🆘 Set Up Your Phone's Emergency Features Now, Before You Need Them

Frank Bravo 0:00
If you had to call 911 right now and you couldn't speak. Could your phone do it for you? Most people answer, I don't know, and that's okay. But here's the thing. Your phone most certainly can do that for you. It can call for help. Share your exact location with emergency services and show first responders your medical information, all without you having to say a single word. This feature is already there and built into your device you just need to have. Make sure it's set up first. Hopefully you'll never need it. But today I'm going to walk you through exactly how to make sure you're prepared if you do. Welcome to your Tech Makeover, the podcast that gives you tips and tricks to help you simplify and get more out of the technology in your life. I'm your host, Frank Bravo. Today's topic is emergency and safety features built right into your smartphone. We're talking about that emergency SOS, your medical ID, emergency contacts, the crash detection which is super cool, and location sharing. These are features that can generally make a difference in a very scary moment, but only if you set them up ahead of time. Here's the truth about most of these features. They're all on by default, and you have to do nothing to configure them. But there are a few things you have to configure first. So your phone comes with emergency SOS. It's already on, but if you haven't been told who your emergency contacts are, or if you haven't filled out your medical ID, the future is only halfway useful. Think of it as a fire extinguisher. It's on the wall. It's there if you need it. But if you've never looked at it and know exactly how to use it when the moment comes, you're going to be struggling to figure out how to use it. The good news is that all it takes is a few minutes to set any of these up. You do it once, it works every time from then on. So let's walk through these pieces one by one. We're going to talk about the emergency SOS first. It's exactly what it sounds like. It lets you call emergency services quickly, sometimes without even looking at your screen. If you have an iPhone, there's two ways to trigger it. If you have a phone that's purchased in the last 6 or 7 years, you can press and hold the side button and either of the volume buttons at the same time until the emergency SOS slider shows up on the screen. Or if you press the side button five times rapidly, your phone will call 911 automatically. You can choose the method in your settings under emergency SOS sections. On an Android device, the process varies by manufacturer, so you're going to want to make sure it's right for your manufacturer. On most phones, pressing the power button five times quickly will trigger it. Just like on the iPhone. On a Samsung phone, there's an emergency SOS option in the Quick Settings panel that you pull down from the top of the screen on a Google Pixel phone. You might find it in the Safety and Emergency section of your settings app. Now here's what makes it useful beyond just the speed. After you trigger emergency SOS, your phone automatically calls the emergency services. It usually plays a brief audio countdown the moment before you can cancel it, just in case you triggered it by accident, and it sends a text message to your emergency contacts letting them know that you've called them for help along with your current location. Now that's super important is where are you? If you have an iPhone 14 or newer, there's something called emergency SOS via satellite. This means that even if your location is out of cell service, like you're out hiking or something, your phone can still reach emergency services by connecting directly to the satellites overhead. Most people will never need it, but if you're on a hike, you're camping, or you travel anywhere off the beaten path, that is a very powerful thing to have. A quick shout out to listeners like you who help make your tech make over possible. Your support is what helps keep this podcast going and I truly appreciate it. Want to contribute? Just click the link in the show notes or visit your Tech makeover. Plus, as a thank you, supporters who give $25 or more will get $25 off a one time consultation with me to help you simplify your tech. Thanks for being part of the Your Tech Makeover community. Now back to what I was saying. Now let's talk about the medical ID. Medical ID is one of the most underused features of any smartphone, and it's one of the most important ones to set up. Here's what it does. It stores your medical information in one place that paramedics and first responders can access your from your lock screen without you having to unlock your phone. Even if you're unconscious or unable to communicate. Someone trying to help you see your blood type, your allergies, your medication, and who to call on an iPhone. You set this up through the health app. You open the to app, you tap on the profile picture in the upper corner, and you select medical ID from there, you'll want to fill out your name, your birth date, your medical conditions if you have any, some allergies if you have those, any reactions to medications that you take, all your emergency contacts, I should say, and your emergency contacts not. Or you want to make sure the emergency contacts are in there as well. The setting you absolutely need to make sure is turned on is the show when locked setting. This is the one that makes your medical ID accessible from your lock screen without it turned on. The information is completely private and useless. In an emergency on an Android device, you'll find the settings under the settings and then emergency, safety and emergency or something like that depending on the device. And then you're going to look for medical information. It's the same idea. The process is pretty much the same. To set it up. You don't have to fill out everything to make this worthwhile, but something you want to make sure you include is your name and your phone and your photo. You want to make sure you have a photo because the first responders can't use it if they can't match the device to the person. But more, it's more in the case of getting your full picture, if you have as much information as you have can put in there, especially if you're allergic to something. If you're allergic to something, or you're on medication that may react poorly with others, you want to make sure those are listed as well. And then there's the emergency contacts. Your emergency contacts are people who get notified when you use the emergency SOS. When that feature is triggered, they automatically receive a text message with your location and a note that you called for help on an iPhone. You add that emergency contact right alongside the other health information in the health app. It's in the medical ID section. Again, there's a field at the bottom labeled emergency contacts. Pretty obvious there where you can select people from your address book on Android. You're going to go back to that same place that you just were, the safety and emergency, and you'll see an emergency contact section there. Same process. The question most people ask often is, who should I add? 1 or 2 people who are most likely to answer their phone is the people you should have on this list. Maybe it's a spouse, a close family member, a trusted neighbor, or a good friend. The most important thing is that it's someone who, when they see that message, they'll respond, not someone who might ignore it like an unknown text and two mornings later say, oh, wait a minute, somebody sent this to me. One thing that's easily overlooked is to make sure you let people know that you've added them, letting them know that you're on their list. No. Makes them think, okay, well, if I ever see the emergency SOS, I'll know what to do with it. A quick conversation ahead of time can make a real difference. Finally, there is crash detection. This is one of the newer features that are out there, and it deserves a moment from itself because it is kind of cool on your. If you have an iPhone 14 or a newer model or a newer Google Pixel, you can have your phone detect if you're in a serious crash. It uses the phone's accelerometer, its gyroscope to know where, how it's located in the world, and the microphone to recognize a combination of sounds and physical forces that happen in a severe collision. If it detects a crash, it puts an alert on your screen and plays an alarm. If you don't respond within a few seconds, it automatically calls emergency services for you and tells them you've been in a crash along with your precise location. If you're fine, you just test. You just tap the I'm okay on and it just cancels it. Simple as that. This feature is usually turned on by phones that automatically support it, but it's worth taking a minute to confirm. On an iPhone, you'll go to settings and then emergency SOS. You should see the crash detection setting there. If you have a phone that's new enough and can support this on a Google Pixel, it's under the Personal Safety app. What I want you to take away from this is even if you have one of these phones, you're probably already protected. You just may not know that, and you need to make sure that it's absolutely turned on. So go do that right now. Pause this episode, go do it and come back. All right, well, let's bring all this home. There's four things I want you to take away and do right now this week. Don't spend another minute without doing these things okay. So number one, open your medical ID and set it up. It's worthwhile. It takes just a few seconds to do number two at at least one emergency contact. I had said two before. But you know, if you're going to do the absolute minimum, do at least one three, learn how to trigger the emergency SOS on your phone. It's okay to go ahead and try it because you can cancel it. Make sure you know how to activate it. And number four, check whether or not your phone supports Crashed Texan, and if it does confirm it's enabled. None of these take very long, but all of them will work a lot better if you do some now and you know they're set up before you actually need them. So have you ever been in a situation where you've had these features already set and you might have wanted to make them different? Maybe something happened to you or someone close to you, and you realize afterwards that the information would have been really helpful had it been done. Or maybe you'd always meant to set it up and never got around to it. Anyway, let me know. And as always, if you have ideas for topics you'd like me to cover on this podcast, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at your Tech Makeover. That's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and make sure you like it and leave a comment if you don't mind doing that. And if you're on Substack, make sure you subscribe to the newsletter so you're alerted to new content as it's posted. You can always check out your technique overcast, where you can see more information about this and other episodes. And if you want to find out more about me, you can visit Bravo! Until next time, I'm Frank Bravo, and this has been your tech makeover.