With barely a month left, a replacement insider tip about subsequent iPhone seems to possess set the web ablaze. Rumors of iPhone 13 features revolving around low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites have unsurprisingly produced some speculation and pushed one company’s shares up briefly. That said, newer information is now tempering those expectations, claiming that the feature could be limited to very specific scenarios and won’t even arrive until next year.
Ideally, LEO satellite support would have enabled users to form calls or send messages even with no cellular network coverage. But, of course, that sounds too good to be true if there weren’t any restrictions, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reveals what those realistic limitations would be. In a nutshell, those satellite capabilities will specialize in emergency scenarios instead of normal calls and messages.
Anonymous sources claim that Apple is preparing for 2 features that will cash in on this satellite connectivity. the primary is the direct ability to send a brief message to emergency services or contacts even without a cellular connection. the opposite may be a tool that will report a crisis like an accident and whether there’s a requirement for search and rescue or other details like potentially dangerous persons.
These features themselves will also be subject to further limitations, which sound ironic or antithetical to their purpose. For instance, users will need to go outside and be directed to steer a particular distance to attach to a satellite, and it’d take a minimum of a moment for the features to kick in. Furthermore, the supply of the feature will depend upon local laws and won’t be available altogether in markets.
Those hoping to ascertain these features within the iPhone 13 could be disappointed to find out that it’s still not set in stone. Although Apple may are performing on a modified Qualcomm Snapdragon RF chipset for that purpose, it’d not even be included during this year’s iPhone or, at the very least, not yet enabled. All that’s certain for now are that the features would eventually land on future iPhones, perhaps in 2022 at the earliest.
