Apple has apparently used a very very high gain (i.e. highly directional) antenna. That's how they got around having that big external antenna found on competitive hand-helds.
I quite like the idea of aiming it by hand using software as the guide.
Apple's antenna can only be smaller if it's lower gain. I would bet they're making that tradeoff because they don't need as much bandwidth. (Emergency pings could be measured in dozens of bytes, let alone kilobytes or megabytes.)
None of the RF ports come out to a connector so no that couldnt really work.
You CAN get high gain antennas for things like your WiFi router, it's my goto when an elderly relative complains about their wifi range.
You can't actually increase power with an (inactive) antenna but you CAN change it's radiation pattern. The higher gain omnidirectional antennas just take a radiation pattern that looks like a sphere (0dB gain) and squashes it into a donut shape. So you get more range laterally around the antenna at the expense of less above and below it
Maybe Globalstar needs a big antenna, but Iridium doesn’t. I have a Garmin InReach with a 1 inch antenna and it works fine without any antenna pointing antics.
There’s been a lot of research into emergency UX. Basically, it needs to be dead simple or people die. In an emergency, people are usually panicked, injured or in shock. The tool needs to do its thing simply and effortlessly to cut through the panic and confusion of a real emergency. I have an avalanche transponder that is one big button because when you friend just got buried under 20 tons of snow and rocks, you have the leftover brain for one button.
From the demo, I think Apple is very aware of this which is why they give you a series of canned prompts. They’ve probably already used up a significant cognitive load by having you point the phone for signal that having you type as well was considered dangerous.
> I have a Garmin InReach with a 1 inch antenna and it works fine
Your definition of the word “fine” is apparently rather generous. Be in an actual emergency situation and the InReach is down right frustrating as hell, but “better than nothing”. I don’t have optimism for Apple’s offering either for the record.
It's a bit slow to get a message out, but at least you can send a message. A traditional PLB might be faster but you can't transmit anything so the responders know zero about your situation. What the problem is, where you are exactly, how urgent it is, etc. I'll take InReach any day.
> It's a bit slow to get a message out, but at least you can send a message.
Tell that to a someone I know who had a broken leg and not only was the location way off, it took multiple hours to send. He was around a half mile of a well trodden hiking path too, so help took no time to get there once the message was actually broadcast (while the location was way off, he was visible from that wrong location). He wishes he’d had a loud whistle instead.
> I'll take InReach any day.
I’ll take my Inmarsat based phone any day. Sure, the monthly fee is 1.5x higher, but I know my message AND my call will go through as long as I have a clear view of the sky.
Ok I didn't realize it worked that badly sometimes :( For me it has always sent them within a couple of minutes.
I had a GEO satphone myself (Thuraya which is really cheap for airtime in Europe) before but as I hike through the mountains it's very hard to get a line of sight. So I didn't deem it useful enough for emergency.
Maybe I'll get a PLB too then, I'll think about it.
> I had a GEO satphone myself (Thuraya which is really cheap for airtime in Europe) before but as I hike through the mountains it's very hard to get a line of sight. So I didn't deem it useful enough for emergency.
Yeah, the iSatPhone2 is fairly forgiving on line of sight as long as you aren’t in a canyon or hiking up the north face of a mountain. Given they are in geosynchronous orbit, targeting is much easier (just point antenna south). My iridium I had back in the late 00’s was a PITA to get signal on a hike where we had to call for an air ambulance for emergency evac.
I see, the Thuraya had a bit of a hard time because it has only 1 sat covering Europe and it's all the way over Saudi Arabia. So it's not only up a long way but also quite far away geographically. I guess this is why it's so cheap in Europe (2 years airtime - not including calls - was about 40 euro IIRC, whereas with Iridium you would pay more than that every month!)
So it was a bit tricky to reach the sat especially in hilly or built up areas.
Modern PLBs send your location to both LEOSAR, MEOSAR and GEOSAR, as well as 121.5MHz homing signal for SAR responders that need to find you exact location (since you might not even have good GPS signal or GPS signal at all if you're in a canyon for example).
I've been using PLB for years and unless I'll only switch to Garmin InReach if I really need to communicate with people back home. Yes, it can be very handy, not just for that, but also to communicate with other fellow thruhikers in ways other than trail registers, but in some cases LEO might not be good enough for sending distress signal.
Could you recommend a PLB model? Like the other poster I didn't realize InReach can take hours sometimes. When I've tested it, it was always fast (not immediate but a couple minutes max)
I have the ACR ResQLink 375. It's the second one I own, the previous one I lost in the Pyrenees (attached it to by shoulder straps in a bad way and could not hear it fall due to the winds). The reason I mention it is that NOAA (which register each device) were extremely responsive when I reported it to them in case: 1. It somehow activates. 2. In case someone finds it and report back to them (they agreed to inform me if that happens).
While it might have been possible for me to retrieve it (I spent a day searching it) if it were a tracker device (such as InReach), I found that even if you find a Garmin device, Garmin support won't disclose any details about its owner or contact them on your behalf. I'm not sure if for privacy or commercial reasons but I just found it awkward (I didn't find a device myself, but learned about it through Garmin support forums).
If I were to buy a new PLB today, I would have considered the newer models with Return Link Service (such as ResQLink 410 RLS). It doesn't let you communicate, but notifies you that your distress signal has been delivered to.
Just read the other comment. While I guess hours response is an outlier in clear sky conditions, I really wish that Garmin would have made stats publicly available
Thanks for the feedback! I didn't realise or even consider these aspects of lost devices etc. I live near (well, sort of) near the Pyrenees and I walk through similar areas.
Because I already owned the InReach (I also used it as a backup for business travel in "less than safe" areas) I never really looked at PLBs. I will look at the ACR range. The prices look pretty OK considering the InReach has a fairly high monthly cost and these don't.
Want to know another great safety measure that only costs you around $100 w/ no monthly fee? Pick up a handheld ham radio. When you enter areas with rangers, stop and ask the emergency frequency they use.
Best to get a HAM license to be safe (it’s trivially easy to pass the General exam), but if you are only using it in an actual emergency, I highly doubt anyone will judge you too harshly for not having it.
> While I guess hours response is an outlier in clear sky conditions
It definitely is an outlier, maybe partially due to conditions (I wasn’t there, just was someone who received the other party’s messages way late), but that’s the point. An emergency situation is already an outlier as is, the last thing I want is to trust a device which has a definite probability of failure again. Screw “me” over once, shame on you. Twice? Shame on me.
> Apple has apparently used a very very high gain (i.e. highly directional) antenna. That's how they got around having that big external antenna found on competitive hand-helds.
> I quite like the idea of aiming it by hand using software as the guide.
In the event of an emergency, fumbling with my phone to find service sounds like a nightmare.
I don't know what the current state of the art is, but it sounds considerably easier to use than old satellite phones. Plus you don't have to lug around a satellite phone.
It sounds worse than current dedicated emergency beacons (which afaik usually are both satellite uplink and lower-frequency beacon), and I'd expect many/most people using them today will continue to carry them. But many people don't, and even if you do it is another fallback.
The best camera is the one you have with you, and no-one[*] carries around an SLR camera these days.
Similarly, the best emergency-alert system is the one you have with you. Apple is playing the long game, getting their feet wet in a new area, and providing some value. They will iterate, it's what they do.
[1] For some definition of "no-one". Obviously some people do carry around SLR's but it's a tiny minority.
I carry an InReach mini in my airplane when flying over wilderness areas. Unfortunately I don’t think I could trust the iPhone. With the Garmin you can press one button and it’ll send out an emergency beacon without having to aim it.
Where are you flying out of curiosity? Flying over sparsely populated areas of rockies in Colorado, I very frequently have cell service. Having said that, nothing wrong with being prepared, I'm just curious about your situation. I might start doing that too. I always figured if I actually went down, landing would be the hard part, not staying alive once I landed.
Those full bars of coverage you had at altitude are probably going to disappear the moment you lose line-of-sight.
That said, aircraft have ELTs which are supposed to trigger on impact and can be manually activated as well, so an InReach probably wouldn't make a life-or-death difference very often.
There are lots of great places to land, but being stuck in the desert without any way to communicate is a very real possibility (Ironically, even at many small town airports I’ve landed at).
To be fair I barely trust my InReach either. Overcast days, canyons, and any kind of tree cover consistently result in delayed or failed messages. And even if they report as "sent" on the device sometimes the recipient doesn't get them.
And for a dedicated device, the tracking feature is laughably bad with worse accuracy than my friend's watch.
Better than nothing in case of emergency but the reliability leaves a lot to be desired.
Are the messaging and emergency functions the same with those? For emergency beacons there is also a ~400Mhz frequency that is monitored independently (vs satellite communication at higher frequencies)
InReach uses the same 16xx Mhz Iridium frequency for everything. It does not have a 400Mhz PLB transmitter (which usually come with extendable antennas by the way, due to the ~ 70cm wavelength).
Even if it is a little worse, NO ONE is shelling out $600 for an InReach after this announcement. I am an avid backpacker who has resisted SatComs (partly for the price, partly because they ruin the experience maaaaan) and I can tell you with certainty that this put to bed any last chance of me purchasing an InReach
> In the event of an emergency, fumbling with my phone to find service sounds like a nightmare.
It doesn't have to be perfect, compared to the current alternative of 1) Having nothing to fumble around or 2) Be one of the few people with a full on expensive satellite phone I think it's a valuable addition.
Similar to how Chase Jarvis said "the best camera is the one you always have with you", this is also the case for emergency equipment.
If you’re in the middle of nowhere and have an emergency where seconds count, you’re dead anyway. This is the difference between rescue in 2 hours and 2 days (or even 2 weeks). Spending 5 minutes finding the transmitter isn’t a problem if you’re stuck with a broken leg. If you’re struggling to control critical bleeding or are doing CPR and are on your own (thus you can’t spend the 5 minutes finding a signal) then you’re screwed anyway.
In my state, emergency services point out that if you use an emergency locator such as a Garmin, you should expect that it may be a couple of days before rescue comes anyway. It depends on exactly where you are, of course.
The tens of thousands billed for a frivolous rescue request probably will stop the casual pranksters too, getting a helicopter out to wherever you're stuck isn't a free service. If you're really out in remote places often, you probably know this well enough to get rescue insurance.
Actually it depends. In Canada, many rescue services are free (North Shore Vancouver is a well known one here) as well as in the National Parks (the cost is essentially insurance paid for by the park pass fee) and many provincial parks.
There is an argument that pay for rescue causes people to hesitate to call and that can lead to worse outcomes and/or more dangerous rescue scenarios.
There is also an argument that free rescues lead to reckless behavior and worse outcomes, because if the worst happens you can always get a chopper to pick you up….
In my state, the bill will be in the five or six figures -- but if you were legitimately in real danger, they will usually opt not to charge you. If you called them by mistake or as a prank, you'll pay.
I quite like the idea of aiming it by hand using software as the guide.