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  The Motorola Hotspot. It connects to the satellite network and has Bluetooth. That's it.

If you're still jealous of the iPhone 14's ability to do satellite messaging, Motorola has a Bluetooth accessory that will help you feel less left out. The Motorola Defy Satellite Link is officially for sale today, following its announcement in February. This is basically a satellite messaging hotspot—it's a box with Bluetooth, a battery, and a chip that will give you a satellite connection. You pair your phone to it, run the app, and you can start firing text messages into outer space. The hotspot is $150 and will work today on Android and iOS devices in the US.

The iPhone 14 made satellite messaging the hot new thing when it was announced last year, and competitors are just starting to appear. The big difference between Motorola's hotspot and an iPhone (and the reason why you might want Motorola's option even if you have an iPhone 14) is that the iPhone 14 only sends a specially crafted SOS message to emergency services—a keyboard is not involved in the process at all, it's just for emergency usage. The Motorola hotspot is not just for emergencies. It does full-blown messaging, where you can type whatever message you want to whoever you want, but via a satellite instead of the usual cellular network.

Motorola's messaging service works just like SMS, but it can only be delivered to other people running the special Bullitt Satellite Messenger app . The service will do SMS forwarding, though, so if you punch in a random number, that person will receive a message prompting them to download the Bullitt app so they can talk to you. It's probably best to set this up with someone beforehand, but it sounds like a great way to communicate when you're off the grid.

Enlarge (credit: Qualcomm)

Hey, Android users! Are you jealous of the iPhone 14's ability to connect to satellites ? Well, it's been a few months, and Qualcomm is already getting a similar feature up and running on Android. Meet "Snapdragon Satellite" a way to send satellite messages from a normal-sized Android phone. Unlike on the iPhone, this is real, two-way, SMS-style texting that you'll supposedly be able to use for more casual conversations instead of the iPhone's highly compressed, emergency-only, one-way questionnaire system that discourages composing a message.

Qualcomm's solution will run on the Iridium satellite constellation —this is the 25-year-old, 66-satellite network that powers traditional, purpose-built satellite phones with giant external antennas. Qualcomm says this is now going to work with normal-sized smartphones and with normal, internal-only antennas. Qualcomm's VP of Product Management, Francesco Grilli, gave a big overview of the service and says "in most cases" you won't even need a new antenna. Iridium runs in the 1-2 GHz L Band , the same as GPS and some mid-band cellular service, so your phone already has an antenna for this.

That's not to say it will work without any new hardware, but Qualcomm will build it into its standard RF loadout without requiring any major new components. This is a great situation compared to mmWave 5G , which added a big, extra, expensive antenna to your phone that very few people can use.