Google has been doing loads of work in Android to assist satellite-based messaging, and it positive could be good if somebody really shipped some {hardware} it might use. Regardless of the function launching with the iPhone 14 in 2022, Android producers have not been tremendous receptive to copying the thought of satellite tv for pc messaging. Qualcomm and satellite tv for pc firm Iridium constructed a working answer and included it into Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, just for zero Android producers to assist the function, resulting in the dissolution of the partnership. If Google needs an Android satellite tv for pc SMS telephone to play with, it looks as if it’s going to want to construct the system itself.
Dependable leaker Kamila Wojciechowska over at Android Authority says Google is engaged on doing simply that. It seems just like the Pixel 9 will probably be getting emergency satellite tv for pc SOS. For the reason that Pixel 6, Pixel telephones have been the uncommon gadgets that do not use Qualcomm modems. Google companions with Samsung and bases its Pixel Tensor chips on Samsung Exynos chips, and meaning utilizing Samsung’s (normally a lot maligned) modems, too. Citing a supply, Wojciechowska says the Pixel 9 would use the brand new Exynos Modem 5400, together with its optionally available NTN (non-terrestrial community) capabilities, permitting the telephone to be “the primary to assist Android’s native satellite tv for pc implementation.” The preliminary service supplier could be T-Cell (similar to the nice previous days).
The transfer would make sense. The entire unique level of the Nexus/Pixel line was to provide Google one thing to construct Android on. By incorporating the most recent {hardware} options into the following Pixel, Android will get a goal to program for and take a look at on. In any other case, we might have a chicken-and-egg drawback the place nobody makes the {hardware} as a result of there is not any software program assist, and nobody makes software program as a result of there is not any {hardware} to program for. Google simply does it abruptly.
As for who could be powering T-Cell’s satellite tv for pc community, the corporate has a high-profile partnership with SpaceX, however these are LTE towers in house and work on common gadgets with no particular software program (the current demo was on a daily set of iPhones). The entire level of Android’s satellite tv for pc implementation is coping with conventional satellite tv for pc issues like aiming at a far-away satellite tv for pc, compressing the message a ton to really make it to the satellite tv for pc, and coping with an unreliable connection. That is probably not related to the SpaceX partnership since that’s making an attempt to be a next-generation answer of “common LTE in house,” designed across the world’s largest rocket and satellite tv for pc community.
We’re simply speculating right here, however a greater goal for a “current-generation” system could be Skylo, which resells service from conventional satellite tv for pc firms like Viasat and Inmarsat, so it might want all that aiming and unreliable connection software program. In a wild coincidence, Skylo already has a press launch out saying it has licensed the Samsung Exynos Modem 5400 to be used on its community. Skylo already has a relationship with T-Cell, and the corporate powered the Motorola Satellite tv for pc Hyperlink hotspot.
