• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Pocket Dialing

olbriar

olbriar

 
Moderator
VIP Member
This afternoon, I no more than got through mowing my river property, when I received a call from a police officer. He was responding to my 911 hang up call. The call didn't show up in my call log but I must have pocket dialed the number while bouncing behind the mower. I told him that but he insisted on following up on my call and wanted my address. Uhhhh.. cabin in the woods by the river is the address :) I told him how to get to the cabin and he was there within five minutes. Nice guy and was impressed with the cabin and property. Not that it's upscale.. but it feels like many miles from civilization.

I've made a number of pocket calls through the years but that was my first time calling 911. I can't be the only person to have accidently called someone. Do you have a pocket call to share?
 
my friend pocket called me.....well it was not in his pocket. apparently he was having sex with his girlfriend and somehow knocked the phone off the nightstand. a hand must have swiped the screen and called me. all i heard was......well sex being performed.......LOL i screamed and shouted and nobody heard me.....they were to busy.....LMAO!!!!!
 
Might be it was bumped a few times. I think it can be disabled. It is under "Safety and Emergency" in settings.
Screenshot_20230825_234849_Emergency SOS.jpg
 
I looked as well and I had it toggled off. To insure that it's off I gave it a custom number to dial which is the number to listen to voicemail from my provider. I pushed the power button five times which opened my camera app. I tried it a few more times and only once did it again open my camera app... it never dialed my voice mail or opened any other apps.
I don't think the five taps of the power button called 911
 
Years ago and phones ago I often made pocket calls. They were always to a subcontractor that I worked around. It got to be a big joke between us and we'd often strike up an impromptu conversation. How I was pocket dialing and why always his number was never solved. It ceased when I upgraded phones. It was those unintended calls and random apps being opened while my phone was in my pocket has since been a priority to eliminate on all new phones. That's why my 911 call seems so odd. I really thought the five taps of the power button was something that I wasn't aware of and left unaddressed but it was toggled off.
 
My first cell phone I also pocket-dialed 911. It was a Nokia phone and if you held down the 9 button it would call 911, which I discovered when it happened. I hung up when I realized it and the 911 dispatcher called me back to make sure I was okay. I apologized profusely, of course.
 
My old Ericsson T68 was prone to pocket dialling: I think the little joystick got jogged, selected the contacts and then it was easy to call. For some reason the screen lock didn't seem to reliably stop this. I created dummy contacts "aaaa" and "zzzz" (to be the first thing selected depending on which way it was jogged) with no phone numbers, and that cut it down a lot.

A friend of mine used to constantly pocket dial me, I think because my name was first in his contacts. Shouting down the phone was never heard.

These days I use a flip case, which solves the problem completely.
 
I have an iPhone. (Don't worry. I also have a Pixel 7). The thing about this phone is that it is prone to butt dials. A lot. I send them and get them a LOT. My goto is to act like I MEANT to call the person rather than telling them calling them was a mistake. :)
 
not a pocket call, but an inadvertent and unneccessary trip up of the Galaxy Watch 4 "fall protection" feature. I am a mechanic, and was using a hammer to free a stuck brake hub on a drum brake. The action of the hammering made Watch 4 think I fell and couldn't get up. Apple Watch does this too, but gives you a minute to respond, then makes a rather loud countdown for another 10 seconds before dialing 911. The Galaxy Watch gave me 5 seconds period. My greasy hands weren't enough to swipe whatever cryptic action it expected to 'dismiss' in time, so not only did 911 get called, watch also went into 'sos mode' and sent a location ping to my mother, who also get a text, freaked her the heck out, and I had to explain to the 911 operator what happened, but watch was 'stuck' in sos mode and mom kept freaking out, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to dismiss that mode as no obvious action was on-screen, I mean come on Samsung I'm old school here! I ultimately destroyed the watch with said hammer as I had no way to stop it from trying to not only re-dial 911 again and again, but stop it from also freaking my mother out. All over using a hammer as a hammer.

WearOS sucks. It always sucked. Samsung stop trying to fix another dead Google product and stick to Tizen.

Today I wear a late '60s Benrus mechanical watch.
 
olbriar said:
Your Watch 4 story made me consider the possibility that my Watch 3 dialed 911 yesterday. I found the SOS settings and they are all turned off. My call is still a mystery.
Click to expand...
Make sure you got the fall protection feature turned off. It was on by default on mine. I still want to try out a Watch 6 Classic, to see if things improved software wise as the 4 felt like a massive downgrade compared to my OG watch, but am on the fence.

When mine went into SOS Mode, it would show an icon on the left indicating it was on which appeared to resemble some sort of flash beacon icon, so I figured swiping over to that would allow it to be turned off. All it did was show that it was on, but no tapping of said notification allowed me to disable it. It was also not in quick toggles, Bixby and Google Assistant couldn't disable it by voice command, and I couldn't find any setting in settings either. Keep in mind I was in a bit of a panic myself dealing with the 911 operator and my mom who was assuming I got hurt on the job, so my mind was more on 'how to disable this with any means necessary' and I already hated the software experience enough but put up with it hoping it'd get better but that was just it for me at the time.

If fall protection is triggered, it pings your wrist with a vibration pulse, no sound, and by the time I caught mine, it was at the 5 second mark. I do not know how long it actually gives you as I don't feel vibration pulses well and often rely on watch's speaker, as my nerves ain't what they used to be, but either way, by the time the counter expires, it will put watch into Emergency SOS, which not only places a voice call to 911, but sends your GPS location and an automated text message to your 'emergency contacts'. It will indicate said mode on the main watchface with a 'flash beacon' icon where the notification 'dot' normally sits. If you swipe over to the notification area, it will show 'Emergency SOS location ON' as the notification, but no tapping action or swipe can either dismiss it or turn said feature off. The Galaxy Watch 3 is less sophisticated here, as it only does fall protection detection during a workout only, while Watch 4 does it all the time.
 
Last edited:
nickdalzell said:
I still want to try out a Watch 6 Classic, to see if things improved software wise as the 4.
Click to expand...
The Watch 4 and 5 are supposed to be getting the same software as the Watch 6 series. Obviously there are hardware changes, but other than that the software should be the same.
 
i mean hoping they'd fill in the gaps they created when they went wear os.

No rotary app drawer

No number badges on app icons in said drawer

Cannot type an emoji in the same sentence on the keyboard i.e., a text message; can only send emoji by itself or words by itself no ability to end a sentence with a few emoji at the end.

predictive text borked. It tends to correct non-misspelled words, no ability to add a custom word to dictionary, picks the wrong words a ton. Zero handwriting mode, zero t-9 mode.

There's no more 'AI' for quick responses offered; static only. on OG watch, the replies were more contextual. If someone texted you 'i love you' it offered for example 'I love you too' as one of the quick replies. If someone texted you 'you coming over today?' it offered 'on my way' and 'not now, later?' as some options.

no alti-barometer widget, or app

no floors climbed in samsung health anymore

no more 3 day battery life

forced to use play store for watch faces, no galaxy store; no transfer of watch faces purchases for the few devs who managed to port over faces to the play store.

Watchface selection limited severely. No more skeuo faces, all flat faces inspired by Apple Watch.

Glitches in the transparency effect when you view a notification; doesn't always return to watchface when idle.

Hoping some of that is fixed..I also didn't like the design of the Watch 4. The OG looked well, like a watch, down to its heavily skeuomorphic default face, with actual 'shine' that changed with the gyro sensor, or even mechanical 'ticking' sound. The Watch 4 and 5 look like obvious smartwatches, which breaks my retro aesthetic that I go for lately. The watch 6, however, starts looking like a watch again, at least with the chrome classic option. But if the software is as limited as the Watch 4 was a year ago, I won't even bother.
 
Last edited:
I thought I had my phone locked down well so I wouldn't pocket dial anymore. Though I didn't dial anyone, my phone had opened the navigation app. I was getting voice instructions where to turn while I was mowing and listening to tunes. The directions made zero sense to my location. I have no idea how the app was opened and a destination set. Closing all apps and reopening my player seemed to fix the problem. Fix is not the right word. Closing the nav app is a better term. The PROBLEM is the app was opened to begin with. I don't have anything in place to quick open my phone. I have to swipe a pattern or fingerprint myself to open the phone. How does a nav app open and have a destination for me to reach?
 
I remember when the first 'pet' deer I knew got hold of a Nokia personal communicator, a candybar phone that had a full QWERTY keyboard that flipped out like wings, with screen in the centre. whatever 'organic' earth friendly material they made the PCB out of in 2004 apparently started getting dissolved by deer drool where I was getting calls from contacts asking 'why did you call me and hang up??' when in reality I had done no such thing. after it attempting to dial 911 on its own i figured that locking it with a PIN where you had to tap MENU plus XXXX where the 'x' is your PIN would be impossible for it to do on its own, but alas, not the case. No later than 5 minutes after i set it on the table did i see the screen light up with 'unlocked with PIN, dialing MOM' and i scrambled to yank the battery as it refused to respond to keypresses. I had a rather interesting discussion with Cingular over it at the time, even demonstrating it in person since they thought such a thing was impossible. only this time it tried to dial 911 and I managed to yank the battery before it could connect. They denied my insurance coverage sadly, claiming that deer are wildlife and therefore it's an 'act of God' and deer drool is considered 'moisture damage' and not covered. What a scam that was. paying so much extra to cover my butt only for it to be a waste of money. Still funny remembering it though.

more recently, seen folks lose phones to all number of animals, from earbuds swalled by curious goats who thought they were actual beans, to phones chewed up by dogs, to reports of a rather interesting incident involving a snake swallowing a phone while managing to dial a video call resorting in a rather disturbing inside view of a snake's digestive tract, and more.
 
I've had those moments when I've used smartphones on the Android operating system. Luckily I only called the last numbers in the phonebook or just a random set of numbers. But since I switched completely to the iPhone, nothing like that has happened.
 
I often dealt with things like it more when I used a SIII, S4, and Note 3. Back then, these phones had amazing (well, to me at least) lock screen effects, water for the SIII, light for the S4, and so on. If you used a secure lock, those effects got disabled and it was just bland. So I often just used 'swipe' for unlock at the time. Unfortunately, having discovered that I somehow 'sent' random gibberish to contacts, to having 4 apps open on their own, to hearing my pocket going 'bwop bwop bwop' (back when they used nature touch sounds) as I moved around, I started using more secure lock screens. Today, those iconic effects are no longer done so you don't benefit any way from not using secure lock, visually or otherwise.

Unfortunately, if you use a standard candybar form factor phone today, you can still pocket-interact with music widgets on the lockscreen, pocket-launch camera, or enable torch and drain most of your battery before you catch it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom