Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Apple has reportedly put a technology for iPhones on hold that would have let people send text messages to other iPhones over a 900MHz radio spectrum that’s typically used for dispatchers in the utility and manufacturing industries, allowing the phones to act like walkie-talkies for texts, according to The Information. It appears this would have been different than Apple’s Walkie-Talkie feature for the Apple Watch, which is essentially a push-to-talk (PTT) FaceTime Audio call.
The Information says Apple and Intel were working together on the technology, which would have been integrated into Intel chips in future iPhones, before it was put on hold. At Apple, the project reportedly went by Project OGRS (pronounced “ogres”), which is likely…