@@paulbragg7618emergency only. You need a subscription for text A phone that does voice is much more expensive and very expansive to make voice calls. If you want something reasonable for texting messages Spot is reasonable
Unusually prescient....lots of people in Appalachia were completely cut off because of Hurricane Helene. Ham radio was critical, since cell service was spotty or non-existent. This would also help.
@@zadtheinhaler I also found it interesting that during the outage I was easily able to contact a satellite with the demo, but trying to send a message resulted in an error. Also, people in the same room got service back hours before others. I think Verizon was bringing sims online randomly instead of all at once. That leads me to believe that the satellite wasn’t working because it didn’t (at the time) consider me to have a cellular plan at all. I’m not sure if the SOS function would have worked over satellite. I suspect the messaging is more picky about making sure you’re an active subscriber. Emergency calls can still go through even if your carrier is down, so I wonder if the satellite mode would do the same. It could have been network load as well. I suspect a lot of people were trying the same thing. A good reminder that having other options is good. Even the technology designed for exactly that kind of scenario isn’t 100% reliable.
@@zadtheinhaler I'm on the SC/GA border that got hit hard in Augusta, GA area and Aiken County(still many without power, and low water pressure), and found it was AT&T that shit the bed here during the power outages with, w/Verizon working well enough, and T-Mobile being the strongest. I'm on Cricket(AT&T) for my family plan, Verizon for the tablet my work gave me(a life saver during power outage w/bluetooth keyboard to get some work done, & watch YT powered off my giant solar battery bank), & T-Mobile 5G for home internet, in fact T-Mobile for me has been really good with it recently bumping 1Gbit down, and over 170 Mbps up with sub 25ms ping times, and that's off a stock Sagemcom F@st Gateway with no antenna mods right after our power came back on here Wed Oct 2nd.
SOS satellite is a last resort. Ham is definitely an asset in emergency if you need food water etc. My iPhone has SOS feature but you only use it if your life is on the line or you will end up with an expensive bill for search and rescue. Ham is also good for SOS but it’s always good to have backup. Someone was still able to connect to a repeater with Baeofeng and was sent food, water and survival essentials after being stranded. However VHF is limited if the repeaters go down. I am planning to get portable HF as a last resort backup in the case of Emergency. I live in earthquake fault on West coast. Cell networks will be overloaded or down. Satellite is only for life or death situation. Ham will be great to reach out for help and to help others.
I was shocked the other day when I sent a satellite text message on my iPhone to a random friend in my contacts list from the middle of nowhere West Virginia. He wasn’t an emergency contact and as far as I know, I wasn’t charged anything. Sometimes it said things like “the next satellite will be available in 11 minutes“ but it worked eventually. I had no idea it could do that.
it's an iOS 18 feature, so you gotta go into Settings to get the update. Otherwise you'll be sitting on 17.7 (or less) until they update everyone. And your iPhone needs to be a 14 or later (came out in fall 2022)
If travelling anywhere in the remote wilderness it's best to travel as a group in addition to commmunications and have people know the itinerary in case of emergency.
@@daviddavidson2357 That is true, but for some no matter what $600 is a lot of money to spend on a phone. The most I've spent so far on a phone has been my Pixel 8a which cost me just over $400 USD.
For those asking, the radio tech being used is essentially 2G, 3G or 4G, albeit with an adapted protocol. The satellites act as typical base stations transmitting a global PLMN, hence availability based on country not satellite coverage. This is made possible due to LEO satellites and the much reduced distance to the earths surface vs GEO satellites. cellular technology has been capable of transmission over vast vertical distances for a while, however bit-rate is very low due to the distances involved.
I imagine that the text recipient, if they have a satellite phone, would not get messages while indoors or if the phone was not pointed at the satellite? That would account for the slowness of a response.
Being indoors would do that, and from what I've read T-Mobile is in the testing phase to use the StarLink network for texting in areas with no signal, so that should help with response times somewhat given how many satellites they have in the sky now, and they are expected to add more with newer generation satellites to cover more areas, and maybe get faster speeds/ping times? 🤷♂
I have 26 Ultra with built in Walkie Talkie. I didnt know 23 Ultra have a satelite function. I will have another look at these phones. Satellite calls function can be indeed a life saver.
30 messages per month is not bad. Hopefully for anyone in an emergency situation, people could upgrade to another contract allowing more messages. They even have FLIR with their phones.
I do not have a mobile phone, but I do have two satellite phones. One is an Iridium 9555 and the other is a Globalstar GSP-1600. I bought them for cruises, but since I had MdDS in 2012, I have never been on a cruise. They are far too expensive to keep the credit on them topped up, so they stay here unused bar a few successful test calls. 🙂
My iPhone offers satellite SOS messaging but I only seem to get no signal on London Underground which wouldn't be too good for getting direct line of sight to a satellite!
What are the messaging specs - is it text only, how long can messages be, does it interoperate with terretrial networks, does it do store-and-forwared and if so how long are messages held, what orbit are the satellites and what's the constellation size? All this would be very interesting!
The Ulefone page linked states that it uses geostationary satellites, which tells you the orbit, but not the constellation size. It also explains the time delay! Hope that helps!
@@tomwinch9107 I did some research on this and it's InmarSat 3 at 37 degrees altitude and Echostar is at 42 degrees altitude, both at 210 degrees SSW on the compass The signal is strong enough in both directions to work inside some buildings and houses
It's around 100 characters per message Interop sends an SMS to a terrestrial mobile to view the message on the Bullitt app It does store and forward, not clear on how long, but assume 3 days max (same as SMS) I've done 1-2 day store & forwards successfully Constellation is InmarSat 3 at 37 degrees altitude and Echostar is at 42 degrees altitude, both at 210 degrees SSW on the compass
So what is going on with Bullitt as they technically went bankrupt? The joint venture with Iridium, Qualcomm & Bullitt fell apart plus Bullitt has not upgraded it's JCB mobile except one for this messaging system!? Also I know Motorola is also in the mix somewhere as they had ideas for UK emergency services! So who is propping this up as I have a feeling someone in California in the USA may have bought out the UK company? I thought it was dead!
I believe the iPhone 14 or 15 is capable of making SOS calls via sattelite. I know it was added at some point recently but I'm not sure if it's going to be a feature of all apple phones going forward. I'm not sure sat phone to sat phone messaging is much use though as both phones have to be pointed at the sky to use it so as the recipient you have to be expecting the message. If you can send to a regular phone though like an ordinary sms and also recieve from standard SMS via sattelite that would peobably be something the iphones don't have since as far as i'm aware it's just sos on those.
You'll need one of those in Australia because they are switching off 3G and most non Australian Telco issued phones won't be able to make emergency calls.
@@Khloya69 oh no their not as you will get a warning if roaming that emergency calls won't work, you also won't be able to use a local SIM as using a non Australian phone will be blocked.
Isn't it worth mentioning that according to several Android news sites, the provider of this phones satellite messaging feature (Bullitt) let all of their employees go back in January 2024 due to insolvency?
So this is similar to the Garmin inReach satellite communicators. They can send/receive SMS messages to any regular mobile phone and also send/receive regular emails via the Iridium satellite network. Can this system send/receive SMS & emails similarly?
The subscriptions seems to finally be coming down to a reasonable price for the average person. That said I want to hold out a bit more so I can use a mainstream device. I'm picky about phones. No way I'm buying a phone that won't get regular security updates.
That's why I bought my family Pixel phones as I know they will get regular updates for several years before needing to be replaced. Even more mainstream companies like Motorola have been bad about not updating their phones for very long, so it's not just the smaller brands sadly.
I'm thinking you could also carry your Baofeng programmed to those Brazilian Satcom frequencies? Do we need to encourage the masses to monitor those frequencies so they can be used for emergencies?
If everybody respected "for emergencies only" it would be legal. But people will abuse it and you'll have the military, police and several national "fcc's" after you....
You have to remember when satellite phones first came out they were connecting to slower high orbit satellites, now they like with T-Mobile set to use the StartLink network they are low earth orbit, and a lot more of them up in space, you don't need as much power, or as big of an antenna to get a signal.
Their website has no details (that I can find) on their satellite radio. What frequency does it transmit on? What is the transmit power? You didn't say anything about that either...
Do you know how long Ulefone will support updates for it and their other models? I couldn't see any information on this. I'd like something like this with with thermal imaging for diagnostic work. I see there's a US satellite company starting tests on LEO 4g? capable service, allowing any standard mobile subscription access. Cheers.
@@burning4902 I try to limit that as best I can. Buying a phone that is made in China, whose code is run by a Chinese company seems like leaving the keys to your car on the top of the hood. If I lock the door, can someone read my car FOB? Sure but I'm at least keep a lot of others out.
200 languages but the service area only speaks about 12? it sounds great, but not useful for me in NZ, that service area is well covered by terrestrial nets not sure what the advantage is.
verizon is rolling out text to sat with skylo (geo stationary sat)for iphone users and android in 2025 in few months for free (they usally charge after awile haha)
I have the armour 26, which has a 2 way radio function and a BIG battery. See no difference operationally from the flagship Samsung except the camera, but for half the price
Yes, I have the Ulefone Armor 26 Ultra, recently obtained for about $500.00 US, which while different was much less expensive than IPhone and Samsung. 😅
I rem when sat phones were HUGE things. These look just like a normal smart phone. Amazing.
It's just messaging, you don't get voice calls
that was 30 years ago
iPhone 14 and newer have SOS satellite now
@@paulbragg7618emergency only. You need a subscription for text A phone that does voice is much more expensive and very expansive to make voice calls. If you want something reasonable for texting messages Spot is reasonable
Unusually prescient....lots of people in Appalachia were completely cut off because of Hurricane Helene. Ham radio was critical, since cell service was spotty or non-existent. This would also help.
Also Verizon shit the bed today in MANY states that were far away from the Helene damage.
@@zadtheinhaler I also found it interesting that during the outage I was easily able to contact a satellite with the demo, but trying to send a message resulted in an error. Also, people in the same room got service back hours before others. I think Verizon was bringing sims online randomly instead of all at once. That leads me to believe that the satellite wasn’t working because it didn’t (at the time) consider me to have a cellular plan at all.
I’m not sure if the SOS function would have worked over satellite. I suspect the messaging is more picky about making sure you’re an active subscriber. Emergency calls can still go through even if your carrier is down, so I wonder if the satellite mode would do the same. It could have been network load as well. I suspect a lot of people were trying the same thing.
A good reminder that having other options is good. Even the technology designed for exactly that kind of scenario isn’t 100% reliable.
@@zadtheinhaler I'm on the SC/GA border that got hit hard in Augusta, GA area and Aiken County(still many without power, and low water pressure), and found it was AT&T that shit the bed here during the power outages with, w/Verizon working well enough, and T-Mobile being the strongest. I'm on Cricket(AT&T) for my family plan, Verizon for the tablet my work gave me(a life saver during power outage w/bluetooth keyboard to get some work done, & watch YT powered off my giant solar battery bank), & T-Mobile 5G for home internet, in fact T-Mobile for me has been really good with it recently bumping 1Gbit down, and over 170 Mbps up with sub 25ms ping times, and that's off a stock Sagemcom F@st Gateway with no antenna mods right after our power came back on here Wed Oct 2nd.
SOS satellite is a last resort. Ham is definitely an asset in emergency if you need food water etc. My iPhone has SOS feature but you only use it if your life is on the line or you will end up with an expensive bill for search and rescue. Ham is also good for SOS but it’s always good to have backup.
Someone was still able to connect to a repeater with Baeofeng and was sent food, water and survival essentials after being stranded. However VHF is limited if the repeaters go down. I am planning to get portable HF as a last resort backup in the case of Emergency. I live in earthquake fault on West coast. Cell networks will be overloaded or down. Satellite is only for life or death situation. Ham will be great to reach out for help and to help others.
My iPhone 15 Pro on iOS 18, now operates as a satellite phone but currently only in the US. Soon to be compatible in the UK
I was shocked the other day when I sent a satellite text message on my iPhone to a random friend in my contacts list from the middle of nowhere West Virginia. He wasn’t an emergency contact and as far as I know, I wasn’t charged anything. Sometimes it said things like “the next satellite will be available in 11 minutes“ but it worked eventually. I had no idea it could do that.
it's an iOS 18 feature, so you gotta go into Settings to get the update. Otherwise you'll be sitting on 17.7 (or less) until they update everyone. And your iPhone needs to be a 14 or later (came out in fall 2022)
Cool ty for info! @@443DM
If travelling anywhere in the remote wilderness it's best to travel as a group in addition to commmunications and have people know the itinerary in case of emergency.
i always hunt alone... whether in unpopulated vastness or high density urban chaos.... SFMF
I'm not sure I call $600 inexpensive.
No, its relative. The original lo tech Sat phones were $3000 25 years ago
Given the features, compared to a flagship smartphone which usually runs you about 1k, it definitely is.
@@daviddavidson2357 That is true, but for some no matter what $600 is a lot of money to spend on a phone. The most I've spent so far on a phone has been my Pixel 8a which cost me just over $400 USD.
And $1200 or more for an iPhone is F**king Stupid, but a lot of people buy them.
I am led to believe both the latset iPhone and latest Samsung s both have satellite emergency phone build in.
They do. I thought this video would be about that.
Pixel 9 line up have satellite sos message, Samsung not for now .
For those asking, the radio tech being used is essentially 2G, 3G or 4G, albeit with an adapted protocol. The satellites act as typical base stations transmitting a global PLMN, hence availability based on country not satellite coverage.
This is made possible due to LEO satellites and the much reduced distance to the earths surface vs GEO satellites. cellular technology has been capable of transmission over vast vertical distances for a while, however bit-rate is very low due to the distances involved.
I imagine that the text recipient, if they have a satellite phone, would not get messages while indoors or if the phone was not pointed at the satellite? That would account for the slowness of a response.
Being indoors would do that, and from what I've read T-Mobile is in the testing phase to use the StarLink network for texting in areas with no signal, so that should help with response times somewhat given how many satellites they have in the sky now, and they are expected to add more with newer generation satellites to cover more areas, and maybe get faster speeds/ping times? 🤷♂
I am in Western North Carolina, been using Zoleos and have been able to interconnect with other satellite devices as well as APRS
I have 26 Ultra with built in Walkie Talkie. I didnt know 23 Ultra have a satelite function. I will have another look at these phones. Satellite calls function can be indeed a life saver.
30 messages per month is not bad.
Hopefully for anyone in an emergency situation, people could upgrade to another contract allowing more messages.
They even have FLIR with their phones.
owner of a power armor 13. thing is a tank best phone I've owned, definitely not the fastest out there but more then enough for me.
I stopped reading at "then".
Amazing as always
I look forward to see the teardown of that 120 W charger by Mr diodegonewild
I do not have a mobile phone, but I do have two satellite phones. One is an Iridium 9555 and the other is a Globalstar GSP-1600. I bought them for cruises, but since I had MdDS in 2012, I have never been on a cruise. They are far too expensive to keep the credit on them topped up, so they stay here unused bar a few successful test calls. 🙂
SAME and works in my country
My iPhone offers satellite SOS messaging but I only seem to get no signal on London Underground which wouldn't be too good for getting direct line of sight to a satellite!
What are the messaging specs - is it text only, how long can messages be, does it interoperate with terretrial networks, does it do store-and-forwared and if so how long are messages held, what orbit are the satellites and what's the constellation size? All this would be very interesting!
The Ulefone page linked states that it uses geostationary satellites, which tells you the orbit, but not the constellation size. It also explains the time delay!
Hope that helps!
with a 4kb plan i'd assume that its text only
@@tomwinch9107 the same satellite should always be in range then
@@tomwinch9107 I did some research on this and it's InmarSat 3 at 37 degrees altitude and Echostar is at 42 degrees altitude, both at 210 degrees SSW on the compass
The signal is strong enough in both directions to work inside some buildings and houses
It's around 100 characters per message
Interop sends an SMS to a terrestrial mobile to view the message on the Bullitt app
It does store and forward, not clear on how long, but assume 3 days max (same as SMS) I've done 1-2 day store & forwards successfully
Constellation is InmarSat 3 at 37 degrees altitude and Echostar is at 42 degrees altitude, both at 210 degrees SSW on the compass
dumb question: do these only talk to each other? or can you use it to text a NON satellite "regular" phone?
No - you need the recipient to have an app installed.
So what is going on with Bullitt as they technically went bankrupt?
The joint venture with Iridium, Qualcomm & Bullitt fell apart plus Bullitt has not upgraded it's JCB mobile except one for this messaging system!?
Also I know Motorola is also in the mix somewhere as they had ideas for UK emergency services!
So who is propping this up as I have a feeling someone in California in the USA may have bought out the UK company?
I thought it was dead!
Great information! Thank You!
I believe the iPhone 14 or 15 is capable of making SOS calls via sattelite. I know it was added at some point recently but I'm not sure if it's going to be a feature of all apple phones going forward.
I'm not sure sat phone to sat phone messaging is much use though as both phones have to be pointed at the sky to use it so as the recipient you have to be expecting the message. If you can send to a regular phone though like an ordinary sms and also recieve from standard SMS via sattelite that would peobably be something the iphones don't have since as far as i'm aware it's just sos on those.
that's really cool. i do a lot of storm chasing had had gotten a apple iphone 16 because it has satellite texts. and its free for 2 years.
You'll need one of those in Australia because they are switching off 3G and most non Australian Telco issued phones won't be able to make emergency calls.
America went through the same drama a few years back
Or just use an iPhone like everyone else. Any iPhone 6 or later isn’t affected.
@@Khloya69Android has a 70.69% market share worldwide, so maybe not like everyone else.
@@Khloya69 oh no their not as you will get a warning if roaming that emergency calls won't work, you also won't be able to use a local SIM as using a non Australian phone will be blocked.
@@timballam3675 on a shitdroid, sure.
Neat! They must get them into stores in time for Christmas. 😁
Isn't it worth mentioning that according to several Android news sites, the provider of this phones satellite messaging feature (Bullitt) let all of their employees go back in January 2024 due to insolvency?
So this is similar to the Garmin inReach satellite communicators.
They can send/receive SMS messages to any regular mobile phone and also send/receive regular emails via the Iridium satellite network.
Can this system send/receive SMS & emails similarly?
The subscriptions seems to finally be coming down to a reasonable price for the average person. That said I want to hold out a bit more so I can use a mainstream device. I'm picky about phones. No way I'm buying a phone that won't get regular security updates.
That's why I bought my family Pixel phones as I know they will get regular updates for several years before needing to be replaced. Even more mainstream companies like Motorola have been bad about not updating their phones for very long, so it's not just the smaller brands sadly.
I'm thinking you could also carry your Baofeng programmed to those Brazilian Satcom frequencies? Do we need to encourage the masses to monitor those frequencies so they can be used for emergencies?
If everybody respected "for emergencies only" it would be legal.
But people will abuse it and you'll have the military, police and several national "fcc's" after you....
Based on the size of traditional satellite phones, antenna tech must have come a long long looong way. Consider me skeptical.
Skeptical about what? It appears to work, does it not?
You have to remember when satellite phones first came out they were connecting to slower high orbit satellites, now they like with T-Mobile set to use the StartLink network they are low earth orbit, and a lot more of them up in space, you don't need as much power, or as big of an antenna to get a signal.
Their website has no details (that I can find) on their satellite radio. What frequency does it transmit on? What is the transmit power?
You didn't say anything about that either...
do you think its possible to use a standard smart phone and use the satellite function that the drone and dji uses?
POCO M6 PRO has the satellite function aswell
Do you know how long Ulefone will support updates for it and their other models? I couldn't see any information on this. I'd like something like this with with thermal imaging for diagnostic work. I see there's a US satellite company starting tests on LEO 4g? capable service, allowing any standard mobile subscription access. Cheers.
The most important question is who can you message? Anyone or only ppl who subscribe to the satellite service? Can I message any number?
Any capability for external antenna i/o?
Since Ulefone is a Chinese country, are you worried about it sending back all your information to China?
That’s a fair question.
Are you bothered by Google sending all your information the US intel?
@@burning4902 I try to limit that as best I can. Buying a phone that is made in China, whose code is run by a Chinese company seems like leaving the keys to your car on the top of the hood. If I lock the door, can someone read my car FOB? Sure but I'm at least keep a lot of others out.
I wonder how many watts that transmits at to hit a satellite
Will be listening in bed in an hour 👍🏻
iPhones have the same satellite messaging functionality
I was interested in this Satellite Phone until the mention of yet another monthly subscription, sick of them curse of modern times
apple doesn’t charge subscription fee
Yup this is the future!
The ulephones are too delicate to be a tough phone. The caterpillar phones are much more robust
How is the service
200 languages but the service area only speaks about 12? it sounds great, but not useful for me in NZ, that service area is well covered by terrestrial nets not sure what the advantage is.
“We can connect to a number of geo-satellite constellations including Inmarsat, Echostar and others”
That’s cryptic
Is this the new RM Sat Mobile? 🤙
exactly wher you don't need them eh
17 million square metres? You may have to recalculate that number ;-)
Can they be trusted ?
Ip68 in Chinease,??????
Wowza
Didn't really want to watch a phone review/ad today
Right… thanks for letting us know
verizon is rolling out text to sat with skylo (geo stationary sat)for iphone users and android in 2025 in few months for free (they usally charge after awile haha)
Chinese phones - so, no thanks.
The new iPhones have satellite capabilities
Actually, the previous iPhone also have it.
Too bad it's still an iphone
Google Pixel 8 and 9 have satellite capability
isnt it for emergency only?
@@nicoracien1924nope, they added SMS And iMessage via satellite in iOS 18.
I have the armour 26, which has a 2 way radio function and a BIG battery. See no difference operationally from the flagship Samsung except the camera, but for half the price
Yes, I have the Ulefone Armor 26 Ultra,
recently obtained for about $500.00 US,
which while different was much less
expensive than IPhone and Samsung. 😅
@@raymondmartin6737 I can't believe such a good phone costs so little. The night vision camera is brilliant
If it can't be used worldwide then it's as much use as a chocolate fireguard!
Brilliant! Elon will bring satellite comms to the main stream within a couple years.
How much power does the transmitter need to get a signal up to the satellite? 🛰️