Portage_Bay
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2015
- Messages
- 2,624
- Location
- United States
- Vessel Name
- Pacific Myst
- Vessel Make
- West Bay 4500
No doubt Garmin will have to up their game but for now with Starlink and T-mobile onboard I'm keeping my inreach. Garmin offers hardened handsets with very long battery life and a dedicated response center prepared to initiate and coordinate search and rescue. A cell phone cannot compare to a Garmin handset. If I drop my cell phone, step on it or get it wet it may no longer work. I'm lucky to get 18 hrs out of my cell phone battery. My inreach battery lasts for days. A single button press on the ineach calls for help. No trying to find an icon with wet cold fingers when the cell phone touch screen is reluctant to respond. The Garmin "keyboard" awkward as it is works with wet cold fingers and won't fail with a cracked screen. And in some important ways inreach cannot compare to EPIRB. Not ready to give up the inreach or EPIRB yet.
Well I think technically they did do it at least once according to that release. Ha. And to standard LTE. No special phones. No special app etc. Really incredible.
Obsoletes things like Garmin’s InReach pretty quickly.