It was raining, with thick cloud coverage overhead, but Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 still connected to an orbiting satellite thousands of miles away within seconds.
“What you experienced was pretty fast,” said Pete Saladino, head of marketing for Skylo. “And when we bring SMS over satellite, that will be pretty fast too.”
On Tuesday, Skylo gave us a demo of the feature at its Mountain View, California, offices. The company is competing with SpaceX and others to supply satellite-to-phone services — an emerging technology that promises to make cellular dead zones a thing of the past.
Skylo has turned on satellite connectivity for Google’s Pixel 9 and it will soon be available on Verizon-connected Galaxy S25 phones, which go on sale this Friday. The free service is similar to Apple’s Emergency SOS satellite feature for iPhones, giving customers a way to reach emergency responders even when traditional cell towers are out of sight.
“No additional app download required,” Saladino said. “The satellite connectivity powered by Skylo is a native integration into Android 15 and a predictable and familiar experience for the user. It is integrated with the device so the UI experience is consistent.”
Response is handled by Garmin, whose emergency coordinators pass information to a network of law enforcement agencies, emergency services providers, search and rescue professionals, embassies, coast guards, and more.
Skylo demonstrated the feature on an S25 Ultra. Similar to how it’s implemented on Pixel 9 devices, the satellite connectivity will appear if the user wants to reach emergency services when their phone can’t connect to a cellular or Wi-Fi signal. The Android software will then ask questions about the nature of the emergency before connecting to an orbiting satellite and relaying the message to Garmin’s response team to coordinate with emergency responders.
“This is a relatively straightforward experience; it’s not a complicated UI [user interface],” Saladino said. The user only needs to point their phone to the sky and follow the on-screen directions.
During the demo, the Samsung S25 was able to send an emergency message through the satellite in about five seconds once the device was properly aligned to face the sky. A few seconds later, the phone received a message back from Garmin’s response team, asking for more details about the emergency. From there, a user could message back-and-forth to get assistance. The same system can also share a phone’s location with emergency services and certain contacts.
The feature is only the beginning of Skylo’s plans to power satellite-to-phone services. The company also wants to deliver satellite-based SMS messaging, and noted that Verizon has mentioned rolling out the capability later this year.
“On top of that, we’ve said on our website that we’re working on voice,” Saladino added. “We’re not that far away from being able to do that.”
(Credit: PCMag/Michael Kan)
The company isn’t alone in its satellite ambitions. In the US, SpaceX has been testing its own Starlink satellite-to-phone services through partner T-Mobile. This includes powering SMS messaging, with support for voice calls and data slated for later this year. Another rival, AST SpaceMobile, is building a constellation made up of massive satellites to deliver the same capabilities for AT&T and Verizon customers. Meanwhile, Apple is preparing to spend over $1 billion to help partner Globalstar build a new satellite constellation.
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Skylo is different in that the company doesn’t directly own any satellites. Instead, it harnesses existing high-orbiting geostationary satellites from Viasat, Echostar, and Canada’s Terrestar Solutions. As a result, the company describes itself as a software layer provider focused on making it easy for devices, including smartphones, to quickly identify and communicate with satellites in orbit. The work has included integrating Skylo’s tech in chips from Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek, which are widely used to power today’s smartphones.
“What we see as our key point of difference is that we built this ecosystem from the ground up,” Saladino said, noting that Skylo has 40 partners. “When you approach it that way, the devices are now smart enough to connect to satellites. So we think of this as a bottom-up approach. And I think others are more focused on a top approach with amazing constellations of satellites. So we’re just doing it a different way.”
Skylo’s approach also means it can tap multiple satellite networks, including low-Earth orbiting satellites. On whether Skylo might try to partner with SpaceX or AST, Saladino said: “I think this is early days. And we’re going to follow our strategy and we think this is the best way to get scale around the world… We like our strategy.”
Although Skylo isn’t launching its own satellites, the company has been busy expanding the ground infrastructure needed to route signals from its partners’ constellations. At the same time, the company is betting on its growing ecosystem to unlock new capabilities, including SMS, voice, and future satellite services for mobile devices.
“As the devices get more powerful and as our network begins to scale, we’ll be able to do more and more,” Saladino said. “We can do a lot with what we have because of the chipset integrations.”
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
