TL;DR
- Google announced back in May that the newly renamed Find Hub would be adding support for satellite-based location sharing.
- That’s still not here yet, but a recent app update reveals text strings that hint at how things will work.
- Users will be able to share their location once every 15 minutes, with a daily limit on maximum shares.
Satellite support is changing the rules of the game when it comes to mobile connectivity, and we are still right now only in the early days of its evolution. The first hurdle was getting our phones talking to satellites hundreds of miles up in the sky. But with that nut cracked, arguably a larger challenge remains: finding a way to make everyday satellite communication practical, and not something left relegated to emergency uses. That’s already starting to happen, thanks to services like T-Satellite from T-Mobile, and earlier this year Google shared that we’d soon be using satellites to share our location with friends and family.
Alongside announcing the rebranding of Find My as the new Find Hub, Google said that it planned to integrate satellite-based location tools. But while that sounded all kinds of promising, it also left us with just a ton of practical questions, and little in the way of insight into how Google might actually be thinking of making this plan a reality.
Satellite features still aren’t available in the Find Hub — but we’re getting there. Looking through Google’s new version 3.1.399-3 release of the Find Hub app, we’ve identified a number of text strings that quite clearly reference the upcoming support.
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Code
<string name="connect_to_satellite_subtitle">Connect to satellite to send a one-time location update</string>
<string name="connect_to_satellite_title">"You're offline"</string>
<string name="error_satellite_update">Not connected to satellite. Try connecting again to update your location.</string>
<string name="satellite_interstitial_connect_button">Connect</string>We start with some basic messaging that establishes how satellite connectivity will be integrated with Find Hub. When you’re sharing your location with someone else, the app should support using satellites to send a one-off ping with your location — this isn’t designed for continuous, real-time tracking, and is more like dropping a pin.
Code
<string name="satellite_interstitial_emergencies">"For emergencies: If there's no network, try contacting emergency services first. If your call doesn't connect, you'll see an option to use Satellite SOS. Satellite SOS has no daily limits."</string>
<string name="satellite_interstitial_one_time_update">"To send a one-time location update: Connect to satellite. You can send an update every 15 minutes, up to %1$d times in a 24-hour period at no charge. While connected to satellite, you won't receive location updates from others."</string>
<string name="satellite_interstitial_title">Connect to satellite to send a location update</string>Find Hub’s satellite sharing is not going to be a replacement for actually contacting emergency services when you’re in real trouble, and the app will make clear when your best option is to use Satellite SOS.
While you’ll be limited to sending those single location pings to people you’re sharing with, there’s still some limited support for when you’re on the move, with the app letting you re-send that ping every 15 minutes. There does appear to be a daily limit, but we can’t yet see what that is. Given the bandwidth limitations of this communication method, that restriction sounds pretty reasonable.
We can’t say for sure just yet, but it also feels like that ability to update your position every 15 minutes will be a fully manual one, and you’ll have to come back to the app and transmit fresh coordinates.
Code
<string name="satellite_location_update_confirmation_subtitle">You have %1$d of %2$d location updates available. Next available update: %3$s</string>
<string name="satellite_location_update_confirmation_subtitle_with_relative_day">You have %1$d of %2$d location updates available. Next available update: %3$s %4$s</string>
<string name="satellite_location_update_confirmation_title">Location updated over satellite</string>The good news there is that the app should tell you just how many updates you have left to send, and inform you how much longer you’ll need to wait before you can get the next one out.
Right now we’re just able to make a few inferences based on the new strings we found, but we’re already starting to get a much clearer picture of how this new support is going to work. Sure, the devil’s in the details — and we’re still very curious about exactly where that daily limit lives — but even based on this early look it’s sounding like this is coming together in a pretty usable, practical way. It’s not a feature we imagine we’ll be using every day, but when the need arises, we bet we’ll be super glad to have it.
Keep checking with Android Authority for further updates on what we’re able to learn about Google’s satellite plans for the Fund Hub.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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