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'Emergency Call' lets you call whoever you like

B

bananabar

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 10, 2008
218
0
I assumed that, like all other phones I've ever had, when the iPhone is locked the only thing you can do with it is make an emergency call - 999, 112 or whatever.

But no, press 'Emergency Call' and you can then proceed to dial whoever you like and then have a nice long chat with them.

What's the point in having a phone that locks but then allows someone to pick it up and call their grandmother who's on holiday in New Zealand? All the time running-up a massive bill that you have to pay.

It's ridiculous!
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

How do you do that? I never could.
 
When it's locked, press emergency call and then tap in a nunber - any number - and natter away. It's not restricted to calling emergency services.

I'm running the latest 2.1 - maybe it's a bug with that build?
 
this has been discussed countless times! Its not a bug with your build, its a feature apple didnt include, use the search function I'm positive this was discussed a long time ago!
 
do you not read my whole post? I said its a feature apple didnt include, meaning they didnt limit it to emergency calls only. Dont lose your phone and you wont have a problem, and if you do lose your phone hopefully you have the brains to report it lost or stolen so you wont get charged. this is one of those little things you nitpickers just have to complain about isnt it. Email steve if you have a problem with it.:D:D:D
 
Yes, definitely call your grandmother in NZ, ask her about her travels in our amazing country. In fact, you should come here too :) ! Prop up our economy a bit...
 
kiwi031 said:
Yes, definitely call your grandmother in NZ, ask her about her travels in our amazing country. In fact, you should come here too :) ! Prop up our economy a bit...
Click to expand...

why is this relevant? you aussies and kiwis have some sayings that just confuse the hell outta me haha but i love yall!
 
The idea with the call-anyone ability, is that the phone can't know what the emergency number is in your country or particular area. Or whether you might want to call someplace else instead.

In this case, the lock is only to keep people from viewing your personal data.

(Although, for a while, there was a serious bug where double-tapping the Home button gave you access to info even while locked ... the typical fallout of adding a UI hack.)
 
I am genuinely shocked.

Every phone I've had in the past would only let me dial 999, 112 or sometimes 911 when locked - those really are emergency calls!

Why would I want to bother locking my phone if someone can still run-up hundreds of pounds of calls. It could be hours before one realises one has lost one's phone/had one's phone stolen - plenty of time to leave you with a massive bill. Why not just have the phone lock-out completely.

As for Bassproguy07 who said "Don't lose your phone and you won't have a problem" - what a brainless thing to say. If I could guarantee I'd never lose my phone, I would't bother locking it in the first place.
 
Even my old phone without a colour screen would restrict the emergency call thing to 999, 911, 112 and other actual emergency numbers!

A little annoying, I dont see it as a big deal, though, no one else ever touches my iPhone anyway.
 
hours to notice your phone gone?? must not use it that much! like I said if its that big of a deal, email old stevie and complain! posting on here about your worries of getting minutes used on your phone by some thief isnt going to get it fixed. We all seem to expect so much from apple, our phones can do so much as it is, and when there is one little mistake like this you freak out! get over it its there, complain to stevie to get it fixed!
 
Supposedly it is so as well as call 911 you can call you wife/brother/surgeon/priest in an emergency.

Personally I’d like to be able to set say max three user defined "emergency numbers". Though really I'm loosing sleep over this issue!
 
I don't think its so you can call someone other then then police etc. Because that would mean that you would have to know there number off by heart to ring them. But if you can ring them then you should be able to unlock your phone easily enough and go from there. I always thought the hole idea of having the emergency button on the lock screen was so if someone else (not the owner of the phone) picked it up when the owner was in trouble they would be able to ring the police or ambo. So if another person picked it up what are the chances they would know the person other then police etc you call in case of an emergency and actually know there number off by heart.

I think its a blatant mistake by apple. Also i agree with wackymacky in that you can set a few user defined emergency buttons into the emergency call.
 
From Apple regarding 2.2 update:

"Impact: Emergency calls are not restricted to emergency numbers

Description: iPhone provides the ability to make an emergency call when locked. Currently, an emergency call may be placed to any number. A person with physical access to an iPhone may take advantage of this feature to place arbitrary calls which are charged to the iPhone owner. This update addresses the issue by restricting emergency calls to a limited set of phone numbers."

So, put simply, I was right and you were all wrong! It WAS an error. Ha ha ha haaaaaa!

bassproguy07 said:
posting on here about your worries of getting minutes used on your phone by some thief isnt going to get it fixed.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? Maybe it was this very thread that flagged it up and made them sort it. You never know...
 
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