After the major announcement by SpaceX and US carrier T-Mobile that they will be bringing satellite connectivity to smartphones, Google has revealed its plans to roll out the next Android 14 version to support this connectivity.
Android 14 Release date
The next rollout of Android 14 is expected to roll out in mid or late 2023.
Hiroshi Lockheimer, who is one of Google’s Senior Vice Presidents of Platforms and Ecosystems noted that the user experience of phones that can handle satellite connectivity will be quite different from phones which have 5G connectivity.
Elon Musk noted earlier last week that this satellite connectivity could have the possibility of supporting about one to two thousand simultaneous voice calls or at a higher level, hundreds of thousands of text messages which are able to be transmitted irrespective of the length of the text message.
Reasons for Satellite Connectivity
The major reason behind the satellite connectivity features being rolled out in smartphones is to support emergency scenarios and enable connectivity in areas where there is no cellular network and service. T-Mobile which is one of the largest mobile network providers aims to support messaging, MMS, and supporting various messaging applications using this feature.
Cooperation will prove to be the key to unlocking more doors in this initiative.
It will be quite interesting to discover what else can be supported through this new feature of satellite connection being rolled into smartphones.
Even more interesting is how the 5G features and satellite connectivity will be incorporated into different phones.
SpaceX and T-Mobile aim to begin work on this project with the late months of 2023 set for beta release.
What are your thoughts on this?
