iPhone Satcoms

Last week I broke my four year old iPhone 12 mini – fell off my desk and (probably) the prongs that contact the sim card shifted just enough – so I fell into a deal on a mid-line iPhone 16.  Fishing offshore the next day, I just had to try the phone's new satcom feature, being out of range for the cell net.  Utterly trivial to use, I simply pulled it out and had at it.  (RTFM?  Hah!  I let the instructions on the screen walk me through.)  Had to sweep around to keep the phone pointed at a satellite, and the transmit took a loooong time – it seems to be about a 20 bits per second data rate – but it all worked just fine.  Until we hit the 12 mile limit, then it gave an "unavailable in this area" message.  So I put the phone away and went back to fishing.

Anyway, the satcom feature works.  If you were thinking of getting a satellite phone for hurricane season (or heaven forbid, get into ham radio), something like this may be all you need to tell distant family "Yeah, bad storm but we're all OK.  Send rum."

More details available at about and how to send at the Apple site.  I'm still mulling over serious satellite comms, but at least this base is now covered before hurricane season.