Google released Android 12 a few days ago, which includes a lot of new features and fixes compared to its predecessor. Although the Android 12 AOSP was available earlier than the official release, it’s better late than never. In this post, we won’t discuss all the features of Android 12 except for the new Safety & Emergency option that comes with all new Emergency SOS features by default.
Even though the feature must be activated manually by the user, it’s worth exploring if you’re new to it. Whenever you’re in an emergency or danger, you can simply activate the SOS option to notify the emergency contact like the hospital/ambulance/police station/fire station/etc.
When you’re in an emergency or crisis or in danger, the Emergency SOS feature will do three things for you. In order to automatically call the emergency services, the power button must be pressed continuously five times. As an added benefit, the app will share information with your emergency contacts and record a video on your phone so both the evidence and the essential message can be preserved.
You’ll need to activate the new Emergency SOS feature on Android 12 for the first time on the handset by heading over to the Settings menu -> Safety & emergency -> Emergency SOS -> Tap on Start setup. It will now ask you whether or not to play a countdown alarm. By default, it’s set to Play a countdown alarm, but if you want to change that, you can set Don’t play the alarm.
Then tap Next -> Here you can select what emergency numbers you’d like to call. Edit the emergency contact number based on your country or locality and tap on Next to save it. You can now share information with emergency contacts by tapping on Start setup or you can skip this step. Make sure you select the contacts list (add multiple contacts) if you want to share info with emergency contacts.
After that, tap on Next -> Finally, you can choose to ‘Record a video’ by tapping on ‘Start setup’ or ‘skip’ it, depending on your preference. If you go with the Start setup then select Turn on -> Allow permissions -> You’re done. But there is an additional option that you can use with the emergency video recording feature. This allows you to automatically share the video with your emergency contacts.
The auto-record feature in SOS can record up to 45 minutes per video or until you stop it. The saved videos will be automatically backed up to your Google account, which will require an internet connection for sure. The average video size will then be around 10MB per minute without compromising quality but will be compressed. However, it also indicates that the recorded video may automatically be sent to your saved emergency contacts, so you will be fully responsible for this.
Moreover, you can access the recorded emergency videos later by selecting ‘Your Videos’ in the SOS feature. Users might be able to use this feature on adventurous trips, while driving vehicles, or in dangerous situations such as life threats, etc.
