Rosenthal gave his first interview since being rescued. Here's an LA Times article. He did some things right, but made some big mistakes, too, like heading out with practically no water and continuing to hike for miles and miles when he should've known that he had missed the loop trail he was trying to follow.

The article mentions that he had a compass (but no map) and I don't see any mention of a broken GPS, so maybe that report I heard earlier was false.

He tried signalling SAR helicopters with his space blanket and two fires started with flares, but apparently those didn't get their attention. On TV, he mentioned that he had seen the choppers flying around for days looking for him, so I guess that they were just too far, and the desert too vast, to see his signalling attempts.

It's amazing he survived almost a week in the desert when he basically ran out of water on the day he first got lost.