Roger Fingas
As of January 1, 2017, all phones in India — including iPhones — will have to have some form of panic button to improve the security of women in the country, according to a new government order.
By January 2018, all phones will also have to have built-in GPS, said the Indian Express. That should allow a phone's location to be shared when the panic button is hit. iPhones have had GPS since the iPhone 3G.
In the case of "feature" phones, people must be able to trigger the panic function by hitting the 5 or 9 keys. The situation becomes more complex with smartphones however, most of which don't have a numeric keypad.
Instead, those devices will either have to add a dedicated button, or tie the option to an existing power button. The latter is more likely in the case of iPhones, as Apple normally avoids making region-specific hardware changes unless it involves supporting local wireless networks.
The Indian government is suggesting that companies going that route use a triple-click command, which would be relatively easy to implement in a future version of iOS as a region-specific setting.
iOS already has a pair of emergency functions, including Medical ID and the ability to dial emergency numbers without unlocking a device. India's panic button is meant for cases where an incident like rape or assault is imminent, however, and there might not be time or opportunity to dial as usual.
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36 Comments
Will be interesting to see if this will end up being India specific or whether it would be available worldwide? If it is available worldwide, would the feature need support by emergency call centres?
Not good, countries already dictate the design and features of cars to some extent which has only made them more expensive and slowed innovation because of all the laws. Guess the same is about to happen with phones. Very slippery slope.
As they say, the police are minutes away when seconds count! This seems like a pointless feature. The police getting to you in minutes would be lucky. If anything I think there will just be a lot of false reports. As for doing any good, slim to none. Not any better then just dialing 911 or whatever it happens to be in other countries.
Have free dump app that would display nothing but large button which does noting but make a panic call to whatever default number configured for that country's emergency service phone number. You can also add few more numbers like parents/family.friends..That application just do that. By embedding panic button into default call app, people will dial mistakenly all the time and that will put unnecessary burden to verify emergency or fake call on emergency services call center.