Apple iPhones can now turn into emergency satellite phones in UK and elsewhere

UK exclusive: Apple has been working for years to shrink down complicated satellite technology into a feature that is invisible – unless you need to use it

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Apple’s iPhones can now turn into satellite phones to try and save their owners.

The new “Emergency SOS” update allows the devices to connect through a set of satellites floating overhead, when the phone can’t reach WiFi or cellular connections. Using those satellites, people can then

The system recently launched in the US and Canada. Now it is live in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany.

Apple announced the feature during the reveal of its iPhone 14 models in September, and it requires those newer models to work. But the process of creating the system has been going on for years, Maxime Veron, Apple’s senior director of iPhone product marketing, tells The Independent.

The discussion started “several years ago” at which point it “sounded like a crazy idea”, he said. At that point – and even now – the only way to do this kind of satellite communication is with a dedicated satellite communicator, which tend to be big, expensive, badly designed and another thing that needs to be charged and brought on trips.

Instead, Apple wanted to fold it into the iPhone, and bring the kind of slick user experience that is associated with that device. But that brought with it a whole host of challenges.

It needed a way to build in the hardware required without making the phone bulky or adding more antennae, for instance – so it relies on the existing antenna and adding some custom hardware to allow it to connect to the right frequency.

It also needed to make sure the software was actually able to communicate with the satellites. That included new updates such as a custom compression algorithm that shrinks the size of text messages down dramatically, so they work with the limited bandwidth of the satellite; it also created a special questionnaire that ensures people give the right information in the right way.

That software also needed to make it stress-free to communicate over satellite, in situations where stress levels are likely to be very high. In practice, that means that a little assistant pops up, glowing green and vibrating when you are pointing the phone in the right direction, all using the same straightforward design for which Apple is well known.

Both are the kind of collision of software and hardware for which Apple is so well known. But the third challenge was a little more unusual: infrastructural.

“In order to get you the help when you need it, we need to put you in touch with a ‘Public Safety Access Point’, or PSAP,” says Veron. “That’s where you find the unsung heroes that will pick up the phone when you call 999.”

So Apple built relay centres that have trained professionals who will take the texts sent by the new feature and call the emergency services. That is because most European emergency services cannot accept text messages – in the US, most of the satellite SOS communications go straight to the PSAP – and so real people are actually needed to pick up the phone on a person’s behalf.

The Emergency SOS via satellite feature actually starts working long before any of that happens, however: long before there is a need to call, or even an incident. When the feature is switched on, the iPhone is sent information about where the 24 satellites it can use to communicate are in the world, so that it can find them more easily.

Everything should then be ready for the unfortunate possibility of an incident happening. Emergency SOS via satellite is one of a range of recent features from Apple that the company hopes you never actually get the opportunity to use: it also released Crash Detection this year, which allows new phones and Apple Watches to sense when their owner has been in a car accident and call the emergency services. (The two work together: if a crash is detected and the phone does not have signal, it will switch to satellite mode.)

But if you do ever need to use the satellite feature, it will look something like what Maxime Veron was doing on a recent day in Richmond Park. He was demonstrating the tool using a phone that had different software on so that it could really go through the process but not actually call 999.

To start with, he showed how the phone demonstrated that it had lost its normal connections: if there is no cellular data, the phone will show an SOS mode, and even then it will try other carriers first, before falling back to the satellite mode. If users call for emergency help while that is happening – either by pressing the numbers on their device, long pressing the power and volume buttons, or quickly pressing the power button five times – then it will begin the process of connecting to satellites.

It does that through an interface that will bring up a questionnaire that will take people through the information they need to give to emergency responders, by indicating what kind of incident has happened and what kind of help they need. This ensures that people include all the relevant information, but also allows Apple to squash down the size of the message, by communicating only those answers and avoiding long-winded replies that might not get through the satellites.

Users are also guided through connecting to those satellites, and given help with how to do so, being encouraged to move their phone around until it finds a connection and then guided on keeping it pointing at the right satellite. Sometimes no satellites might be available given their arrangement in the sky and any surrounding blockages, and the guide will help with that too.

iPhone users can do something like this themselves, before anything happens, using a demo mode that has been built into the phone and which can be found from the Settings app. (Finding it there is also an indication that the system has gone live, wherever you are.)

That demo connects the phone to real satellites, so that people have the experience of looking for and then finding one in the sky, and it takes them through a version of the real questionnaire that will be asked. But it does not actually connect to emergency services.

That allows people to play with the feature without wasting the time of emergency responders. But it also means that users can become familiarised with the service at a leisurely time – so that it is hopefully second nature if it is ever required during an actual incident.

Apple wanted to make sure that people “had a way to understand what it feel like, and set the right expectations, without having a risk of actually contacting emergency services”, says Veron. It is also partly about limiting expectations of how well the feature will work: messages can take 15 seconds to send even in the clearest conditions, and satellites can fall out of view while they are being used.

The satellite features also have a more fun version, too, since they can be used to communicate with Apple’s ‘Find My’ network. If a person is reaching their campsite or the peak of a hill for instance but will be out of internet connection, they can use the system to update their location to their friends.

For now, all of this is free for two years from the time that the system goes online in a person’s home country. An Italian person can come to the UK and connect via satellite, for instance, but that two year countdown will not begin until the system switches on in that country.

Apple is still yet to announce what will happen after that two year period is over: it has only said that the feature will be free at first, and not that it will be paid-for after that. Veron suggests that decision is not yet made, saying that it is “an ever-changing and dynamic environment” and that the company will make an announcement in the future.

The satellites have already helped save people in the US, where the tool has been available for weeks. The crew of a capsized boat was rescued from the sea, and another person in the far reaches of Alaska was able to find help.

Apple no doubt hopes that there will be as few of those stories as possible, since Emergency SOS with satellite is the kind of tool that nobody will ever want to use. But if they ever do, then it will be waiting – constantly learning about the skies in case it ever needs to send out a cry to help to them.