[tialaramex]

Yes, findmy messages are store-and-forward. So the phone notices, "Huh, I saw something, when I was here, at this time, but I have no WiFi or cell signal" so it goes in a pile, and then a while later it has satellite, but still no WiFi or cell signal, so it sends out the pile.

I'm surprised it's worth doing this, I'd have expected that most findmy situations it's enough to get the pile of data hours or days later when somebody has Internet access again. Like, suppose I drop my airpods out of a pocket on some mountain trail on Saturday morning, a subsequent walker's iPhone sees them, but has no WiFi of course, however on Monday they're in the office, their iPhone reports it saw my airpods, X here at T time, and that's enough that I should be able (if I want) to go back and find them.

The place you might spend longer periods with only satellite is the open ocean, but basically if you lose shit in the ocean it's fucking gone.

[vineyardmike]

Find My isn’t just Find My Stuff. It’s also Find My Friends and Find My Family Member.

The use case isn’t AirPods lost in the tundra it’s your husband or wife lost in the tundra.

[Lendal]

Doesn't need to be that dramatic. Our Jeep got stuck in the Utah desert, and our guide had to pull out his Garmin satellite gadget to send a text message/coordinates for a friend to come pull us out. Lucky he had that thing. Yeah we could have hiked 3 miles over rugged terrain to a highway, but by the time we got there it would have been dark and we would have been exhausted. So we made the call. It wasn't life-or-death but it sure was convenient, saved us a lot of time, and allowed us to be back on schedule the next day. Definitely worth the investment. I'll be getting this iPhone for sure.

[ghaff]

As others have noted it’s not clear if you can use an iPhone for that. It may well be emergency signal or nothing.

[Lendal]

Good point. I did watch the keynote. SOS and Find My coordinates are the only explicitly specified use cases. But it's a paid service with the first 2 years free. I made the assumption you should be able to send text messages, because asking people to pay for a service that only lets you communicate with emergency services and that's all seems like a much less compelling product which is a bit un-Apple like. But then again, they have done lousy products before so it's possible they went with the less-compelling option.

[ghaff]

Per a video someone else posted it seems there's communication with (probably just) emergency services which (for some use cases) is probably more useful than just a personal locator beacon.