It's happened to all of us. You're wandering around, trying to get a cell signal out in the middle of nowhere, or even in a dead zone in the city, but no luck. You can't get service and in the corner of your iPhone all you see is SOS, which means you have service but only for emergency calls.
This isn't an emergency, you just want to be able to use your phone like you normally do. Eventually, you make your way back to civilization, to a place where you should have service, but for some reason, you don't. That pesky SOS is still in the corner of your screen, and no matter how high you raise your iPhone to the sky, you still can't get access to the internet.
What's going on?
In this story, we'll take a look at what Emergency SOS via Satellite is and what you can do when your iPhone gets stuck in Emergency SOS mode. Here's what you need to know.
While you're here, check out how to use Emergency SOS via Satellite to contact 911 and how to prevent your iPhone from automatically calling 911.
Patrick Holland has a pretty great explainer on the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature, which you can check out here. In short, Emergency SOS via Satellite is a feature on the iPhone 14 and later that allows you to get in contact with emergency services and share your location with them, even if you don't have cellular network service.
Whenever you don't have cellular service or Wi-Fi, you'll see an SOS in the corner of your iPhone, indicating that you can use Emergency SOS via Satellite to get emergency help.
Note: There's also Emergency SOS on every iPhone, and while this feature does call your local emergency number and share your location information with emergency services, it requires you to have service. It's not the same as Emergency SOS via Satellite.
Once your iPhone loses service and is in Emergency SOS mode, your device might have trouble finding your network, even if you're back in an area that has service. You might notice that someone else in the area has service while you don't, or vice versa. Luckily, there are various ways to tackle this issue.
Emergency SOS in action.
Kevin Heinz/CNETAccording to Apple, if you see "SOS" or "SOS only" in the status bar, you can do the following to help your device find a cellular network:
Try restarting your iPhone, turning Cellular Data off and on and checking for any software updates.
Nelson Aguilar/CNETLastly, if network connection issues persist, Apple suggests contacting your phone carrier in case there are issues with your carrier or account that could be affecting your service, like outages in your area or an unpaid account.