Apple iPhone 14 Pro with emergency SOS capabilities.
The latest iPhone 14 series phones have a deeply cool feature that may have already saved a life. The functionality is Satellite Emergency SOS. And a new report claims it may already, less than a month after it went live, have saved a life.
According to a report from the Alaska Department of Public Safety, State Troopers, retrieved by MacRumors, a man became stranded on a snowmobile and contacted emergency services via satellite.
Let’s step back for a second. It’s a truly remarkable feature, so your slim, pocket-sized iPhone can send an emergency message even when you’re away from cellular coverage. Of course you have to be standing outside, but that still blows my mind. And one of the reasons it does that is because to contact a satellite you have to point straight at it, and unless your view is considerably better than mine, they’re just not visible.
Of course, Apple has thought of that and provides software that guides you so you know exactly which part of the sky you need to point to.
Anyway, back to Alaska. At around 2 a.m. on Thursday, December 1, the report states:
“Alaska State Troopers have been notified that an adult male traveling by snowmobile from Noorvik to Kotzebue activated an Apple iPhone Emergency SOS via satellite on his iPhone after becoming stranded. In conjunction with local search and rescue teams, the Apple Emergency Response Center and the Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue Coordinator, NWAB SAR deployed four volunteer searchers to Nimiuk Point area directly to GPS coordinates provided by Apple’s Emergency Response Center The adult male was located and transported to Kotzebue by the volunteer search team No injuries were reported to soldiers .
I don’t know the climate of Noorvik intimately, you understand, but being stuck in the early hours of a December morning doesn’t seem ideal, to say the least.
According to MacRumors, the soldiers who assisted in the rescue were “impressed with the accuracy and completeness of the information included in the initial alert.”
What’s also impressive is that Apple has warned that the service may not work in locations above 62° latitude, and locations in Alaska are considerably above that, at 69°.
This revolutionary smartphone feature is about to go live in more places, including the UK. uploaded, I’d say it’s a bit more important than that.
