Pretty stupid question since the cost is not stated, the reliability and coverage is unknown, and it might or might not require a high end phone. I don’t plan to buy a pixel 9 before they are old enough to be deeply discounted, at any rate. To put it in perspective, a Moto Defy is $150+$5/mo and I haven’t bought one of them. Anything I buy would have to be cheaper and at least as good.

In the PNW where lots of people spend time out in the mountains or desert miles away from anything and any service, normalizing satellite communication into regular smartphones would be excellent in an emergency. I know they have special satellite phones now but the costs are insanely expensive.

No way. Coverage on my carrier is solid everywhere I’ve been - even in the middle of a national park a couple of hours outside the city recently.

I like to get away, but I’m not the type to want to go to extremely remote places, hours from the nearest town in the middle of the desert or anything like that. So this is useless to me.

I’ll accept it if it’s free, otherwise you can keep it.

Setting up a pay-as-you-go option would be rather neat

No.

oh good, if this technology is on the horizon, I will continue to resist the urge to establish starlink service. I will wait until my android phone has this built in.

If smartphones start embedding a lora antenna and a mesh client, it won’t be necessary on 90% of earth surface

https://youtu.be/YE1T3XuOpow?si=bWve9qzpZXrmn_Gp

Maybe for a month if I’m on a trip to a remote location. Don’t really see a use for it other than that.