In-Depth Hands-On: I Tried Google’s Pixel 9 Satellite SOS
Hi, I’m here at Google and I’m here to test out the pixel nine’s new satellite S OS service. This strange device here is gonna help me. It’s not a Panini press. It’s actually a heated box to kill all the radio signals. So in order to get it to work, I have to close this in order for it to dial a satellite before we get back to my demo of satellite S OS. Let’s look at what it is and why it’s significant satellite S OS lets pixel nine owners contact emergency services when they’re out of range of mobile networks and Wi Fi. And to help me understand more about it, I talked with Stephanie Scott and Isa Sharif from Google’s pixel phone team. I’m Isha Sharief. I’m a product manager of pixel software. I’m Stephanie, I’m a product manager on the hardware team at Google and um I make uh pixel phones satellite. So SS is part of our suite of safety features. We’re excited to introduce this one with our pixel nine phones that allows you to connect with emergency services even if you’re in place without service. There’s really two simple steps. The first is connection. And so you want to be able to first connect to that satellite. It’s super easy. If you’re out of range, you dial 911 and you’re going to be prompted right on the screen to connect and make this satellite connection. The second step is communicating the information that you might be wanting to communicate during an emergency. And so we’ll actually prompt you through an on screen survey to describe a little bit about what’s going on. So we can send that information in your location back up to the satellite. And then depending on um what’s going on, you may have a few back and forth messages with emergency services. So with those basics out of the way, let’s go back to my satellite S OS demo. Obviously, in real life, people aren’t gonna have their phone in the box next to a PC. We’re doing this. So we don’t accidentally call 911 with the phone this box here. I can’t get to it. I can’t see the screen. So we have this cable coming out connected to a PC that lets me see the screen here. And if we look on the top, right, I don’t have any cellular signal. In fact, my icon has been replaced with an icon of a satellite, meaning I could connect to that. But in order to actually connect to the satellite, I have to trigger it by calling 911. Let’s give it a call, see what happens. Pixel phone is trying to call 911 is trying to reach it. And when it fails, it will give me the option to, to a satellite. So if you look at the bottom of the dialer, we see there’s a new button, it says satellite. So si tap that and now I’m able to actually connect to the satellite. So we’re going to take the phone out of the box since we know we’re not actually going to call emergency services. I now have a question. I’m going to fill out. This will be sent to emergency services. It wants to know if I have an illness or injury, vehicle or vessel. Uh if I am lost, missing or trapped. If there’s a crime going fire or something else, let’s tap fire. It says is anyone injured or in immediate danger? I’m gonna say no, what’s going on? Is it a force brought a grass building? Let me say a building fire. And now I have the option to not only send this questionnaire that I filled out to emergency responders but also to my emergency contacts. So they’ll know what’s going on. Let me hit, notify. And now here comes the fun part. I have to connect to the satellite. Uh I have some buildings behind me in trees, so I’m gonna move the phone. So a few things you might be hearing some, some chimes. Uh that’s it, prompting me to move it because I’m slightly near a building, I’m gonna get away from this and get a better vantage tilt down to center keeping phones. Now, I have green. It means I’m connected to a satellite. A satellite that’s, uh, flying by at tens of thousands of miles an hour is now connected to my phone. It pop up window shows my connectivity to the satellite. So if I need to reposition it, I can move my hand back and forth. I also have uh a thread going on with the responders. It’s called Garin response. Uh Since this is not an actual emergency, I’m gonna let them know that please don’t respond. So it’s now being sent from my phone to the satellite and I should hear back a moment here it was sent, there we go. Going through the demo was really enlightening. I’m impressed with how straightforward it all is and what’s great is if you’re a pixel nine owner, you don’t need to know anything about this feature to use it because it all gets triggered by attempting a 911 call. The moment you try to dial 911. When you’re in a place without service, we already get that prompt. So we try to make it super easy and accessible for users to find this in those times where you need it. Most I know we’re already starting to get inbound stories from, from users that have been able to, to use um the feature successfully, which is really awesome because we’re trying to build that in to help people for myself. I, I actually enjoy knowing that it’s there. Um When I’m doing things like going hiking, um especially on the coast, coastal areas where you don’t always have great, great reception. Um Having that extra layer of security that your back up for yourself is, is really nice. During my demo, you may have noticed the name, garment response pop up. I asked Stephanie, this Garmin response is the one that’s on the receiving end for the emergency S OS message that gets sent over satellite and they have 24 hour answering services that really help triage through the problems in in contact emergency services. And garment response isn’t the only partner Google had for the service satellite S OS uses satellite service provider sky low to place these emergency calls. Now, currently satellite S OS is limited to the pixel 99 pro nine pro XL and nine pro fold. And it turns out there’s some unique hardware in the phones that makes all this work. So the hardware is definitely enabled to provide this. Um So we definitely the modem is capable of helping provide this as well as having specific bands, um cellular bands to support this Google satellite. So service is free for the first two years, but the company didn’t hear how much it would cost after two years nor if it would be more broad available to other Android phones. If they have the included hardware needed for satellite connectivity. As a tech journalist, it’s wonderful to see safety features like satellite connectivity come to pixel phones and beyond Google. There’s Apple who offers a similar service for the iphone and carriers are now starting to get into the satellite game too. T Mobile, which is working with SpaceX on their own version of satellite connectivity for emergency notifications temporarily turned on its service prior to hurricane Milton. These are still the early days for smartphone satellite connectivity, but the feature is already helping people and it will likely only get more robust over time. But now I want to hear from you. Do you look for safety features like satellite S OS when buying a phone? Have you ever used it or Apple’s version to contact emergency services? Let me know in the comments. Lastly, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up and thank you for watching.
