On the iPhone, on the lock screen there is a button on the bottom left that says “Emergency” which lets you dial an emergency number.
It actually has to work on any cell phone, even one that is not associated with an active subscription. When you first setup a new cell phone, before it’s fully activated with a carriers network and linked to your subscription, you can still actually make emergency calls.
On the iPhone at least, even if it was 000 for emergency I don’t see how you’d butt dial it. The screen doesn’t unlock unless you depress the home button or the top power button. Neither of which would easily happen in a pocket.
Then, you have to slide to unlock to access the lock screen, then press the bottom left emergency button. Then dial the 3 numbers, then hit the call button.
I was talking specifically about the iPhone, which is not configured that way. You have to (1) press the home button or the sleep/wake button to wake, (2) swipe across the screen to unlock, (3) press “emergency” in the bottom right of the screen, and then (4) dial “0-0-0” or whatever. If you have an iPhone, I seriously doubt you have a need to disable this function in order to avoid butt-dialling emergency services.
There’s the chance it’s not an iPhone. My Android phone can be unlocked without using the power button in at least two ways.
1)Shaking it in a certain way turns the camera on, from there, you could drop back to the home screen.
2)It has something called Active Display. When you move it, the unlock button (as well as the time and a few other things) light up on the screen. It’s kinda neat, but it can unlock from time to time in your pocket.
IMHO, it is a major design failure that persists generation after generation in mobile phones resulting in huge costs to all of us in additional burdens on the emergency response system.
Obviously, it’s had enough and it isn’t scared of you anymore. Sure, you can smack it around some more, but what’s that going to solve? Make a clean break and let it get on with its life.
And that’s two reasons the US picked “911” as our emergency number. It’s easy to remember and hard to accidently dial since 9 and 1 are on opposite corners of the dial pad. Of course, for a phone setup that has a one touch emergency button which overrides the lock screen, well, all bets are off.
Thus, it seems odd that there would be so many accidental 911 butt dials, as cited in that article that Iggy linked. Is it that one-touch emergency button that’s doing all this? Is that common on pocket phones these days?
It could be a one touch emergency call button. Some cell phones have been known to randomly dial 911 (or other number) when the battery is very low - multiple times in some cases. It could be people arsing around. Most likely it is a combination of the above but, like you, I have a hard time believing it is true “butt dial” calls. Unless there is a significant number of people out there who possess a prehensile butt.
Earlier in this thread I posted a picture of a lock screen with an emergency button on it. Sort of defeats the purpose of a lockscreen IMO. A replacement lock screen is still my suggestion.
Anywhere there are valid phone numbers beginning 9-1… just hit that 1 twice.
Anywhere you dial 9 to get an outside line just opens up all sorts of possibilities… particularly if callers don’t understand that then dial 011 for an international number requires dialing the 0.
Legend has it that some phones were designed to dial the emergency number if any key is held down too long. (Imagine dying breathless caller grasping at phone… )
Verified. One local phone carrier was send out promotional text messages to its customers. If you tried to return the call the number dialed would connect to 9-1-1. (No! I can’t help you get double minutes! No We did NOT send you a text!)
My phone has a pattern to unlock. That means if somebody picks it up, they won’t be able to access it and gain control of everything I have stored on it or connected to it. It also means they can’t dial any numbers… Not even the emergency number to summon me an ambulance, should some ill fate have befallen me. So the emergency button permits them only to call 000 and allows no further access to my personal details and accounts. It doesn’t defeat the purpose of a lock screen, it makes the phone useful for summoning help when it has been secured.
This is fixed easily - get a cover. No more accidental 000 and the phone will last longer too (actually just not having it in your back populace will increase it’s life span)
I was under the impression that the primary purpose of a lock screen was preventing accidentally activating things on your phone when it is in your pocket/purse/whatever. Like on an iDevice, you have to swipe to unlock. Butt dialing has been around a long time, and to me calling emergency services is the worst butt dial you can make.
I’m sure they didn’t intend for that to happen. It took awhile to figure out exactly what was happening.
Before 9-1-1 was rolled out here our jurisdiction had multiple three-digit emergency numbers… and one was 5-5-5 for ambulance. Once we got a unified 9-1-1 system we wanted 5-5-5 calls to be transferred to 9-1-1 for a time. But that was years ago.
Unfortunately the phone company was listing 5-5-5 as the call back number on their advertisements. And no one had ever cancelled the transfer from 5-5-5 to 9-1-1. Ergo, the problem.
But the phone company didn’t exactly sort it out the first time the problem was reported to them. We had to figure out what was happening. When our department got a new manager we referred the matter to him and he made them stop.