Qualcomm has emerged as the pioneer of the smartphone processor-producing industry. The company has offered some of the best processors with features that have never been seen before. That said, Qualcomm is now prepping up to bring ground-to-satellite communication to Android smartphones. The feature has already been spotted in iPhones as they can connect to satellites in emergency cases. It is being said that smartphones with Snapdragon Satellite will soon make their debut in the market. Moving further in this article, we will talk about what we can see in terms of Snapdragon Satellite and the details regarding the same.
Snapdragon Satellite – What is it, and how it works?
Snapdragon satellite can be dubbed as Qualcomm’s ground-to-satellite arena, and it marks the entry of the company in the satellite connectivity segment. Considering that a majority of smartphones available in the market work on Qualcomm processors, we can assume that the Snapdragon satellite feature will have a wider range as compared to what Apple has right now. There are chances that the feature will be rolled out for all the Snapdragon processors with 5G support, even if they belong to the affordable category.
All the readers should know it firsthand that Snapdragon Satellite is not making a debut with an aim to replace the telecom providers and make calls free. Instead, it will provide cellular and WiFi coverage to the users in cases of emergency and low network areas. This will work as a boon for people who are adventurous or are supposed to travel to remote areas due to their job requirements.
As claimed by Qualcomm, the Snapdragon Satellite feature will first support the transfer of emergency texts. Whenever the user is supposed to connect with the emergency services, the feature will primarily connect with the Garmin Response system. Right after that, the feature will forward the GPS coordinates of the user to local first responders. The feature will let the users send and receive a 140-byte limit per message, and it will only work for Emergency SOS currently.
Qualcomm has suggested that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor comes with Snapdragon Satellite connectivity. Nonetheless, the feature is not available for the masses to use as of now. Teh tech is backed by the Snapdragon X70 5G modem that supports ultra-high frequency bands. These bands let the devices establish communication directly with low-orbit satellites in the sky. In addition to that, Qualcomm has collaborated with Iridium Communications, which is a Virginia-based company that works on a constellation of 66 satellites.
Android smartphones supporting Snapdragon Satellite
The integration of the Snapdragon Satellite feature in any device does not simply mean that the phone is only supposed to have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. Apart from that, the smartphone should also have special antenna hardware to make the feature work. Expectations are that Snapdragon will soon roll out some updates to make the Snapdragon Satellite feature work smoothly on most of the devices.
