Will the New Apple iPhone Replace the Garmin inReach

The critics were correct—of course we should have had a Garmin inReach.

Early last October, after nearly 10,000 miles of hiking together without major incident, my wife, Tina, and I became separated on the Continental Divide Trail. A snowstorm had swept through the San Juan range of southern Colorado, and we’d unknowingly taken different routes on that choose-your-own-adventure trek. For 36 hours, walking back and forth while postholing in fresh snow, we couldn’t find one another. There was no cell service, and since we’re accustomed to moving together in relative lockstep, neither of us carried a Garmin inReach—the rugged orange rectangles dangling from the front of backpacks that allow adventurers in the backcountry to communicate with one another.

Instead, I used the relatively rudimentary satellite function of my iPhone to text an SOS message to an emergency responder. After some back and forth, the responder told me that Tina had made it to town, and I was able to tell the operator that I was mostly safe and on my way, too. It was the most embarrassing and unsettling instant in two years living outdoors. As Outside readers loved to tell me, I really should have had a Garmin, bro.

But only nine months later, Apple might be upending that quip. On June 10, amid a flurry of announcements at its Worldwide Developers Conference in California, the company revealed that its forthcoming iPhone operating system, iOS 18, will indeed allow users linked to satellite to send text messages to others, not just to emergency services. While the iPhone’s current capabilities managed to tell me which way to go and find me a ride from a high mountain pass, that all would have been unnecessary had I simply been able to ask Tina where she was (or vice versa), much as I could have done with a Garmin.

With iOS 18 or a Garmin inReach, there would have been no tentless night in the Colorado cold, no search-and-rescue duo dispatched, no exhausted day off in a Silverton hostel. Instead, Tina and I could have texted one another with a simple link to a satellite, saving ourselves 36 cold and anguished hours and a lot of emotional anguish. We would have simply rendezvoused and continued south.

Exact details about Apple’s new service remain scarce, but a source close to the company did confirm a few key components to Outside: When iOS 18 is released, likely this fall, those with an iPhone 14 or newer will be able to send satellite-based iMessages and SMS messages, complete with emojis and in-line replies. Two phones connected only to satellite, as in my hypothetical, will be able to text one another. There will be no quota, meaning you can send five or 500 such messages. And at least until late 2025 for current iPhone 14, 15, or 16 users (or two years after the purchase of a 14 or later, if you’re now in the market), the functionality is free. No future price plan has been announced. Apple believes it has the satellite capacity to handle this new volume, though the service will not support RCS messages, calls, or data.

The announcement sets up a sort of satellite race with Android, too, as it began to signal to some beta users last month that they too were eligible for satellite messages. The real competition here, though, is not between Apple and Android, as it seems clear both will offer two-way satellite messaging within the next several months, anyway. Instead, the question is what happens to Garmin, Somewear, and the bevy of similar devices that have long enabled such satellite communication from the backcountry without the same mainstream cultural cachet as Apple.

Are these outdoor gizmos doomed to become dodos, fated for extinction as their particular niche disappears? In the long run, barring innovations of their own, perhaps. (Garmin recently declined to comment on Apple’s iOS 18 announcement.) Still, after our incident in October, Tina and I did indeed buy a fleet of Garmins. We’ve since toted them on backcountry ski or snowshoe adventures in avalanche country and canyoneering escapades down in the Colorado Plateau. They’re going with us on thru-hikes later this year.

Indeed, I’m not getting rid of them as soon as iOS 18 arrives. Remember, inReach and other SOS devices are made for heady outdoor travel, whereas an iPhone and Android are not. We’ve bricked supposedly waterproof phones in rain jackets and broken multiple screens amid alpine boulder fields. In the desert, heat has temporarily deactivated my phone, just as cold has done on the mountain. Batteries fail.

The Garmin inReach and its ilk are little rubber-bound bricks, readymade to be dropped or rained on and abused. Their batteries last a long time (you’ll need a lot of backups to charge an iPhone for 14 days, which an inReach can sustain) and, perhaps more important, are separate from that of your phone. As last lines of defense go, they are made to be resilient, perhaps even to outlast you. And though Apple’s new operating system will add hiking trails only in national parks to its fleet of maps, many of these satellite-based devices include native maps, route tracking, and weather, however frustrating and non-Apple-intuitive their proprietary platforms can be. That is to say, they are made for people who are trying to disappear from cell phone service, not for those who happen to disappear from it. That’s why they’re bound to stick around, if only for a little while.

Our smartphones have become the Swiss Army Knives of digital existence, in the woods as in the city. They are our map and our camera, our newspaper and our entertainment, our calculator and our compass. But when Karl Elsener patented his Officers and Sports Knife in 1897, he enabled Swiss soldiers to do lots of things reasonably well—pop corked bottles, open canned rations, punch holes in leather, cut through fabric. The Swiss Army Knife wasn’t the best at most anything it could do; it could and can still simply do lots of things with some measure of inefficiency. The tradeoff is that you have it all in one compact form.

At this early stage, that’s how I think of Apple’s attempt at comprehensive satellite coverage in the backcountry, too: most likely good enough for most circumstances, but perhaps a little flimsy and unproven when I know the situation could get extreme. The market will likely never be big enough for some near-unbreakable endurance version of an iPhone or Android, something you can take deep in the woods or down a river without worrying about its ability to withstand the elements. For that reason, at least for now, I guess I really should have that Garmin, bro.