101–110 of 201 posts
I dropped my Pixel in water and since it had previously cracked, it had lost the waterproofing. The water apparently shorted the power button and the screen. That was a fun night when the dead phone woke up and started dialling 112 repeatedly and there was nothing I could do short of smashing the damn thing with a hammer to stop it. Every electronic device needs to have a physical disconnect for the power supply. It…
iPhones have exactly the same feature, activated in almost the same way, except that it requires one fewer interactions with the device to trigger, and yet, there's no reporting about this happening too much with iPhones, nor was there any when the feature came out a few years ago. Additionally, this doesn't seem to have been a problem when it rolled out on Pixel devices a year and a half ago, Pixels are certainly co…
But if I remember correctly, the emergency call feature is something that is explicitly explained during the iOS/watchOS initial setup and/or upgrade procedure, at which point you can also elect to opt out, so at the very least, it's less of a surprise.
I dropped my Pixel in water and since it had previously cracked, it had lost the waterproofing. The water apparently shorted the power button and the screen. That was a fun night when the dead phone woke up and started dialling 112 repeatedly and there was nothing I could do short of smashing the damn thing with a hammer to stop it. Every electronic device needs to have a physical disconnect for the power supply. It…
I guess this is one of the major down sides of battery not being removeable...
https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/22/new-eu-law-to-forc...
As an android user for 10+ years, and an avid one at that, this feature still managed to surprise me when my phone screen died in the office one day. I knew the phone was still working as the touch layer was still giving me feedback, but I was trying all the old tricks in the book, unaware that this feature is automatically switched on when you upgrade the phone. This was on a 2+ year old Samsung phone that released…
> but this was entirely hidden in sub-menus without me even realising For context in case it was missed in TFA: While Samsung has a settings page for the feature, some users report the page doesn't actually have an "off" switch. Some builds for the Galaxy S23 and S22 let you control things, like if emergency SOS should play a warning sound, but you can't actually turn off the power button shortcut. I don't blame you…
I dropped my Pixel in water and since it had previously cracked, it had lost the waterproofing. The water apparently shorted the power button and the screen. That was a fun night when the dead phone woke up and started dialling 112 repeatedly and there was nothing I could do short of smashing the damn thing with a hammer to stop it. Every electronic device needs to have a physical disconnect for the power supply. It…
Just put it in a Faraday cage. Problem solved.
- would this not be one of the best examples of when to use small, incremental canary releases with the emergency feature enabled?
- if you did do a canary release, i would think that one of your first contacts be EMS in the area that you were planning on rolling out the feature to, so that you’d get good feedback directly rather than through news reports. do apple and google just not do this?
This puts them in the difficult position of changing up how emergency calls are made -- so anyone who might see this as a necessary feature will have to relearn their emergency button.
I'm somewhat curious what the data is on how many people use the "emergency call from locked screen" feature. Devices that detect crashes and such are a god send for safety. Being able to use the phone from locked state feels not nearly as useful. Granted, this all became way worse with touch. I wouldn't be surprised if larger phones make it worse, too. I have loved my flip's ability to "close" and render this a non-…
Way back when cell phones were rare, the intention was that in an emergency you could make a call on someone else's phone, even if they were incapacitated. For example, a vehicle accident that left the phone owner unconscious while other passengers were OK.
In the modern age, where the US has 1.16 cell connections per person [1] the chances of needing to use someone else's phone are of course much reduced.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
This is anecdotal but the same exact thing (albeit with an Apple Watch vs. Android) happened to me a few days ago- I had forgotten to turn on the watch's water mode before going in the water. After about like 5 minutes in the pool it started calling 911 for a medical emergency. My watch ended up calling 911 about 3 times (it probably tried to call them about 5 more times but I ended up taking it off in time to preven…
I have a nice, handmade mechanical watch and it's never tried to spam-call any emergency services. Also shows the time fairly reliably.
It isn't just a problem with Android. I volunteer for a small fire department. We respond to about 500 calls a year. Since January I can think of three times the automatic crash detection on iOS devices has called us out by mistake. 1) A person left their phone on their car and it fell off. Being a small town one of the volunteers was able to find the owner and bring them the phone. 2) A gps location in the middle of…
Once I was tucking to pick up speed and I must have accidentally held the side button down in my pocket. I didn't notice anything had happened until I got a call back asking if I was okay. (I did hear the countdown alarm that plays, but misattributed it to a snowmobile or other equipment at the ski resort.)
The second time I was also skiing and did actually fall. I was unhurt but I guess going fast enough to trigger the call. Unfortunately I couldn't get myself situated enough (gloves, zippered pocket, super steep hill) to cancel before the call went through.
The dispatchers were great in both cases. Asked me a few questions to make sure nobody in the area needed help and nothing else happened.
I went out and got the cheapest android phone I could find just temporarily. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was clear that whatever crummy little SoC they put in there was hardly capable of running the OS version they struck on it.
Often, the phone would lock up, but in a strange way. Only the rendering would freeze. There were several times an app would appear to completely lock up, and I would try to press the lock button of even restart it, but whatever app froze was still stuck on the screen, at least until it finally got going again and I realized that whatever frustrating tapping I was doing hit the emergency call button before the Lock Screen had even rendered. I had to explain to the operator about 5-6 times before I went and got a new phone.