Apple’s surprising free ‘Game Changer offer for all iPhone 13 users now live live

Updated on May 20 with further analysis of the satellite service for iPhone 13 users.

When Apple launched the iPhone 14 in 2022, the subsequent hoods were supplied with a powerful additional: satellite sensitivity to send messages to emergency services if they are outside the mobile phone cover. Now another type of satellite connection for the iPhone 13 series has been granted as part of a free upgrade of the iOS software. It is currently available on T-Mobile, although it will probably add its own offer to other airlines.

Verizon and AT&T want to continue with a key technology partner AST Spacemobile based in Texas and help them to offer video calls via satellites in due course. At the moment, however, T-Mobile has a live service.

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“The satellite confectionality can be useful if you end up in an area without conventional cell service. Instead, your phone can communicate through all-round satellites and give you a way to get a signal even in a mobile dead zone. For US users, the iOS 18.5-update-update paves will get the way for iPhone 13 models to get connectivity to get connectivity through T-Mobile-Mobile-Starlink-Service with SpaceX.

With the arrival of iOS 18.5 on Monday, May 12th, Apple added carrier-supported satellite conference to the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Note the words “carrier support”: Obviously Apple could not add the hardware required for the direct satellite connection that the iPhone 14 and the newer iPhones. This hardware means that you can keep your iPhone to the sky if there is no mobile phone or Wi-Fi reporting, and the software of the iPhone helps you to send the phone to the nearest satellite, for example, to send a message to emergency services or auxiliary companies on the roadside.

This is not what has only arrived for the iPhone 13 series. Instead, carriers like T-Mobile in the United States did not focus what was known as a game-changer offer, on the phone on the satellites in order to maintain this diluted connectivity. The phone can stay in your pocket instead and the carrier guides the satellite bit of the connection to Starlink for the satellites.

To be clear, the software update is not strongly putting Starlink on your iPhone one-etwas, which Scaremonger proposed in February 2025. The T-Mobile service can currently try out in a test period in the United States, although this will end in July 2025.

While T-Mobile already had a Starlink satellite option that users could send to emergency reports within the framework of mobile phone, this was only intended for Samsung telephones, although this has now changed. And Apple’s emergency -SOS via the satellite service used another system with the competing Globalstar network.

This is how the new service works: If a T-Mobile phone that is part of the Starlink program is outside of mobile phone connectivity, an attempt is made to combine with SpaceX satellites. At the moment you have to be in the United States to have this connectivity.

T-Mobile said that at some point it will be available with most smartphones, not only with iPhones, although they probably also require compatible software to carry out this trick.

“As soon as iPhone 13 users are updated to iOS 18.5, t-satellite will be available to you,” T-Mobile told PCMAG and later added: “Our teams are urging an update on our support page this week to reflect on the change in iPhone 13 (and Samsung Edge),” said T-Mobile to PCMag.

“Mobile phone Starlink -Service costs 10 US dollars per month and promises to offer SMS messages in mobile phone zones before expanding to voice calls and data,” said the report.

In the above test time, T-Mobile customers currently offer free access to the satellite system as part of a beta program in every network. The so-called “T satellite” service also supports the iPhone 14, 15 and 16 as well as some Android devices, including Google Pixel and Samsung telephones.

And the new update for iOS means that airlines such as AT&T and Verizon, as mentioned above, can use support for iPhone 13 and newer iPhones. PCMAG comments that the service with AST AST -Spacemobile will only start next year.

The satellite connection function on the iPhone has already been attributed to save lives and helps the rescuer to find hikers when they are injured or people who may otherwise be lost by forest fires.

Although the new software update from iOS 18.5 gave other aspects, this new function is probably the most exciting, especially since it proves that older iPhones can still gain useful new functions.

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