How to call for help with your iPhone?

Travel safety, especially women's travel safety, has recently become the focus of attention.

What should we do when danger comes? When we discuss buying self-defense tools from Taobao, we actually ignore the most necessary method - asking friends and family for help. Modern technology has provided us with a very convenient one-click help function, and this life-saving function at a critical moment is hidden in your mobile phone.

Instead of worrying about your travel safety, you might as well learn how to call for help with one click on your mobile phone.

The iPhone with the most complete one-click rescue function

If you are using an iPhone, congratulations, your chances of successfully calling for help when in danger will be much higher. Because after my actual experience, the one-touch call for help on iPhone is at the benchmark level among mobile phone manufacturers in terms of functionality and ease of use.

First is the "SOS Emergency Contact" that comes standard on all iPhones. According to Apple's official instructions, when you activate the SOS Emergency Contact function, the iPhone will automatically dial the local emergency number. The local emergency number here is specific to China, and you can choose the police, fire or ambulance.

To make a call on an iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus, follow these steps:

• Press and hold the side button and either volume button until the Emergency SOS slider appears. Drag the Emergency SOS slider to call emergency services.

Of course, if the situation is critical and it is inconvenient for you to operate the screen with your hands, Apple also provides another way to operate: if you continue to hold the side button and volume button instead of dragging the slider, the system will start a countdown and sound a prompt. When the countdown ends, the iPhone will automatically call emergency services.

This method can be summed up in one sentence:

• If you encounter a dangerous situation, immediately press and hold the iPhone side button and either volume button.

If you are not using the latest iPhone, such as iPhone 7 or earlier models, the specific calling method is as follows:

• Quickly press the side button five times. The Emergency SOS slider appears. Drag the Emergency SOS slider to call emergency services.

iPhone emergency help trilogy: one-click call for help, send location SMS, disable Touch ID

By using the iPhone's one-touch call for help, you're just making a call for help. In the worst case, you may not have time to explain your location clearly.

Apple has taken all of this into consideration. After you finish your call, your iPhone will send a text message containing your current location to your emergency contact. I am an obsessive-compulsive person who is worried about my iPhone running out of battery, so I often turn off the location service on my iPhone. According to Apple's instructions, if the location service is off during a crisis when I am calling for help, it will be temporarily turned on.

And the text messages sent are real-time, so if my location changes, the emergency contacts will receive updated information. In other words, after I dial the emergency contact number, the iPhone automatically turns on a feature called "Share Emergency Contact Location."

In the settings, you can choose whether to turn on automatic calling. It is worth noting that in order to ensure that you are not discovered when calling for emergency help, it is recommended to turn off the countdown warning sound in the settings.

Of course, the premise of using this feature well is to create a medical emergency card in the iPhone's built-in "Health" app. In the emergency card, you can add multiple emergency contacts.

According to Apple's official instructions, the specific steps are:

• Open the Health app and tap the Medical ID tab.
• Tap Edit, then scroll to Emergency Contacts.
• Tap to add an emergency contact.
• Tap a contact, then add relationship information.
• Tap Done to save your changes.

In the event that you call for help urgently, your iPhone is also likely to fall into the wrong hands. To increase the difficulty of unlocking the iPhone, Apple also automatically disables Touch ID or Face ID after you activate the emergency contact function, and you can only unlock it with a password.

In addition to iPhone, you can also use the "SOS Emergency Contact" of Apple Watch. The method is similar to that of iPhone. Press and hold the side button of the watch until the "SOS Emergency Contact" slider appears. When the countdown ends, the watch will automatically call emergency services.

iPhone can also find your friends' locations in real time

If you unfortunately missed all the above steps, there is actually a feature "hidden" in your iPhone that can let your family or friends know your location - Find My Friends.

Turn on "Share My Location" in the settings in advance, and add your friends in the "Find Friends" app, and your friends will be able to see your location in real time.

According to Apple's official description, you can share your location with up to 100 friends. Since this feature involves privacy, you can also choose to turn off "Share My Location".

Few Android phones have a one-button emergency call function

If you are not using an iPhone, you can still make emergency calls on an Android phone when you are in danger. However, there are few phones that can activate SOS by pressing a physical button like the iPhone.

In my actual use, the four domestic mobile phones of Huami, OV all provide the "Emergency Call" function on the lock screen page. Huawei supports adding emergency contacts. Searching the Xiaomi forum, someone suggested that MIUI add this function in 2015. On the Xiaomi 6X running MIUI 10, it is still not possible to add emergency contacts.

On the Samsung Galaxy S9 and OnePlus 6, you can directly call emergency contacts by pressing the power button five times in a row.

In addition, the one-click emergency function on the 360 ​​mobile phone is quite unique - it does not make a phone call, but directly sends a text message.

In the "Security Center" built into the 360 ​​mobile phone, you can add the "One-click SOS" function by opening the toolbox. Users can set up to three numbers. When encountering an emergency, press the power button four times in a row. The phone will vibrate, indicating that the default SOS message has been sent successfully. The message will include the current real-time location for easy search.

One-click calling of emergency contacts is a feature that mobile phone manufacturers need to pay attention to.

Source of some title pictures: Apple official