Caribou Gear

RIP Garmin Inreach … iPhones to allow satellite messages in ios18

After the customer service I got from Garmin over a 430 tracking collar, I doubt I'll ever spend money on Garmin again. Only service I've ever seem as bad was Sears trying to get a part for my sears lawn mower. Companys with crap customer service should do every body a favor and simply shut their doors!
 
Sat comm messaging by cell phone is only the first stop on the way to having a full on sat/cell phone in your hand. Messaging still has issues but, like lots of things, it will improve with time. BTW, T-mobile has had an agreement with Starlink to provide full sat services to user. Too bad it's been delayed, but it's coming. The only way the InReach will still be viable when that happens is for Garmin to automagically provide some great tech improvement which makes the device compelling to use. I doubt that'll happen with the likes of Starlink and T-Mobile teaming up.
 
Sat comm messaging by cell phone is only the first stop on the way to having a full on sat/cell phone in your hand. Messaging still has issues but, like lots of things, it will improve with time. BTW, T-mobile has had an agreement with Starlink to provide full sat services to user. Too bad it's been delayed, but it's coming. The only way the InReach will still be viable when that happens is for Garmin to automagically provide some great tech improvement which makes the device compelling to use. I doubt that'll happen with the likes of Starlink and T-Mobile teaming up.
GRMN up over 50% YTD and raised guidance at the 10/30 earnings call. While I am on board with your view, they must be selling drugs because the results are easily beating all expectations.
 
GRMN up over 50% YTD and raised guidance at the 10/30 earnings call. While I am on board with your view, they must be selling drugs because the results are easily beating all expectations.
Well, after all, they do have more going on than just the InReach. Might be a buyout coming, never know.
 
Well, after all, they do have more going on than just the InReach. Might be a buyout coming, never know.
This is a good point. They own the marine market and I’m sure several other markets but they seem to be dying one at a time.
 
Marine, aviation, car navigation, health tracking (watches, etc), dog collars....
 
GRMN up over 50% YTD and raised guidance at the 10/30 earnings call. While I am on board with your view, they must be selling drugs because the results are easily beating all expectations.
Seen the price on some of the Livescope set ups? Haha
 
After my recent backcountry trip, the problem with the new Apple feature is it does not push messages to your phone unless you actively have the feature running and are pointing the phone towards a satellite. This basically limits you to one way communication unless you stand in the same spot for a few minutes and keep your phone off of airplane mode and pointing at the satellite.

I use my inreach to communicate with hunting partners and those at home fairly regularly. It’s nice to send a message and then go about your hunt, even if the process is slow. So for my case I didn’t find the Apple feature very useful aside from a few instances where I had trouble getting an inreach message out.
 
Starling has the potential to make satellite comes obsolete. Wifi everywhere, will take time to get there
 
Seems you buried the lede a little.
Actually, it wasn’t useful in that one instance either come to think of it. Trying to get in touch with hunting partners to help track while I was down in a bowl with bad satellite coverage. Had trouble getting inreach messages out. Was able to get Apple messages out but my buddies never got them since their phones were on airplane mode. Inreach eventually did it but took awhile.
 
Actually, it wasn’t useful in that one instance either come to think of it. Trying to get in touch with hunting partners to help track while I was down in a bowl with bad satellite coverage. Had trouble getting inreach messages out. Was able to get Apple messages out but my buddies never got them since their phones were on airplane mode. Inreach eventually did it but took awhile.
One thing I noted in the reviews is that the iPhone tells you it can’t get a signal and to reposition. Garmin doesn’t do this until the message isn’t able to be sent 20min later. This is what I mean when I say the garmin device user interface is horrible. I view it as the equivalent of working with Jeffrey “The Dude”Lebowski. The user has no idea of what it is working on, or if it is doing anything at all.
 
iPhone user here. Where I hunt has places where a cell signal just doesn’t connect. Some areas (the top of the hills get signal but when I’m in the valleys nope.

So it was interesting for me to see if I could get a Sat-signal in the bottoms…sure enough, if I was in an area that didn’t have canopy, I could get a signal. So I sent a message…

Thing is: the Sat message is one way only. I could send a note to my wife (if I don’t message by 11am, I’ll be back after dark) but she couldn’t confirm back.

I got her return message when I got back into cell range. So, yeah, it has its benefits but it’s not 100% yet.
 
iPhone user here. Where I hunt has places where a cell signal just doesn’t connect. Some areas (the top of the hills get signal but when I’m in the valleys nope.

So it was interesting for me to see if I could get a Sat-signal in the bottoms…sure enough, if I was in an area that didn’t have canopy, I could get a signal. So I sent a message…

Thing is: the Sat message is one way only. I could send a note to my wife (if I don’t message by 11am, I’ll be back after dark) but she couldn’t confirm back.

I got her return message when I got back into cell range. So, yeah, it has its benefits but it’s not 100% yet.
I had the opposite experience this fall. I was able to both send and receive messages vis the iPhone satellite messaging. If/when I was expecting a message back, I found it worked best to reconnect to the satellite every so often to see if a message came through. There was often a delay, for sure. But it did work for me.
 
iPhone user here. Where I hunt has places where a cell signal just doesn’t connect. Some areas (the top of the hills get signal but when I’m in the valleys nope.

So it was interesting for me to see if I could get a Sat-signal in the bottoms…sure enough, if I was in an area that didn’t have canopy, I could get a signal. So I sent a message…

Thing is: the Sat message is one way only. I could send a note to my wife (if I don’t message by 11am, I’ll be back after dark) but she couldn’t confirm back.

I got her return message when I got back into cell range. So, yeah, it has its benefits but it’s not 100% yet.
It’s two way communication. I sat texted a lot this fall. It works fine.

You need to be hooked up to the satellite to receive messages.
 
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