I suspected that would happen.  Qualcomm has a massive customer base, so their risk and cost is effectively more amortized than Apple's.

You might be able to say that for the rest of your life and never end up upgrading. Think of all the new features you can upgrade to when this phone is ready for retirement.

It’s pretty much never worth the wait. Especially for some rumored hot feature that’s made an appearance at a show. 2 years and you could still be waiting. And based in current rates the satellite service charges will be eye watering.

The bloviating press is already on to iPhone 15 and beyond, with no clue. Just click bait.

And if your current device is EOL you’re going to have your socks blown off regardless.

“The company says several partners are already working on designs. ”

Vapor ware at the moment.

I would guess it would start with the future flagship Androids so the phones that will have it first are still on the drawing board. That said it seems like there are new flagship phones every year so the wait won't be too long. Top of the line Samsung and Pixel phones will likely be the first ones you see it in.

Another issue is whether the service providers will support it. If your phone has the chipset in it it has to be able to send free SOS SMS by law. Likely they will also have to work with Iridium to offer full SMS subscriptions and pay for the "free" SOS SMS. Someone like T-Mobile may not think it is worth dealing with and just not have phones with the chipset in their versions of phones.

Knowing you can emergency txt almost anywhere you can see the sky is a very desirable safety feature in a phone.

Qualcomm is scrapping plans to offer a satellite SOS feature for Android phones that would have rivaled the one offered by Apple on its latest iPhones. The feature, Snapdragon Satellite, was announced in partnership with the satellite communications company Iridium in January. Now, just 10 months later, the plan is already dead.

www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955416/qualcomm-snapdragon-satellite-shut-down-emergency-sos-iridium

“ because no smartphone maker signed up to use it.”

That’s rather sad actually.

That sort of thing happens pretty often. I don't want to give away specifics, but the product cycles haven't gotten that much shorter, they just overlap more of them, so there's a lot of long-range guessing going on. Some capabilities in the HW and even system SW never get brought out to the user.