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In Germany it is not possible to call emergency without an active SIM (if it is PIN protected, the PIN has to be entered before). This has been deliberately disabled since February 2009 because there were too many anonymous calls for fun or (how idiotic!) to test if a secondhand phone still works.

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That sounds kind of insane; the whole point of being able to call emergency numbers in the UK on a phone without a SIM, and/or without unlocking it, is that it's an emergency.

The solution you describe sounds like a potentially dangerous technical solution to a cultural problem. I don't hear of people phoning 999 in the UK to test a second hand phone works, or for fun.

What happens in the case where the only phone to hand happens to be someone else's and said person is incapacitated, or otherwise incapable of unlocking it?

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