Real-world demonstration of SpaceX’s direct-to-cell service has popular apps loading over Starlink in places where phones usually go dark, ahead of a broader rollout. In a field test posted on YouTube by YouTuber Jake Pimental, Google Maps, X, and WhatsApp worked over satellite from a known cellular dead zone (at times snappily, at times with apparent lag), giving early adopters a taste of what the apps can do when mobile app support eventually goes live.
Early hands-on in a dead zone
“Eligible” support is starting on select devices, with more to come.
Access via mobile apps is coming first for T-Mobile’s T-Satellite customers.
Pimental accessed it on through a Galaxy S25 Ultra on Samsung’s One UI 8 beta, and the phone showed an option for T-Satellite data. That tested Starlink’s “direct-to-cell” promise, in a region where traditional coverage keeps dropping.
The killer app behavior you work out of satellite-to-phone or satellite-to-Satellite app the answer has always been its usability. Texting over the link has operated for months, but performance fluctuates because the connection rides on narrow channels and small, phone-size antennas. Some messages are sent quickly, others within minutes, in independent tests of the system, depending on satellite geometry and the load on the network.
What worked—and what didn’t
Google Maps loaded normal tiles as well as satellite imagery in the video, and did so with surprising frequency. When Pimental zoomed in, tiles appeared in under a second, and, as he put it, “it loads very nicely.” But he also had periods where the app went quiet for maybe 20, 30 seconds, then caught up — typical behavior for a satellite link that flares out when signal conditions degrade, maybe during a handoff between satellites moving quickly above.
On X, the app included posts, images and even video. Clips were limited to 240p or 360p (it’s legitimate bitrate control for early service). In one pass, a six-minute CNET video loaded and played to the end over the satellite link. WhatsApp messaging succeeded, and he was able to take voice and video calls, although he said the call quality wasn’t great.
App support is being introduced incrementally, for a handpicked list of about a dozen services that include X, Google Maps and WhatsApp. A whitelist model can be used to limit congestion as engineers adjust bandwidth allocation, caching and retransmission strategies for doodle or latency-sensitive apps.
Why the experience varies
Direct-to-cell links confront a more difficult physics problem than the one faced by dish-based Starlink. Phones have small antennas, a short range of transmit power, and need to have a clear line of sight to a satellite that whips across the sky in minutes. Factor in Doppler shift, frequent handovers and a tight link budget. A tree, some terrain or a car’s roof might block the signal; even small fades can freeze an app as it sits and waits for the missing packets.
To make things workable, operators throttle bitrates, prioritize lightweight requests and rely heavily on app-level optimization. Map tiles dump down uber quick, because they cache well and come in tiny little nibblets.GONE! Persistent video is messier; until new spectrum and satellite capacity come online, murky streams are a pragmatic compromise.
Capacity up-grade imminent
Earlier this month, SpaceX signed a multi-billion-dollar deal with EchoStar to use the 2GHz band in the future Starlink low-orbit satellite system.
Thanks to the capacity density boost of those bands — along with T-Mobile’s licensed spectrum — 5G is hoping to drive throughput up so it doesn’t have to throttle so hard down. The company has cited its goal as LTE-like performance, an aggressive target that will be goal-dependent on satellite density (more on that in a moment), spectrum reuse, and ground integration.
The broader race is accelerating. AST SpaceMobile, backed by AT&T, has already proved latent voice and broadband-class data services directly to unmodified handsets using field trials, while Verizon is partnering with Skylo on satellite messaging services. Standards bodies like 3GPP, whose Release 17 features specifications for nonterrestrial networks, are writing down how phones and satellites converse, which should foster increasing compatibility over time.
What to look for as launch approaches
At the outset, the list of supported devices is a bit thin but the tuner adds support for a few models of some bigwig Android OEMs. Operators are notoriously slow to take new software releases, so it is possible that we could be stuck with a limited app catalog for a while yet until this performance is validated and until traffic shaping is put in place. Slow connection speeds, intermittent dropouts, and low video bitrates are to be expected in fringe coverage area, especially indoors, under heavy tree cover, or inside cars.
In any case, there’s a demonstrative value to the early test, providing a pretty simple answer to the question of whether core apps would load somewhere where phones tend to not work at all. If the kind of future spectrum, satellite launches and software fine-tuning that are being promised do deliver on broadband capacity, direct-to-cell could go from last-resort backup to a credible, always-there safety net for navigation, messaging and—no special hardware required—media at the very bottom of the bandwidth scale.
