Emergency SOS is the kind of iPhone feature you hope you’ll never ever have to use — but will be extremely grateful for if you do. In short, if you’re stuck in an area without cellular signal, the iPhone 14 and 15 let you use satellites to text emergency services for a rescue.
Operating an emergency service like this isn’t cheap, but despite this Apple pledged to give iPhone 14 and 15 buyers two years’ access free of charge, in what it curiously still calls a “free trial”.
We’re now at the one-year mark of the service activating in the US, and Apple has decided to extend it by a year for iPhone 14 owners, taking them up to November 2025.
Given Apple hasn’t given the same additional year to iPhone 15 buyers, we assume it’s just simpler to introduce a paid option for both handsets at the same time, but still: a nice bonus for iPhone 14 owners. Just maybe book any potentially dangerous trips for October 2025 at the latest if you don’t plan on paying after then.
There’s still no indication of how much Apple will charge for the service when it does become a subscription, but, hey: that’s a problem for your 2025 budgeting. It is interesting that this announcement comes within days of Qualcomm announcing its shuttering of its own similar plans after ten months, however. Apple probably enjoyed that.
The company also probably enjoyed the chance to mention how Emergency SOS has actually saved lives in the real world. “From a man who was rescued after his car plummeted over a 400-foot cliff in Los Angeles, to lost hikers found in the Apennine Mountains in Italy, we continue to hear stories of our customers being able to connect with emergency responders when they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to,” said Apple’s Kaiann Drance in the company’s newsroom.
