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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

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 common enough for that to become a known issue.

Why is Android different? Why are third party Android devices seemingly so different?

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From TFA:

> The funny thing is, Android 12 — and this easy emergency call feature — came out a year and a half ago. [...] the feature is only now hitting enough people to become a national problem. Google's Pixel devices get new Android updates immediately, but everyone else can take months or years to get new versions of Android [...]. When this landed on Pixel devices in 2021, it was immediately flagged as a problem by some people, with one Reddit post calling it "dangerous." Since then, there has been a steady stream of posts warning people about it.

It objectively has been a problem, and was a known issue, with Reddit posts warning others. There just weren't enough Pixels to cause this latest tsunami. That year-and-a-half delay from Samsung rolling out Android 12 was meant to be for testing - which apparently didn't catch everything.

I did read this but it doesn't feel convincing. People complain on Reddit about anything, and have complained about triggering this on iOS, and yet we don't get ArsTechnica (or the BBC, or other major news organisations) covering it as a widespread problem. There are plenty of Pixels, I'd expect enough to cause coverage if this was a substantial issue.

Increasing the accessibility of emergency calls is always going to be a tradeoff, so I'm not surprised there are accidental calls. However it strikes me as being significantly exacerbated by something about the phones it's rolling out to.

There's about 3 android phones for every iOS device. Seeing Android highlighted as a problem isn't surprising.

On my Galaxy, it was enabled by Android 13 upgrade. It seems that Samsung had postponed to enable it

Seems obvious to me: Power is opposite Volume on Samsung Android phones, but not on Pixel. Easy to hit both buttons at once, and iPhone may do something special to detect that.

My Blackberry Android phone is the same, I remember having to train myself not to hit power when I first got it because my previous phone wasn't like this.

> iPhone may do something special to detect that

Apple seem to have lockscreen "keyboard mash detection" for macOS (where, if you are cleaning your keyboard and therefore mashing down keys as you swipe across them with a cloth, the OS will wake up and process the random inputs a while — until it detects that you've mashed 4+ function-row keys at once, at which point it'll just go back to sleep) so I wouldn't put it past them to have similar logic for iOS.

Ah! Good point. Yes on my iPhone if I press one or both volume buttons while pressing power 5 times it doesn't trigger, and yes on my Pixel the power button is above the volume button.

It seems strange that Samsung wouldn't do something to tackle this. Part of the point of Samsung and other OEMs taking ages to roll out new Android versions is that they're testing and ensuring compatibility.

On my recent Samsung smartphone, the power button is below the volume buttons, on the same side of the device.

Google made including the "emergency SOS" gesture a GMS requirement for Android 12 but left it up to OEMs to decide whether or not to enable it by default. I suspect this spike in emergency calls stems from a few factors:

1) Due to the general lag between Google pushing a new release out to AOSP and OEMs pushing out updates, many devices have only recently been updated to Android 12. OEMs with outsize market share pushing out updates will result in many more people - who probably don't know this gesture was added or how it's activated - accidentally triggering it.

2) Some OEMs may have flipped the switch in an OTA to turn the gesture from off by default to on by default.

There have been a few articles about iPhone 911 calls at bonaroo this week:

https://gizmodo.com/iphones-false-911-calls-bonnaroo-android...

That’s the crash detection feature, not hitting a button repeatedly.

The iPhone had its articles about it half a year ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...

No, that’s crash detection. Not pressing a button multiple times accidentally.

Not that different. In 2018, there were a lot of fake 911 calls from iPhones, if you look around for it.

Now the iPhone's fake 911 call issue comes from its "auto car crash detection," which gets set off when people ski and, well, fall.

I've seen that but I consider it to be a separate issue. Same result but completely different cause, and arguably a harder one to get right.

I've had my Apple Watch detected me playing volley ball as having a serious fall, but it doesn't call until after a minute, and it makes quite a loud sound to notify the wearer that it's about to call.

It happens on iPhones and Watches as well, occasionally.

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.

> 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 common enough for that to become a known issue.

It absolutely was a problem for me and I disabled it. I attach the phone to my car vent with an adapter and it slipped and when trying to adjust it called 911 twice while I was driving (couldn't pick up the first time).

How come such a critical shortcut be so unknown is a mystery to me. I can't imagine anyone ever used it intentionally.

Personally from my Samsung phone - it had enabled gestures by default. This allowed you to tap the screen a few times and it would present you with the lock screen which has the emergency call button. From personal experience - the phone will wake up and go into this menu if you sweat and have the phone in your pocket.

you must not be in touch. Here's a hackernews discussions about iphones triggering:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34157142

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