Galaxy S25 received Snapdragon Satellite, but Samsung forgot to tell about it

Often, during high-profile presentations, some new device functions remain “behind the scenes”, despite the fact that they are interesting and deserve attention. This happened in the case of Samsung Galaxy S25 series smartphones. According to the GSMArena resource, all three Galaxy S25 models are the world’s first smartphones with support for Snapdragon Satellite satellite communication technology.

Image source: Samsung

What’s noteworthy is that the Galaxy S25 smartphones have a feature that allows users to send and receive messages via satellite over narrowband non-terrestrial networks (NB-NTN), not Samsung, but Qualcomm, announced in a press release issued after the presentation of the Galaxy S25.

The Snapdragon Satellite feature of the Snapdragon X80 5G modem included in the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset was introduced in January 2023. A month later, Qualcomm announced that the Snapdragon Satellite service will be supported by future smartphones from several manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, Nothing and Motorola.

At the moment, Samsung has not activated actual satellite support on its flagships. Most likely, support for Snapdragon Satellite will vary by region, and Samsung will need to release a software update in order for smartphone owners to take advantage of this service.