Apple’s Surprise Free Offer To All iPhone 13 Users Is Now Live
Updated May 19 with further details of the satellite offering.
When Apple launched the iPhone 14 in 2022, it and subsequent handsets came with a powerful extra: satellite connectivity so you could send messages to emergency services when out of cellular coverage. Now, a different kind of satellite connection has been granted to the iPhone 13 series as part of a free upgrade to the iOS software. Right now, it’s available on T-Mobile, though it’s likely other carriers will add their own offerings.
Apple iPhone 13 Pro
Verizon and AT&T are aiming to go even further, with a key technology partner, AST SpaceMobile, based in Texas, helping them to offer video calls via satellite in due course. Right now, though, T-Mobile has a live service. With the arrival of iOS 18.5 on Monday, May 12, Apple added carrier-supported satellite connectivity to the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max.
Note the words “carrier-supported”: obviously, Apple couldn’t add the hardware needed for direct satellite connection that the iPhone 14 and more recent iPhones have. This hardware means you can hold your iPhone up to the sky when there’s no cellular or Wi-Fi coverage and the iPhone’s software will help you to point the phone at the nearest passing satellite to send a message to emergency services or roadside assistance companies, for instance.
That’s not what’s just arrived for the iPhone 13 series. Instead, carriers like T-Mobile in the U.S. have what’s been referred to as a game-changer offering, because you don’t need to point the phone to the satellite to get that rarefied connectivity. The phone can instead remain in your pocket and the carrier will handle the satellite bit of the connection, using Starlink for the satellites.
To be clear, the software update emphatically does not put Starlink on your iPhone — something that scaremongers suggested back in February 2025.
The T-Mobile service is currently free to try in the U.S. as it’s in a trial period, though this is due to end in July 2025. While T-Mobile already had a Starlink satellite option for users to send emergency messages when outside cellular range, it was for Samsung phones only, though this has now changed. And Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite service, using a different system, used the rival Globalstar network.
Here’s how the new service works: when a T-Mobile phone that’s part of the Starlink program is outside cellular connectivity, it will try to pair with SpaceX satellites. For now, you need to be in the U.S. to be able to have this connectivity.
T-Mobile has said that eventually it will be available with most smartphones, not just iPhones, though these presumably will also require compatible software to perform this trick.
The satellite connection feature on iPhone has already been credited with saving lives, helping rescuers find hikers when they’re injured or people who might otherwise be lost to wildfires, for instance.
Though there were other aspects to the new iOS 18.5 software update, this new feature is arguably the most exciting, especially as it proves that older iPhones can still gain useful new features.