We received a Samsung Galaxy S25 satellite text demonstration for Verizon customers

While iPhone were able to send emergency messages through satellites for years, consumer Android phones remained behind with just a few, like the recent Google Pixel series 9offering similar services. Now, Verizon provides its subscribers holding Samsung’s Galaxy S25 series of connectivity of phones in satellites. I saw a demonstration of it in action.

2025 is modeled to be the year in which satellite connections on the phone could extend dramatically. Some telephone producers have tried to provide connectivity for selected models, and transport operators have sought to provide services to most subscribers through partnership with satellite companies. While T-Mobile Beta tests your own system with Starlink Spacex networkVerizon has shown how its subscribers will be able to use Galaxy S25 phones to send messages through satellites.

Verizon first and announced the partnership with Skylo To provide its mobile subscribers to satellite connectivity in August last year. Over a recent video call, people from Verizo’s satellite partner, Skylo, have shown how this will work for normal text. They used a Samsung reference device (a phone with internal use) that runs an Exynos 5400 modem, which is also used in Google Pixel 9. It has not been configured not to connect to a cell network, thus simulating how connectivity only by satellite would work.

They asked for my personal mobile phone number, sent an SMS message and received it -once I took about 8 seconds, once again taking 27 seconds. I sent an answer, which lasted 17 seconds to reach their device. While the reference device has been configured to contact their test server, rather than a effective emergency respondent, Skylo has shown SMS routing texts.

Skylo service can also connect to emergency respondents, similar to the way iPhone owners have used Emergency sauce for years. In the demo, I saw how a user will go through a questionnaire to sort out his emergency details and severity, which would be approached by a living person and transmitted to the emergency services in their area.

“What we are trying to show here is the experience at the production level, which we worked a lot to do perfectly,” said Pete Saladino, Skylo’s global marketing chief. “And again, we use existing satellites that are already in the sky.”

Apple was associated with and made big financial investments in Globalstar to use their constellation of satellites to support them iPhone 14, iPhone 15, iPhone 16 and iPhone 16e Owners with satellite connectivity. Skylo, on the other hand, does not have its own satellites – on the other hand, is a partner with half a dozen suppliers, including life, echostar and to use satellites. It works as a kind of signal manager to ensure that, in this case, the Samsung Galaxy S25 owners with the Verizon service are covered by the satellite networks that already operate in the blind.

The already operable satellite network of Skylo is an advantage for Verizon in the transport race to cover the satellite, although it only accepts the Galaxy S25 phones. Pixel 9 phones have satellite connectivity by a separate agreement with Skylo. The T-Mobile Partnership with Spacex started a new phase last month, when it has launched a beta version for connecting Starlink satellites subscribers (Which is accidentally available for Verizon and AT&T users). Next to Verizon, AT&T intends to connect their customers to the satellite network today, which only received approval from the US Federal Communications Commission to start testing this arrangement.

Skylo’s advantage uses networks already carried out by satellites, which currently covers a combination of 50 million square kilometers of territory (about five times larger than the US area). While half -brisket networks suppliers have satellites and capacities of different sizes, the company aims to offer uniform experience and access, regardless of where they connect. For example, I do not want customers to be able to send photos to a part of the globe and not in others under the same service.

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The phone-satellite connectivity has been limited to SMS messages and small data (such as with Imessage Apple), but there are no more sophisticated communications beyond that. Skylo works on the delivery of vocal calls that, hopefully, will be available until the end of 2025, although it could reach the middle of 2026.