Snapdragon Satellite will come to all Snapdragon tiers, confirmed for devices from Oppo, more

Qualcomm today announced that Snapdragon Satellite is coming to new Android smartphones from Oppo, Nothing, Motorola, and more, as well as coming to more Snapdragon chips in the future.

Snapdragon Satellite was first announced at CES, with support for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but no clear timeline for release. Today’s announcement brings us one step closer to the feature being available to customers, with devices confirmed in the pipeline.

Qualcomm says that Snapdragon Satellite will be used in upcoming smartphones from Honor, Motorola, Nothing, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi. There’s no indication of which devices will be supported, though it’s likely that the device from Nothing with the feature equipped will be the Nothing Phone (2), which was confirmed recently.

As we previously covered, Qualcomm’s tech uses the Iridium satellite constellation and supports two-way messages for emergency services, SMS, and more.

Related: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Satellite will bring emergency SMS to Android

Further, Qualcomm’s satellite tech will be available on “all upcoming 5G Modem-RF systems and
Snapdragon Mobile Platform tiers.” Qualcomm says it will be supported across Snapdragon chips from 4 through 8, which seems to match MediaTek’s offering which also works on more affordable devices. Similarly, Qualcomm also says the future will bring this tech to automotive, IoT, and compute applications.

Snapdragon Satellite will be available across all upcoming 5G Modem-RF systems and
Snapdragon Mobile Platform tiers (from 8- to 4- tier) as the ecosystem matures. Beyond
smartphones, Snapdragon Satellite is set to expand to other device categories in compute,
automotive and IoT segments. As the ecosystem grows, OEMs and app developers will be able
to differentiate and offer unique branded services taking advantage of satellite connectivity.
Snapdragon Satellite is planned to support 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), as NTN satellite
infrastructure and constellations become available.

More on Qualcomm:

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 tipped to arrive earlier than its predecessor yet again
• Yes, the ‘Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy’ in the Galaxy S23 is manufactured by TSMC
• Samsung making XR device powered by Android and Qualcomm chip