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I'm going to call it exactly as I see it: This is fake. 1) LEO. Low Earth Orbit. Starlink is in a lower than usual orbit, and look at the immense effort/expens

I'm going to call it exactly as I see it: This is fake. 1) LEO. Low Earth Orbit. Starlink is in a lower than usual orbit, and look at the immense effort/expense to make base station antennae that can reliably communicate with the satellites. They're not going to magically stuff that into an iPhone. EDIT: Some replies have said "Hey, Iridium is LEO". The same antenna issue applies. 2) Bandwidth. Unless Apple has been secretly launching their own fleet of satellites, where are they getting the bandwidth? I doubt it's Starlink. Any incumbent satellite operators (such as Thuraya, mentioned in another comment) are in Geostationary orbit, not LEO. This requires an even better antenna. See #1. I don't claim to be an expert in any of this, adding this capability an iPhone would be as disruptive as the iPhone itself was. Apple was able to keep the iPhone under wraps, but it's impossible to do that with satellite launches and FCC filings as we've learned with SpaceX. So for these reasons I call Fake. Maybe next decade.

tyingq 5y ago
It does say "phone calls and text" and not "internet", so Starlink probably isn't the best comparison. Iridium phones aren't that bulky these days. I'm also skeptical, but mostly about what the motivation would be to do it and who would pay for it.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  > Iridium phones aren't that bulky these days I own both an Iridium phone and an Inmarsat phone, both are current gen. If you don’t consider them bulky, then you must be used to using an iPad/tablet as a phone. The antenna alone is longer than my iPhone 12 Max.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Iridium has devices on their network that look pretty dang small to me: https://www.iridium.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/mini3.jpg https://www.iridium.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/mini3.jpg And how much of that is just the IPX7 case?
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      For one thing, I said phone as did GP I was replying too. That’s not a phone (aka needing a continuous real time connection), that’s a low bandwidth data transmitter (aka a best effort single transmission that can take multiple minutes to send). Even still, look at the size of the antenna on that. It’s definitely not all plastic there. If you’ve ever seen a tear down of a modern smart phone, you’ll realize 95% of the space is either battery or screen. The space used by antenna (which is often part of the outer metal ring) or circuit board is extremely small in comparison.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Here's the antenna inside. Looks like a small helical antenna. https://fccid.io/img.php?id=1547768&img=bg1.png https://fccid.io/img.php?id=1547768&img=bg1.png There are certainly other possible designs, as those creative frame-antennas that apple so infamously popularized with the iPhone 4. Iridium uses a 1.6 ghz signal, there's a lot of creative packaging that can be done at those frequencies. And definitely, if this is in an iPhone, I'm sure it's low bandwidth use only.
        jsjohnst 5y ago
        > Here's the antenna inside. Looks like a small helical antenna. Thanks for proving my point and saving me the hassle of looking up the antenna inside. There is no way that would fit inside an iPhone, even with Apple’s creativity in antenna design. The frequency, as previously stated, is not the problem, it’s the transmission power. You need a lot more more watts of EIRP to transmit reliably 350 miles (distance to LEO) than you do for 3 miles (average distance to a cell tower). A modern smart phone transmits at about 100-200mW on average, Iridium operates at around 2 orders of magnitude higher transmit power than that.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Replacement batteries for the inreach mini online are labeled at 3.52Wh. The iPhone 12 has a 10.78 Wh battery. The key to keeping power consumption low is that you transmit momentarily, not constantly. A use case like backup communication on an iPhone wouldn’t necessitate use of the iridium network at 100% duty cycle. > There is no way that would fit inside an iPhone, even with Apple’s creativity in antenna design. The vast majority of the volume that a helical antenna consumes is empty space. The obvious solution is not groundbreakingly creative: try using something other than a helical antenna.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    The context was that my comment was in response to magically stuffing a 2 foot diameter Starlink antenna into an iPhone. Where the challenge is instead stuffing one of these into an iPhone: https://www.iridium.com/phones/ https://www.iridium.com/phones/ Still challenging, but maybe not impossible.
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      Look at the antenna on those (or any other satellite phone). When the antenna is extended (required for continuous transmission like with even a poor audio quality call), it’s HUGE compared to anything possible in an iPhone form factor.
ginko 5y ago
Iridium is in LEO and uses L-band
lxgr 5y ago
Have you heard of Iridium?
- mikestew 5y ago
  Have you seen the antenna on Iridium devices? Think that's going to fly on an iPhone? Yes, we all know that there is existing technology, no need to ask rhetorical questions. Just saying "Iridium" doesn't solve the problems that still need to be solved, though.
  - Fatalist_ma 5y ago
    https://www.itabnav.com/545-large_default/iridium-go.jpg https://www.itabnav.com/545-large_default/iridium-go.jpg not that huge of an antenna...
    - turminal 5y ago
      That's still at least an order of magnitude bigger than the space available for this thing inside an iPhone
    - mikestew 5y ago
      not that huge of an antenna... I would argue that you’ve just illustrated my point. It also wouldn’t take a lot to convince me that you’re being facetious.
      - Fatalist_ma 5y ago
        Well it's a finger-sized antenna. Admittedly all I know about antennas is that size matters. An Iphone is bigger than a finger, why is it inconceivable that it could have a comparable antenna on its surface? Also for an Iphone this would be just one rarely-used feature, it could get by with somewhat worse reception and lower bandwidth than a dedicated satellite phone.
        detaro 5y ago
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
It'll be low bandwidth of course. The starlink antenna size is just to give more bandwidth. Bigger antenna means less error correction which means more bandwidth for other things. Voice compressed can be intelligible at 300bps. You can do that with a smaller antenna and more error correction. Mobile Satellite phones are already similar in size to other phones.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  Per phone might be low bandwidth, but tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of phones is not low bandwidth.
  - Retric 5y ago
    And how many iPhones are going to be used out of network? I can see people paying an extreme rate of say 10$/minute with serious warnings in a true emergency. But worldwide it might only be 100 phones at a time even with 10’s of millions of iPhones. Meanwhile averaging 100 calls * 10$/ minute is 1/2 billion dollars a year which could pay for bandwidth on LEO satellites. Those numbers are of course pulled from thin air, but iridium suffers because few are going to keep such expensive service on a just in case basis. However, the technology and economics are really close to working out.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      I carry an iridium hotspot when away from civilization and I’d definitely use an eSIM in my iPhone to get access to LEO sms or voice calls in a pinch. One less device to carry.
  - nullityrofl 5y ago
    > Per phone might be low bandwidth Yes, but you used the comparison to Starlink receivers. Per-phone is all that matters to refute your receiver size concern. The reporting suggests that Apple partnered with Globalstar for delivery. I don't think anyone is under any illusions that Apple suddenly launched a LEO fleet but there's a lot of providers of satellite mobile telephony in the space and Globalstar is one of them. Low bandwidth satellite does not take huge hardware anymore. You can buy Iridium or Globalstar mobile hotspots that are handheld in size (e.g., Iridium Go!). Many trail runners carry Garmin InReach which is phone-sized.
nashashmi 5y ago
Agree. This might be planned for iPhone 14. And won’t have internet. Just low bandwidth apps. Like messaging and low quality phone calls. The only question is what will pricing look like. I’m betting free for emergency 🆘 and hourly for non emergency.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Marine weather is another big thing. It's not exactly low bandwidth, nor huge (maybe 100kb-1mb every 8 hours) but provides sailors with huge value.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
api 5y ago
The big problem I see is power. Starlink base uses about 100W. Even for a low bandwidth link I imagine this would drain batteries quick.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  Power is not an issue for a very low-bandwidth system like Iridium, which only provides 2400bps. Starlink's bandwidth is 10,000x higher, and in a nutshell that's why they need a lot more power. Starlink also uses an active phased-array antenna, while Iridium uses a passive ("dumb") omnidirectional antenna. This also contributes to a greater power budget for Starlink.
dhuk_2018 5y ago
https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/ https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/
webmobdev 5y ago
The old cellular phones once had an external antennae too. But current modern cellular phones have managed to pack it internally. So perhaps this could be possible for satellite phones too, one day. Technically, it may be possible but I think this is fake too - In India, you cannot own and operate a satellite phone without getting an NOC (no objection certificate) from the Home Ministry (who are in charge of internal security in india). Apple will not be able to sell its phone in India if it adds satellite telephony to it. Most countries will react the same - no country likes to allow communication within its borders that it can't monitor (it's an obvious national security threat).
- GravitasFailure 5y ago
  Worse, it's a crime to bring a satellite phone into India without first getting an NOC, and even then only ones that operate exclusively on INMARSAT will be authorized. China has a similar ban, so if this is real, traveling to China and India (among other countries) with an Apple device is going to turn into a legal minefield unless Apple has figured out something to work around that.
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    Lol you think Apple wouldn't be aware of this. Obviously they will disable this as soon as you enter their airspace.
    - GravitasFailure 5y ago
      >Lol you think Apple wouldn't be aware of this That...was like the whole point of my comment. Of course they're aware, and of course they aren't going to criminalize their users. This either isn't real, or Apple is going to figure something out to make it so this isn't a problem. What they can do to not criminalize their users is the really interesting question. BTW, disabling illegal transmitting gear makes no difference to most authorities when importing. The only way to guarantee you won't get busted is to not import it in the first place.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I'm still waiting for the translucent iPhone that Robert Scoble assured us that Apple would definitely announce three or four years ago.
tomjen3 5y ago
I don't think this is going to happen, but what would stop Apple from making a deal with Starlink? Or Iridium? Phones are hard to differentiate these days, but "can be reached anywhere, always, no matter what" may be the last big differentiator left.
AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
I agree it's unlikely, but, not for technical reasons. Iridium would work fine for this if you limit it to iMessage/SMS and anything else low-bandwidth (I would imagine they add 911/SOS support too). I have a Garmin InReach which operates on Iridium, it's a 5+ year-old-device which works fine with Iridium in very challenging conditions and isn't very much larger than an iPhone. Considering (some of) the commercial side of this, I strongly suspect the Iridium network has more than enough capacity for such a plan and Iridium could easily support it technically and they could work out some reasonable commercial terms with Apple for this. If Iridium doesn't want to work with Apple the company could surely be acquired for effectively pocket change by Apple and if they did release such hardware and charge a monthly subscription for "100% global coverage" it could be pretty quickly profitable. But, with all of that said, I'm really not sure why Apple would want to do this. Like I said, I have an InReach, I'm commonly in areas with no cell service and so for me this would be a clear win and I would love it, but, I suspect I'm squarely in the minority.
- CodeWriter23 5y ago
  > I have a Garmin InReach The photo seems to indicate the InReach is 3-4x as thick as an iPhone. I couldn’t find specs. Would you care to share the actual size?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Given the size of my Garmin 64st, I bet that most of that thickness is down case design. Apple sacrifices a lot of durability in the name of making the “thinnest iPhone ever”, while Garmin often goes in the exact opposite direction for fairly obvious reasons.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    2.04” x 3.90” x 1.03” (5.17 x 9.90 x 2.61 cm) It’s chunky. Hard to say how much of that is radio and antenna. And folks in this discussion seem to forget the antenna, which is multiples of iPhone thickness. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/592606#specs https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/592606#specs
  - 5y ago
wongarsu 5y ago
Iridium receivers are already quite manageable in size. An ultra-low-bandwidth version with smaller, cheaper receivers as part of their new constellation doesn't seem that far fetched. You only need 4kbit/s or so (after all the iPhone has plenty of power to run a good voice codec).
TrainedMonkey 5y ago
You are right that transparent high-bandwidth satellite fall back is not in the cards at the moment. I will challenge you that high bandwidth is a hard requirement in this case. If Apple can integrate emergency short text + location capability at a low marginal cost, it will make iPhone platform more attractive to people who aspire spending time outside of cell coverage. First, let's examine some limitations we are dealing with: 1. On the receiving side the trade is power projected on the receiving terminal vs bandwidth. At lower bandwidth we can have quite reasonable power requirements, think GPS antennas. High bandwidth applications are all limited by FCC power per cm2 projection limits. Without those limits LEO satellites could focus transmit onto a much smaller area and enable high-bandwidth receivers that are basically cell-phone sized. Given that GPS is a thing, we can definitely have low-bandwidth phone integrated satellite antenna. 2. On the transmit side primary trade is again transmit power vs bandwidth. Iridium phones are a thing https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-extreme/ https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-extreme/, so low bandwith transmit is feasible. Overall, I think it is quite unlikely that Apple is adding a dedicated on-handset satellite coms. It is possible, maybe even likely, they will be enhancing existing satellite communication capability or adding external devices. Even if they are enhancing satellite coms the provider is definitely not Starlink because phased array power requirements are staggering for mobile applications. So, assuming there is some truth to this leak, it is maybe 1, probably not 3, and almost definitely not 2: 1. Upgrading the existing GPS capability with new antenna / silicon. Most likely to support other positioning constellations https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-competitors-to-GPS https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-competitors-to-GPS, but in era of SDRs maybe sat signals in general. 2. The claim specifically talks about phone/text calls, to make that happen they will either need to integrate with Iridium or back a new not yet deployed service. On Iridium front there are a couple of problems, but they don't seem insurmountable: Iridium modems are expensive and iPhone power/thermal requirements will mean developing logic that is significantly better than anything on the market. Of course Iridium IP licensing or company acquisition would be big news breaking quite a bit before we see any devices, so this is almost certainly not happening. 3. First party integration of external satellite antenna into iPhone ecosystem. Introducing Apple emergency beacon. Deploy this beacon anywhere in the world and get emergency communications for affordable* price. Basically a modern, Apple sleek, version of https://www.iridium.com/blog/2012/05/23/iridium-connected-delorme-inreach-is-apple-ready/ https://www.iridium.com/blog/2012/05/23/iridium-connected-de... .
mrgordon 5y ago
$ASTS and others are launching large LEO constellations starting in March from what I understand. They have major partnerships with Vodafone, AT&T, and more.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Soon we'll just have a Dyson sphere around the earth.
GeekyBear 5y ago
> Unless Apple has been secretly launching their own fleet of satellites, where are they getting the bandwidth? For text messages or sending an emergency beacon signal, you don't need much bandwidth. The surprise is Kuo specifying voice over IP as a supported feature, but modern codecs can really squeeze voice down now days. >Lyra, which is now hosted on GitHub, can compress audio down to as little as 3 kilobits per second while still ensuring a sound quality that compares well with other codecs that require much greater bandwidth. https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/06/google-open-sources-lyra-codec-high-quality-voice-calls-low-bandwidth/ https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/06/google-open-sources-lyra...
- lxgr 5y ago
  Satellite phone systems are using 2.4 kbps codecs, so while Lyra might significantly raise the voice quality bar, it would not really change the bandwidth requirements.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
gist 5y ago
I don't know if you are right or not. But what you are saying reminds me of I think it was the 70's when someone who was involved in early trunked car phones told me that there was no way a phone could be portable that it would take to much power to be in a light enough form factor.
cjohansson 5y ago
I agree it's fake, there is phones on the market that has phone and internet via satellite but you need a subscription and it's expensive. The average Joe don't have that. I think this is a PR-trick to suggest Apple is relevant and innovative, Apple after Jobs is safe and predictable and not exciting like this
- Jcowell 5y ago
  You guys are forgetting that Apple is turning into a service company and already has a subscription product (Apple One) that the average joe may be subscribed to. And how is the M1 chip not an innovation on its own ?
kkirsche 5y ago
I think this is more likely incorrectly understood leaks. Similar to what occurred with the Nintendo Switch OLED. My guess is the chips and whatnot the iPhone will use will support this but Apple won’t enable it in the software. I believe this is equivalent to fm radio capabilities in some of the iPhone chips
mortenjorck 5y ago
> They're not going to magically stuff that into an iPhone. This sounds a bit like Ed Colligan's immortal "they're not going to just walk in." The thing is, you're right, of course they're not going to just tweak a few things and somehow fit a satellite antenna into a phone. They're going to put Apple-level resources into recruiting a team of the field's leading experts and funding them for years to do it. As you say, this would be a genuinely disruptive development in mobile tech. It seems at very least plausible that Apple would see this as a problem worth throwing a spare billion at solving.
- mcny 5y ago
  » This sounds a bit like Ed Colligan's immortal "they're not going to just walk in." Some context for others like me > Sarah Jane Tribble and Dean Takahashi, reporting for the San Jose Mercury News on Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s remarks two weeks ago regarding Apple’s prospects in the mobile phone market: » Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector. » “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I’m sure Apple would love to find a way to bypass the mobile operators, especially in the US.
Meandering 5y ago
I think 1 and 2 are connected. Apple sees the cellular communication game from the perspective of their ecosystem. Improving network agnosticism is supportive of that perspective. We see that Apple wants to deliver a premium experience for a premium price. I assume that LEO or Lower than LEO communications could be supported by auxiliary products. A small "hotspot" type device(comm array) to couple with the Apple ecosystem? This future proofs the ecosystem to partner with a communications swarm or launch their own as launch prices drop. I'd say it is possible in the context of what I stated. But, the article's characterization seems too good to be true.
kilroy123 5y ago
I've been following this tech for a while and I assure you it's being worked on and looked at seriously. I absolutely think it will exist in the future. Likely for very low bandwidth text messaging or maybe very low quality calls. Obviously, it will only work outside with line of site. I don't think it's ready for the next iPhone though. I would be very shocked and surprised if this capability was on the iPhone 13, not surprised if on the 14.
sho 5y ago
> This is fake Let's reserve words like "fake" for knowingly misleading or malicious misinformation. This might be wrong or misunderstood but I'm pretty sure it's not deliberate lies. So much of the comments so far have focussed on two things: 1. The size of the antennae and 2. The huge cost of bandwidth on satellite services. For 1, who's to say there isn't an add-on antenna planned? The news is about the baseband support. Knowing Apple they will sell a hugely expensive add-on antenna which connects via magsafe. This does not indicate the news is wrong. For 2, obviously carriers or maybe Apple itself will have to organise the auth/payment arrangements to actually make use of this new capability. This also seems doable and is not a blocker, it means, this will not be some automatic free things users can just use on day one. None of these points really strike me as showstoppers and certainly do not warrant claims of "fake!". Here's what is actually being reported: the iPhone 13 will have the technical capability to connect, using some yet to be released antenna adapter, via some yet to be announced plans or arrangements, in some yet to be described capacity, to LEO satellite services.
raxxorrax 5y ago
> I don't claim to be an expert in any of this, adding this capability an iPhone would be as disruptive as the iPhone itself was. Would it really? I think satellite communication is something interesting in the outback in some regions where conventional signals aren't available. Technically GPS is also unidirectional satellite communication, I guess. There are also personal locator beacons for emergencies. Don't really see the application. Maybe the first Apple smartphone gen has reached arthritis-age and goes on cruises?

tyingq 5y ago

It does say "phone calls and text" and not "internet", so Starlink probably isn't the best comparison. Iridium phones aren't that bulky these days. I'm also skeptical, but mostly about what the motivation would be to do it and who would pay for it.

jsjohnst 5y ago
> Iridium phones aren't that bulky these days I own both an Iridium phone and an Inmarsat phone, both are current gen. If you don’t consider them bulky, then you must be used to using an iPad/tablet as a phone. The antenna alone is longer than my iPhone 12 Max.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Iridium has devices on their network that look pretty dang small to me: https://www.iridium.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/mini3.jpg https://www.iridium.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/mini3.jpg And how much of that is just the IPX7 case?
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    For one thing, I said phone as did GP I was replying too. That’s not a phone (aka needing a continuous real time connection), that’s a low bandwidth data transmitter (aka a best effort single transmission that can take multiple minutes to send). Even still, look at the size of the antenna on that. It’s definitely not all plastic there. If you’ve ever seen a tear down of a modern smart phone, you’ll realize 95% of the space is either battery or screen. The space used by antenna (which is often part of the outer metal ring) or circuit board is extremely small in comparison.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Here's the antenna inside. Looks like a small helical antenna. https://fccid.io/img.php?id=1547768&img=bg1.png https://fccid.io/img.php?id=1547768&img=bg1.png There are certainly other possible designs, as those creative frame-antennas that apple so infamously popularized with the iPhone 4. Iridium uses a 1.6 ghz signal, there's a lot of creative packaging that can be done at those frequencies. And definitely, if this is in an iPhone, I'm sure it's low bandwidth use only.
      - jsjohnst 5y ago
        > Here's the antenna inside. Looks like a small helical antenna. Thanks for proving my point and saving me the hassle of looking up the antenna inside. There is no way that would fit inside an iPhone, even with Apple’s creativity in antenna design. The frequency, as previously stated, is not the problem, it’s the transmission power. You need a lot more more watts of EIRP to transmit reliably 350 miles (distance to LEO) than you do for 3 miles (average distance to a cell tower). A modern smart phone transmits at about 100-200mW on average, Iridium operates at around 2 orders of magnitude higher transmit power than that.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Replacement batteries for the inreach mini online are labeled at 3.52Wh. The iPhone 12 has a 10.78 Wh battery. The key to keeping power consumption low is that you transmit momentarily, not constantly. A use case like backup communication on an iPhone wouldn’t necessitate use of the iridium network at 100% duty cycle. > There is no way that would fit inside an iPhone, even with Apple’s creativity in antenna design. The vast majority of the volume that a helical antenna consumes is empty space. The obvious solution is not groundbreakingly creative: try using something other than a helical antenna.
- tyingq 5y ago
  The context was that my comment was in response to magically stuffing a 2 foot diameter Starlink antenna into an iPhone. Where the challenge is instead stuffing one of these into an iPhone: https://www.iridium.com/phones/ https://www.iridium.com/phones/ Still challenging, but maybe not impossible.
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    Look at the antenna on those (or any other satellite phone). When the antenna is extended (required for continuous transmission like with even a poor audio quality call), it’s HUGE compared to anything possible in an iPhone form factor.

ginko 5y ago

Iridium is in LEO and uses L-band

lxgr 5y ago

Have you heard of Iridium?

mikestew 5y ago
Have you seen the antenna on Iridium devices? Think that's going to fly on an iPhone? Yes, we all know that there is existing technology, no need to ask rhetorical questions. Just saying "Iridium" doesn't solve the problems that still need to be solved, though.
- Fatalist_ma 5y ago
  https://www.itabnav.com/545-large_default/iridium-go.jpg https://www.itabnav.com/545-large_default/iridium-go.jpg not that huge of an antenna...
  - turminal 5y ago
    That's still at least an order of magnitude bigger than the space available for this thing inside an iPhone
  - mikestew 5y ago
    not that huge of an antenna... I would argue that you’ve just illustrated my point. It also wouldn’t take a lot to convince me that you’re being facetious.
    - Fatalist_ma 5y ago
      Well it's a finger-sized antenna. Admittedly all I know about antennas is that size matters. An Iphone is bigger than a finger, why is it inconceivable that it could have a comparable antenna on its surface? Also for an Iphone this would be just one rarely-used feature, it could get by with somewhat worse reception and lower bandwidth than a dedicated satellite phone.
      - detaro 5y ago

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

It'll be low bandwidth of course. The starlink antenna size is just to give more bandwidth. Bigger antenna means less error correction which means more bandwidth for other things. Voice compressed can be intelligible at 300bps. You can do that with a smaller antenna and more error correction. Mobile Satellite phones are already similar in size to other phones.

geocrasher 5y ago
Per phone might be low bandwidth, but tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of phones is not low bandwidth.
- Retric 5y ago
  And how many iPhones are going to be used out of network? I can see people paying an extreme rate of say 10$/minute with serious warnings in a true emergency. But worldwide it might only be 100 phones at a time even with 10’s of millions of iPhones. Meanwhile averaging 100 calls * 10$/ minute is 1/2 billion dollars a year which could pay for bandwidth on LEO satellites. Those numbers are of course pulled from thin air, but iridium suffers because few are going to keep such expensive service on a just in case basis. However, the technology and economics are really close to working out.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I carry an iridium hotspot when away from civilization and I’d definitely use an eSIM in my iPhone to get access to LEO sms or voice calls in a pinch. One less device to carry.
- nullityrofl 5y ago
  > Per phone might be low bandwidth Yes, but you used the comparison to Starlink receivers. Per-phone is all that matters to refute your receiver size concern. The reporting suggests that Apple partnered with Globalstar for delivery. I don't think anyone is under any illusions that Apple suddenly launched a LEO fleet but there's a lot of providers of satellite mobile telephony in the space and Globalstar is one of them. Low bandwidth satellite does not take huge hardware anymore. You can buy Iridium or Globalstar mobile hotspots that are handheld in size (e.g., Iridium Go!). Many trail runners carry Garmin InReach which is phone-sized.

nashashmi 5y ago

Agree. This might be planned for iPhone 14. And won’t have internet. Just low bandwidth apps. Like messaging and low quality phone calls. The only question is what will pricing look like. I’m betting free for emergency 🆘 and hourly for non emergency.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
Marine weather is another big thing. It's not exactly low bandwidth, nor huge (maybe 100kb-1mb every 8 hours) but provides sailors with huge value.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

api 5y ago

The big problem I see is power. Starlink base uses about 100W. Even for a low bandwidth link I imagine this would drain batteries quick.

dreamcompiler 5y ago
Power is not an issue for a very low-bandwidth system like Iridium, which only provides 2400bps. Starlink's bandwidth is 10,000x higher, and in a nutshell that's why they need a lot more power. Starlink also uses an active phased-array antenna, while Iridium uses a passive ("dumb") omnidirectional antenna. This also contributes to a greater power budget for Starlink.

dhuk_2018 5y ago

https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/ https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/

webmobdev 5y ago

The old cellular phones once had an external antennae too. But current modern cellular phones have managed to pack it internally. So perhaps this could be possible for satellite phones too, one day. Technically, it may be possible but I think this is fake too - In India, you cannot own and operate a satellite phone without getting an NOC (no objection certificate) from the Home Ministry (who are in charge of internal security in india). Apple will not be able to sell its phone in India if it adds satellite telephony to it. Most countries will react the same - no country likes to allow communication within its borders that it can't monitor (it's an obvious national security threat).

GravitasFailure 5y ago
Worse, it's a crime to bring a satellite phone into India without first getting an NOC, and even then only ones that operate exclusively on INMARSAT will be authorized. China has a similar ban, so if this is real, traveling to China and India (among other countries) with an Apple device is going to turn into a legal minefield unless Apple has figured out something to work around that.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Lol you think Apple wouldn't be aware of this. Obviously they will disable this as soon as you enter their airspace.
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    >Lol you think Apple wouldn't be aware of this That...was like the whole point of my comment. Of course they're aware, and of course they aren't going to criminalize their users. This either isn't real, or Apple is going to figure something out to make it so this isn't a problem. What they can do to not criminalize their users is the really interesting question. BTW, disabling illegal transmitting gear makes no difference to most authorities when importing. The only way to guarantee you won't get busted is to not import it in the first place.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

I'm still waiting for the translucent iPhone that Robert Scoble assured us that Apple would definitely announce three or four years ago.

tomjen3 5y ago

I don't think this is going to happen, but what would stop Apple from making a deal with Starlink? Or Iridium? Phones are hard to differentiate these days, but "can be reached anywhere, always, no matter what" may be the last big differentiator left.

AdamJacobMuller 5y ago

I agree it's unlikely, but, not for technical reasons. Iridium would work fine for this if you limit it to iMessage/SMS and anything else low-bandwidth (I would imagine they add 911/SOS support too). I have a Garmin InReach which operates on Iridium, it's a 5+ year-old-device which works fine with Iridium in very challenging conditions and isn't very much larger than an iPhone. Considering (some of) the commercial side of this, I strongly suspect the Iridium network has more than enough capacity for such a plan and Iridium could easily support it technically and they could work out some reasonable commercial terms with Apple for this. If Iridium doesn't want to work with Apple the company could surely be acquired for effectively pocket change by Apple and if they did release such hardware and charge a monthly subscription for "100% global coverage" it could be pretty quickly profitable. But, with all of that said, I'm really not sure why Apple would want to do this. Like I said, I have an InReach, I'm commonly in areas with no cell service and so for me this would be a clear win and I would love it, but, I suspect I'm squarely in the minority.

CodeWriter23 5y ago
> I have a Garmin InReach The photo seems to indicate the InReach is 3-4x as thick as an iPhone. I couldn’t find specs. Would you care to share the actual size?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Given the size of my Garmin 64st, I bet that most of that thickness is down case design. Apple sacrifices a lot of durability in the name of making the “thinnest iPhone ever”, while Garmin often goes in the exact opposite direction for fairly obvious reasons.
- mikestew 5y ago
  2.04” x 3.90” x 1.03” (5.17 x 9.90 x 2.61 cm) It’s chunky. Hard to say how much of that is radio and antenna. And folks in this discussion seem to forget the antenna, which is multiples of iPhone thickness. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/592606#specs https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/592606#specs
- 5y ago

wongarsu 5y ago

Iridium receivers are already quite manageable in size. An ultra-low-bandwidth version with smaller, cheaper receivers as part of their new constellation doesn't seem that far fetched. You only need 4kbit/s or so (after all the iPhone has plenty of power to run a good voice codec).

TrainedMonkey 5y ago

You are right that transparent high-bandwidth satellite fall back is not in the cards at the moment. I will challenge you that high bandwidth is a hard requirement in this case. If Apple can integrate emergency short text + location capability at a low marginal cost, it will make iPhone platform more attractive to people who aspire spending time outside of cell coverage. First, let's examine some limitations we are dealing with: 1. On the receiving side the trade is power projected on the receiving terminal vs bandwidth. At lower bandwidth we can have quite reasonable power requirements, think GPS antennas. High bandwidth applications are all limited by FCC power per cm2 projection limits. Without those limits LEO satellites could focus transmit onto a much smaller area and enable high-bandwidth receivers that are basically cell-phone sized. Given that GPS is a thing, we can definitely have low-bandwidth phone integrated satellite antenna. 2. On the transmit side primary trade is again transmit power vs bandwidth. Iridium phones are a thing https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-extreme/ https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-extreme/, so low bandwith transmit is feasible. Overall, I think it is quite unlikely that Apple is adding a dedicated on-handset satellite coms. It is possible, maybe even likely, they will be enhancing existing satellite communication capability or adding external devices. Even if they are enhancing satellite coms the provider is definitely not Starlink because phased array power requirements are staggering for mobile applications. So, assuming there is some truth to this leak, it is maybe 1, probably not 3, and almost definitely not 2: 1. Upgrading the existing GPS capability with new antenna / silicon. Most likely to support other positioning constellations https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-competitors-to-GPS https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-competitors-to-GPS, but in era of SDRs maybe sat signals in general. 2. The claim specifically talks about phone/text calls, to make that happen they will either need to integrate with Iridium or back a new not yet deployed service. On Iridium front there are a couple of problems, but they don't seem insurmountable: Iridium modems are expensive and iPhone power/thermal requirements will mean developing logic that is significantly better than anything on the market. Of course Iridium IP licensing or company acquisition would be big news breaking quite a bit before we see any devices, so this is almost certainly not happening. 3. First party integration of external satellite antenna into iPhone ecosystem. Introducing Apple emergency beacon. Deploy this beacon anywhere in the world and get emergency communications for affordable* price. Basically a modern, Apple sleek, version of https://www.iridium.com/blog/2012/05/23/iridium-connected-delorme-inreach-is-apple-ready/ https://www.iridium.com/blog/2012/05/23/iridium-connected-de... .

mrgordon 5y ago

$ASTS and others are launching large LEO constellations starting in March from what I understand. They have major partnerships with Vodafone, AT&T, and more.

bbarnett 5y ago
Soon we'll just have a Dyson sphere around the earth.

GeekyBear 5y ago

> Unless Apple has been secretly launching their own fleet of satellites, where are they getting the bandwidth? For text messages or sending an emergency beacon signal, you don't need much bandwidth. The surprise is Kuo specifying voice over IP as a supported feature, but modern codecs can really squeeze voice down now days. >Lyra, which is now hosted on GitHub, can compress audio down to as little as 3 kilobits per second while still ensuring a sound quality that compares well with other codecs that require much greater bandwidth. https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/06/google-open-sources-lyra-codec-high-quality-voice-calls-low-bandwidth/ https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/06/google-open-sources-lyra...

lxgr 5y ago
Satellite phone systems are using 2.4 kbps codecs, so while Lyra might significantly raise the voice quality bar, it would not really change the bandwidth requirements.
- deleted 5y ago
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gist 5y ago

I don't know if you are right or not. But what you are saying reminds me of I think it was the 70's when someone who was involved in early trunked car phones told me that there was no way a phone could be portable that it would take to much power to be in a light enough form factor.

cjohansson 5y ago

I agree it's fake, there is phones on the market that has phone and internet via satellite but you need a subscription and it's expensive. The average Joe don't have that. I think this is a PR-trick to suggest Apple is relevant and innovative, Apple after Jobs is safe and predictable and not exciting like this

Jcowell 5y ago
You guys are forgetting that Apple is turning into a service company and already has a subscription product (Apple One) that the average joe may be subscribed to. And how is the M1 chip not an innovation on its own ?

kkirsche 5y ago

I think this is more likely incorrectly understood leaks. Similar to what occurred with the Nintendo Switch OLED. My guess is the chips and whatnot the iPhone will use will support this but Apple won’t enable it in the software. I believe this is equivalent to fm radio capabilities in some of the iPhone chips

mortenjorck 5y ago

> They're not going to magically stuff that into an iPhone. This sounds a bit like Ed Colligan's immortal "they're not going to just walk in." The thing is, you're right, of course they're not going to just tweak a few things and somehow fit a satellite antenna into a phone. They're going to put Apple-level resources into recruiting a team of the field's leading experts and funding them for years to do it. As you say, this would be a genuinely disruptive development in mobile tech. It seems at very least plausible that Apple would see this as a problem worth throwing a spare billion at solving.

mcny 5y ago
» This sounds a bit like Ed Colligan's immortal "they're not going to just walk in." Some context for others like me > Sarah Jane Tribble and Dean Takahashi, reporting for the San Jose Mercury News on Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s remarks two weeks ago regarding Apple’s prospects in the mobile phone market: » Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector. » “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I’m sure Apple would love to find a way to bypass the mobile operators, especially in the US.

Meandering 5y ago

I think 1 and 2 are connected. Apple sees the cellular communication game from the perspective of their ecosystem. Improving network agnosticism is supportive of that perspective. We see that Apple wants to deliver a premium experience for a premium price. I assume that LEO or Lower than LEO communications could be supported by auxiliary products. A small "hotspot" type device(comm array) to couple with the Apple ecosystem? This future proofs the ecosystem to partner with a communications swarm or launch their own as launch prices drop. I'd say it is possible in the context of what I stated. But, the article's characterization seems too good to be true.

kilroy123 5y ago

I've been following this tech for a while and I assure you it's being worked on and looked at seriously. I absolutely think it will exist in the future. Likely for very low bandwidth text messaging or maybe very low quality calls. Obviously, it will only work outside with line of site. I don't think it's ready for the next iPhone though. I would be very shocked and surprised if this capability was on the iPhone 13, not surprised if on the 14.

sho 5y ago

> This is fake Let's reserve words like "fake" for knowingly misleading or malicious misinformation. This might be wrong or misunderstood but I'm pretty sure it's not deliberate lies. So much of the comments so far have focussed on two things: 1. The size of the antennae and 2. The huge cost of bandwidth on satellite services. For 1, who's to say there isn't an add-on antenna planned? The news is about the baseband support. Knowing Apple they will sell a hugely expensive add-on antenna which connects via magsafe. This does not indicate the news is wrong. For 2, obviously carriers or maybe Apple itself will have to organise the auth/payment arrangements to actually make use of this new capability. This also seems doable and is not a blocker, it means, this will not be some automatic free things users can just use on day one. None of these points really strike me as showstoppers and certainly do not warrant claims of "fake!". Here's what is actually being reported: the iPhone 13 will have the technical capability to connect, using some yet to be released antenna adapter, via some yet to be announced plans or arrangements, in some yet to be described capacity, to LEO satellite services.

raxxorrax 5y ago

> I don't claim to be an expert in any of this, adding this capability an iPhone would be as disruptive as the iPhone itself was. Would it really? I think satellite communication is something interesting in the outback in some regions where conventional signals aren't available. Technically GPS is also unidirectional satellite communication, I guess. There are also personal locator beacons for emergencies. Don't really see the application. Maybe the first Apple smartphone gen has reached arthritis-age and goes on cruises?