It appears that Samsung is planning to follow in Apple’s footsteps once again. We lost the headphone jack and charging bricks too recently, but this time, it may just be an upgrade.
The Apple Emergency SOS function on iPhone 14, which works via satellite through a Globalstar partnership, may be coming to Samsung Galaxy phones soon, says a new report from Korean media ET News. The emergency communication feature helps you connect to authorities through SOS messages when you don’t have internet or a cellular connection.
Iridium is now said to be working with Samsung on bringing satellite communication to the Galaxy S23 family.
Samsung has reportedly been working on overcoming the technical barriers to bringing satellite communication to smartphones for the last two years, and it appears that it has finally achieved it. With the launch of the Galaxy S23 series, it is said that you will be able to send text messages and small pictures (of hundreds of kilobytes) via satellite.
Antennas on dedicated satellite phones are usually large, so the challenge was to shrink it down enough to fit into a regular smartphone without making it twice as big.
The land area in Korea is small and well-covered with 5G services, so Samsung doesn’t expect the feature to take off on its home turf. However, it is expected to be particularly popular in North and South America, Europe, Russia, and China, particularly in those areas where infrastructure is underdeveloped.
The Galaxy S23 family will reportedly use a higher-binned version of Qualcomm’s recently launched Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, and the launch is apparently scheduled for the first week of February.
Keep in mind that there is no confirmation from Samsung as of yet, so we would recommend taking this information with a grain of salt since it is only based on leaks.
