Android can now reveal your exact location to emergency services when making a call. A feature that could save a lot of lives.
Placing a call to emergency services is something you hope never have to do. Accuracy and speed is key to potentially saving a life, Android is going to make this much easier by removing human error, by locating you for the police, ambulance and fire brigade.
The feature is done automatically when placing a call to the emergency services, with nothing needed to be done except making the initial call.
It will use Wi-Fi, GPS, cell tower locations to find out exactly where you are. Google will not record or even view the location data, only the emergency services will have access to it.
It will also work indoors, just as long as you have any of the aforementioned signals connected to your Android device.
Emergency services in the UK and Estonia for now
The new feature is available in the UK and Estonia, Google hope to bring out the new feature to other countries around the world soon.
In the UK you need to be on BT, EE, O2, Vodafone or Three, and have a device with Android 2.3 to support the amazing new feature. You’ll just have to update Google Play Services after checking the other boxes.
According to Google 70 percent of calls to emergency services are made from mobile phones. Making it easier to track down calls and helping experts to save lives.
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