Just curious how Emerg Mode works. I called 911 the other day and for several minutes after the call, the phone displayed "SOS" and (I think) "Emergency Mode" for several minutes.
I let it time out, and almost as soon as it did, I received a few SMS and emails that were (I assume) delayed while in Emergency Mode.
Does the phone lock incoming and/or outgoing calls in this mode? I'm not sure what it does....
If your phone is displaying "SOS", that means that your signal is only strong enough to make emergency phone calls... meaning the signal isn't good enough to receive text messages or data. That is why everything came poring in once your phone got a strong enough signal back.
There are actually a couple of rooms in my house where my phone will lose signal like that.
if the person just dialed 911 it has nothing to do with him having no signal, i mean it does but not in their case. i read somewhere that after you make the 911 call it keeps your position, number or something like that in case the 911 people have to call you back.
Ok... and that's fine... but that must also either "make" the phone lose enough signal to not receive SMS or data, or it "makes" that stuff not come through on purpose so if someone from 911 has to call you back, they are guaranteed to get through. It still explains why he received nothing else until he got the normal signal back on the phone.
if i understand the sos mode correctly... if you cant pick up a compatible network for voice or data you can still make emergency (911) calls, also if service is not activated or disconnected, you can still make sos calls. dosent really make sence to block all other calls and data for a time after you dial 911. I would expect if you lets say have a car wreck you call 911 to get help then want to call family or a friend, not logical to have all services blocked after a 911 call.
It is partially a technical thing, When you call 911 you are taking the highest priority over any other calls on that tower and going to a dedicated switch and it is guaranteeing that priority on a return call. Anybody ever heard of getting an "All circuits are busy" message when calling 911? Thats what I mean by priority. It locks out your phone so, like someone else said it guarantees a return call can get thru (it doesn't differentiate between me calling you or anybody else as I am calling from a regular phone line) and, as long as we don't hang up our phone we can continue to do an ALI refresh (update the phase II location). Just hit the end key a couple times and it should exit you out of SOS mode. It's kinda fun stuff, I can see the tower you are connected to, the sector (side of the tower), and GPS coordinates (along with a bunch of random technical info) when you call 911. Oh ya, my source: I am a 911 Operator and police/fire/ems dispatcher.
I work in a major 911 comm center. In the parking lot at work I have 5 bars. At my console I have 1 or 2 if I'm lucky. Some times I'm in sos. Kinda crack me up. Irony is funny.
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The phone also stays in SOS mode in case you have to call back. There is a way to exit the SOS mode, right now I forget how I did. It does prevent incoming calls and text or e-mails, basically keeps the phone open for emergency calls only.
Another thing "emergency mode" does is override the PRL and any other call restrictions, and on GSM, ignore any restrictions in the SIM (or the lack of a SIM). The idea is that the phone will attempt to put the call through to any system it is technologically compatible with.
Just wondering though: if you have your Storm set to CDMA only, and upon dialing 911 it cannot find a CDMA system, will it then try GSM to put the 911 call through?
I can see the tower you are connected to, the sector (side of the tower), and GPS coordinates (along with a bunch of random technical info) when you call 911. Oh ya, my source: I am a 911 Operator and police/fire/ems dispatcher.
Does your system translate the GPS info to something that helps you identify the nearest fire station (or whatever) and give you an address (or whatever location coordinates your responders use)? I would think that raw latititude/longitude numbers wouldn't be too useful.
