Pixel prevented me from calling emergency services - three years ago

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9 pointsvisviva4 comments

The issue is that it's impossible to test this functionality. It's not like you can have a test that calls 911 since that would be illegal. It only makes sense that untested software would have bugs.

People test apps in emulators all the time, which really are Android VMs, it wouldn't be a problem to give one virtual phone hardware that can pretend to dial whatever and test the software/app layers of this very effectively.

And for what the emulator can't cover, people make test calls to 911 all the time, it's often required when setting up larger phone systems. There are established procedures for how to do this.

I hear this all the time in less important software. A test can be made. And they don’t have to make the call to test this.

Computers are amazing. We can have them do anything we like. That includes testing the things we wrote.

I don’t think I have ever heard a case of “it can’t be tested” that was not demonstrably wrong.

If you don't make the call, how can you be sure it will work when someone actually needs to use it?

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