It was somewhat off the cuff and meant to encapsulate the idea that you can improve the ability of the phone to connect with the satellite. That isn’t possible if you don’t design the phone.

You could potentially control the situation enough where a user can enable “satellite mode” which uses extra power for sending messages. It’d affect battery life, and need to be manually enabled, but it’d enable better connections in emergencies.

You could try to improve directional antennas and some sort of aiming system with the screen.

Lots of things that maybe could happen when you control the client side instead of just the satellite side.

And then you need to design it in a way that it’s not blocked by somebody’s hand when they hold the phone.