Sat phones take continuous satellite coverage to work, but the Inreaches always leave me wondering if my message actually got through. If you can have an actual conversation on a Sat phone, you KNOW your message got through.
I have heard several stories of it taking several hours for an Inreach text to get to the recipient, if they get out at all. I never trust the "delivered", "recieved" or "read" indicators the Inreaches give when a message is supposedly sent. It doesn't mean the message was actually read. SPOTs are even worse.
Inreaches are much smaller than Sat phones. Ups and downs to them all.
If you send an SOS with an InReach, they'll text you back to find out what the problem is so you know they got it. If you don't get the text, it doesn't necessarily mean they didn't get it but could be that their text didn't get back to you. If you don't respond to the text, they'll assume you either are too hurt to respond or you've Darwinized yourself.
